“On horseback, beyond the church, at just after three.”
“Yes.” Turning away, she flung him a smile. “And to make it, I’ll have to rush. I’ll see you there.”
Suiting action to her words, she hurried to the stairs and went quickly up-before he asked how she planned to motivate him to browbeat the aldermen into submission. The sharp jab she had in mind would, she thought, work best if he wasn’t prepared.
After speaking with Cranny about rooms for the latest expected guests, and with Retford about the cellar and the depredations likely during the house party, she checked with Hancock over his requirements for the mill, then rode into Alwinton and spoke with the timber merchant. She finished earlier than she’d expected, so dallied in the village until just after three before remounting Rangonel and heading south.
As she’d expected, Royce was waiting in the designated field, both horse and rider showing their customary impatience. He turned Sword toward Harbottle as she ranged alongside. “Are you really planning on joining the others in Harbottle later?”
Looking ahead, lips curving, she shrugged lightly. “There’s an interesting jeweler I could visit.”
He smiled and followed her gaze. “How far is it to this footbridge?”
She grinned. “About half a mile.” With a flick of her reins, she set Rangonel cantering, the big gelding’s gait steady and sure. Royce held Sword alongside despite the stallion’s obvious wish to run.
A wish shared by his rider. “We could gallop.”
She shook her head. “No. We shouldn’t get there too early.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.” She caught his disgruntled snort, but he didn’t press her. They crossed the Alwin at the ford, water foaming about the horses’ knees, then cantered on, cutting across the pastures.
A flash of white ahead was the first sign that her timing was correct. Cresting a low rise, she saw two young girls, pinafores flapping, books tied in small bundles on their backs, laughing as they skipped along a track that led down a shallow gully disappearing behind the next rise to their left.
Royce saw them, too. He shot her a suspicious, incipiently frowning glance, then tracked the pair as he and she headed down the slope. The girls passed out of sight behind the next rise; minutes later, the horses reached it, taking the upward slope in their stride, eager to reach the crest.
When they did, Royce looked down and along the gully-and swore. He hauled Sword to a halt, and grimly stared down.
Expressionless, she drew rein beside him, and watched a bevy of children crossing the Coquet, swollen by the additional waters of the Alwin to a turbulent, tempestuous, swiftly flowing river, using the rickety remnants of the footbridge.
“I thought there was no school in the area.” His clipped accents underscored the temper he held leashed.
“There isn’t, so Mrs. Cribthorn does what she can to teach the children their letters. She uses one of the cottages near the church.” It was the minister’s wife who had brought the execrable state of the footbridge to her attention. “The children include some from certain of Wolverstone’s crofter families where the women have to work the fields alongside their men. Their parents can’t afford the time to bring the children to the church via the road, and on foot, there is no other viable route the children could take.”
The young girls they’d seen earlier had joined the group at the nearer end of the bridge; the older children organized the younger ones in a line before, one by one, they inched their way along the single remaining beam, holding the last horizontal timber left from the bridge’s original rails.
Someone had strung a rough rope along the rail, giving the children with smaller hands something they could cling to more tightly.
Royce growled another curse and lifted his reins.
“No.” She caught his arm. “You’ll distract them.”
He didn’t like it, but reined both himself and Sword in; drawing her hand from the rigid steel his arm had become, she knew how much it cost him.
Could sense how much, behind his stony face, he fumed and railed while being forced to watch the potential drama from a distance-a distance too great to help should one of the children slip and fall.
“What happened to the damned bridge, and when?”
“A bore last spring.”
“And it’s been like this ever since?”
“Yes. It’s only used by the crofter children to get to the church, so…” She didn’t need to tell him that the welfare of crofter children didn’t rate highly with the aldermen of Harbottle.
The instant the last child stepped safely onto the opposite bank, Sword surged down the rise and thundered toward the bridge. The children heard; trudging over the field, they turned and looked, but after watching curiously for several minutes, continued homeward. By the time she and Rangonel reached the river, Royce was out of the saddle and clambering about the steep bank, studying the structure from below.
From Rangonel’s back, she watched as he grabbed the remaining beam, using his weight to test it. It creaked; he swore and let go.
When he eventually climbed back up and came striding toward her, his expression was black.
The glare he bent on her was coldly furious. “Who are the aldermen of Harbottle?”
He knew she’d manipulated him; the instant he’d seen the two girls he’d known. Despite that, his irritation with her was relatively minor; he put it to one side and dealt with the issue of the rickety footbridge with a reined fury that brought vividly to mind ghosts from his ancestral past.
There was a wolf in the north again, and he was in a savage mood.
Even though she’d had high expectations, Minerva was impressed. Together they thundered into Harbottle; she introduced him to the senior alderman, who quickly saw the wisdom of summoning his peers. She’d stood back and watched Royce, with cutting exactitude, impress on those unwitting gentlemen first their shortcomings, then his expectations. Of the latter, he left them in absolutely no doubt.
They bowed and scraped, and swore they would attend to the footbridge expeditiously.
He eyed them coldly, then informed them he would be back in three days to view their progress.
Then he turned and stalked out; entirely satisfied, she followed.
Royce set a furious pace back to the castle. The dark look he cast her as he swung up to his saddle made it clear he hadn’t forgotten her tweaking of his temper, but he’d wanted an urgent and dramatic reason to give him justification for browbeating the aldermen into fixing the footbridge, so she’d given him one. Her conscience was clear.
Something she suspected he realized, for even when they reached Wolverstone, left their horses with Milbourne, and started toward the castle, other than another of his piercing, dark looks, he said nothing.
By the time they reached the west wing and were approaching the turret stairs, she’d stopped expecting any reaction from him. She was deep in self-congratulation, pleased and eminently satisfied with her day’s achievements, when his fingers locked about her elbow and he swung her into the shadowed hall at the bottom of the stairs. Her back met the paneled wall; he followed, pinning her.
Startled, her lips were parted when he crushed them beneath his and kissed her-filled her mouth, seized her wits, and stormed her senses.
It was a hard, bruising, conquering sort of kiss, one she responded to with damning ardor.
Her hands were sunk in the dark silk of his hair when he abruptly pulled back, leaving her gasping, her senses reeling.