Heart of the Cotswolds: England Read online

  Jane didn’t only see, she understood. It shouldn’t be possible, but she did.

  While he was looking away, his lamb not only found his feet but managed several staggering steps toward Jane. He fell once, but was getting the hang of standing up again. When he reached her, he leaned his head into her lap and nipped his sister on the butt.

  She woke, twisted, flailed, and tumbled out of Jane’s lap before Jane could react. Her lamb lay on the straw blinking herself awake, then started her own trial-and-error experiment on how to stand.

  Jane helped her lamb up, easing each hoof inward until the tiny thing stood almost four-square on only her second effort. Jane caught her when she fell, mothering the lamb beyond what any sheep would or could do.

  It was so easy to see what kind of person she was and what kind of parent she would be.

  God help him, but he was completely gone on Jane Tully.

  Could he win her? Despite being some sad-sack, gimped-up—

  He slammed the Black Demon aside before it had a chance to take root. He knew he didn’t have a chance with someone like her, not a long-term chance. But he also knew that he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try.

  Jane lay in bed, listening to the silence of Aaron Mason sleeping in the room above hers.

  Cottage, stone wall, lamb birthing all swirled about her. She’d never forget any of it, but if there was one thing she’d never forget about today, it was walking back from the lambing shed in the quiet dark with Aaron.

  He hadn’t offered his arm as her White Knight was supposed to.

  Instead he’d offered his hand and she’d taken it.

  It was as if she had to learn about a whole new person. The tension in his arm was no longer her guide to his shifting moods. Instead, she could feel every callus. Places where the rock must rub as it was lifted and placed. Or were they old calluses from when he was a soldier? Even Aaron’s fingers were well-muscled. It made sense, but she could actually feel them flexing where their fingers interlaced. As intimate as any palm reading, every little shift filled with meaning she didn’t know how to interpret.

  Yet he hadn’t spoken a word.

  Instead, he had held her hand until they reached the stairs up to the rooms. The pub was dark and silent, everyone gone including Hal and Bridget. The fire was just banked coals behind a wire screen, offering the last ruddy glow as if the final bit of the sunset had been saved just for them.

  At the base of the stairs, he’d asked a silent question with the turn of a wrist.

  In answer, she’d faced him and slid into his arms. It was everything a kissing gate wasn’t. His hard body pressed against hers in all the right places. When he scooped a hand up into her hair, it was to guide her head to rest on his shoulder.

  All he did was hold her. He went so very still it was almost as if she was alone, if they hadn’t been so close.

  Was that what it was like to be with a good man? To feel…safe? Protected?

  The feeling had become so strong that she’d finally had to step away before it overwhelmed her. All the Larry Jenkinses in her life had never prepared her for the power of an Aaron Mason.

  I will defend her against anyone wishing her harm. Anyone.

  She beat her head back against her pillow. Even in the fairy tales, White Knights didn’t spout such lines. Yet Aaron had. And there was no doubt he’d meant it.

  That’s back when he thought I was a pretty blonde with an IQ greater than a gerbil and had my shit together.

  Yet as they’d sat there earlier in the night, with the lambs struggling to stand and achieving the goal of being stable at about the same time as their mother did, he’d asked softly of her past.

  It had spilled out.

  The loss, the hurt, the pain.

  She’d left out her fears for the future. Not because she didn’t think Aaron would take them in stride as he did everything else, including his own handicap, she knew he would. Jane left out the future fears because she wasn’t sure if she was ready to face them.

  And then he’d offered his hand and his surety that somehow he’d decided she was worth it despite the mortal mess that was her life. He didn’t promise that the future was going to be okay, but she could see the possibility whenever he was around…even with him sleeping on a separate floor above her.

  She thought about tiptoeing up the stairs and sliding quietly into his bed so that he’d find her there when he awoke. Just another of Jane’s silly fantasies. He might welcome her, but why would he want her? If he really knew her, he wouldn’t.

  The other problem was that she couldn’t read between his lines on this. A shrug could only convey a certain layer of information. If he wanted her, why didn’t he do something about it? At least kiss her at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe his knee wasn’t the only thing shot up in the war. That didn’t fit either or he wouldn’t have kissed her the way he already had on their walks. But tonight he’d simply cradled her head upon his shoulder long enough for her speeding heart rate to slow, then wished her goodnight.

  It was impossible to imagine his confidence was what had been taken down by enemy fire. Aaron Mason was the most competent man she’d ever met. Nothing seemed beyond him—from building rock walls to birthing sheep, to fitting into this very close community of Fosse-on-the-Wold. She’d have been a complete outsider if not for the doors he opened with the locals by the simple act of being seen with her.

