My Lady Jane(33)

The villagers were still screaming, though the wolves had abandoned the child and the other farmers. The cow was dead. The four men with the wolves were dragging it away.

“It’s over, Jane.” Gifford didn’t release her; his hands were hot on her ribs.

She stared beyond him, where the peasants were regrouping, consoling one another. Their voices drifted up from the field. “Third cow this week,” someone said.

“The Pack will take everything unless we hunt them down,” a man replied. “The children will starve.”

A small meep came from Jane. The poor children.

“Is he going to be all right?” someone called, looking toward the people surrounding the child who’d been attacked. Jane held her breath. Even Gifford turned to listen.

“The bites aren’t deep. As long as they don’t fester . . .” Their conversation grew too quiet for Jane to hear.

Gifford stepped back, releasing his grip on her. “This way, my lady. Let’s go back to the carriage.”

“But we have to help them—”

“It’s over now. What would you do for them? They’ll take care of one another.” He gestured toward the carriage, where the driver shifted from foot to foot. “Don’t you have an ugly scarf to finish?”

How could he joke at a time like this? Clearly Gifford Dudley had no sense of responsibility or honor.

Jane hugged herself and gazed toward the farmers once more. Some were taking the injured child away, while others stayed to discuss ways to make the fields more secure. Gifford’s question had been fair: what would she do for them? The attack had happened. The wolves and strange men were slinking out of view, the cow carcass loaded onto a cart.

“Very well.”

“Thank you.” Gifford offered his arm as though he actually thought he was a gentleman. Jane jerked away and walked on her own, though her whole body trembled with adrenaline and panic at how close that child had come to dying, and how the peasants might go hungry now.

When she sat in the warm carriage, surrounded by her books and her pathetic knitting, the only thing she felt was cold.

Those people were in trouble. In need of help. And Gifford had done nothing.





NINE


Gifford

There was nothing he could’ve done. If he hadn’t stopped Jane, she would’ve been hurt. G was a strong man, at least he thought he was, but under no circumstances did he have the ability to dispatch an entire wolf pack.

And those had been no ordinary wolves. They were part of the E?ian Pack, G was sure of it.

He would not have stood a chance against them. The Pack was well known all over England. For E?ians, they represented a kind of Robin Hood figure—taking back what for so long had been denied to them. For the rest of the country, they were terrifying bandits. Ruthless. Cunning. And even if G had managed to stop the attack while remaining alive, saving one small village would’ve done nothing to abate the numbers of the desperate and starving.

He sighed and scratched at the gold-leaf windowsill of the carriage, and a few flecks of gold flaked off into his palm. What those peasants wouldn’t do for a handful of the shiny metal. But for G’s father and the other nobles like him, gold was a mere decoration. G had never known hunger, not really, but he had seen it. He’d been all over the countryside as a horse, and it seemed to him that the entire kingdom was going hungry. But what could one person do?

Nothing, he thought. One person could do nothing. So there was no point being noble about it.

The driver hit a bump, causing one of Jane’s books to topple. G cut a glance toward Jane, expecting her to stage a dramatic rescue of the fallen tome, but her face remained a blank mask. Her chest heaved, perhaps still out of breath from the tumult of the attack. Just below her collarbone, her skin was red and splotchy.

G grabbed his flask of water, splashed a bit on a handkerchief, and handed it to her.

She looked at it warily for a moment, and then took it and pressed it against her delicate neck, along her collarbone, and just under her hairline in the back. She did it so gracefully that G decided he would include a description of the motion in his poem about her pout and the curve of her neck.

Oh that I were the handkerchief in that hand, that I might touch that neck. . . .

“Thank you,” she said, handing him back the kerchief.

Her silhouette against the moonlit window was lovely. This creature was his wife, he thought again with a kind of disbelief, and no matter what her (incorrect) perspective was, he’d saved her back there. At this instant, he could feel a pull toward her, a desire to protect her always. For the briefest of moments, G considered the romantic notion of secretly shoving the handkerchief inside his shirt, against his heart. He caught himself leaning ever so slightly toward her.

Jane turned to him, a blush on her cheeks. “My lord, if you’d be so kind as to remain on your own half of the seat. My books are crushed as is.”

Ah. There she is. The aloof and disappointed lady. G mentally slapped his own cheek, over and over until it burned red under his imaginary hand and he was sure he’d slapped out every romantic notion. He wanted to tell her she’d have more room if she’d just get rid of her books, but he supposed that in her case, it would be like telling a mother she’d have more room if she threw out her children.

So instead, he took the handkerchief, smiled sweetly at his lady, and let it fly out the window.