  She didn’t know what to think of him, but the knowledge that her White Knight was there, just one room away, finally let her slide into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 7

  For days Aaron had done what he’d always done: gotten up, gone to build stone walls with Trent, had a slow dinner at the pub, and gone to bed.

  But for all the similarities, his comfortable, well-worn routine hadn’t been routine at all. When Jane had discovered what time he always had breakfast, she’d adjusted her schedule so that she could join him. Each evening they shared dinner.

  One night they’d gone out to The Indian Princess and split chicken jaipuri and garlic nan for a change of pace. It was the first time he hadn’t eaten in the pub in weeks. Even in casual Fosse-on-the-Wold, he’d felt underdressed as he sat at the white linen tablecloth across from Jane. Her taste was impeccable—the simple emerald blouse made her green eyes look warm rather than cool and the thin gold chain about her neck had made him want to trace his finger along its length where it dipped inside the open collar.

  His decision that if she was willing to be around him, he was going to stop being an idiot by pushing her away was less helpful than he’d hoped. Flirting across a kissing gate and holding hands when they walked was a long way from his aching need to take her down every time he looked at her. He didn’t care where: bed, floor, the side of some remote footpath among the bluebells. Didn’t matter.

  Yes, it had been a year now since the last time he’d bedded a woman, but that wasn’t it—not all of it, anyway.

  He wanted Jane Tully like he’d never wanted anyone.

  By Friday morning as he headed over to work on the cottage, it had gone from exquisite torture to ridiculous. Each night, because the stairs were so steep and the landings so small, it was too awkward to steal a kiss, let alone embrace. The pub itself was busy later than usual so the base of the stairs was out. And if he led her out into the darkness of the night, self-control was going straight into the rubbish bin, which also wouldn’t do. It had also been chilly and drizzling all week, which had taken the fun out of that idea.

  Lying awake half of every night as he thought about her wasn’t helping his attitude either.

  Friday had dawned sunny and it shifted everyone’s mood. Breakfast—which had included a lesbian couple down from Newcastle and a Chinese couple with no English and a co-traveling translator who wasn’t much better—had a lively energy to it. Another major bonus today would be that when Jane Tully went running by the cottage, she wouldn’t be swaddled in rain slicks. The spectacle of her runn
ing by was something he’d looked forward to every morning.

  It was also nice to work on the wall out in the sunshine. But lunchtime was fast approaching and, though he’d kept an eye out, no sign of Jane.

  “You keep craning your neck like that, you’re liable to break it,” Trent harassed him.

  “Worth it,” was Aaron’s reply, because that was absolutely the truth.

  Trent’s lined face might have smiled.

  Several hours later, Trent sat on the pile of rock and rolled a cigarette. “Making good progress.” Trent actually sounded pleased, an event rare enough to make Aaron stop. He studied the wall. It ran for over a dozen meters in a great curving arc. It invited rather than excluded.

  At least the property owner hadn’t wanted to build a two-meter-high wall, plus the vertically-placed capstones. It was a classic Londoner thing: buy a cottage, then raise the wall height for “privacy.” That had been Trent’s grumble through the first week of tearing down the old, failing wall. “Londoners always trying to wall off the Cotswolds.”

  “Your lady buying the place?” Trent puffed away.

  “Not my lady, but that’s her plan.”

  “She the welcoming sort?”

  “What the hell are you asking, old man? It’s none of your goddamn business if she—”

  “Wasn’t asking if she took you to bed, though I can see now she hasn’t. Was asking if she was the sociable or unsociable sort.”

  “Oh,” Aaron decided that the less he spoke, the better off he’d be. He turned back to select stones for the next rise. “Self-contained, but sociable.” He thought of her casual ease with the earl and the others at the pub.

  “Reckon she’d like a gate in her wall?”

  Aaron straightened slowly and surveyed the landscape. A complete wall would make the cottage very self-contained and cozy. A gate would open an access to the footpath that ran along the lower edge of the property. Without it, it would take a long sidetrack down the lane that ran on the other side of the cottage in order to reach the footpath.

  “Yes,” Aaron knew. “She’d like it.” He’d seen how she lit up tramping over fields and paths.

  But it was more than that. The way Jane Tully saw herself, she’d want to have the wall closed, keeping her safe and secure from a life that had hounded her into so many hard corners. Aaron knew her though, perhaps better than she did herself in some odd fashion. With a gate as a connection out into the wider world, it would give her permission to venture forth and become the startling woman he already knew her to be.

  “Not placed front and center, but rather off to one side,” he pointed to where the lower edge of the curved wall would eventually meet the wall along the property’s edge. “She’s partial to kissing gates.”

  Trent scoffed. “She’s not planning on keeping sheep, is she? Can’t fool me, I know just who is partial to those gates. My Elsie, rest her soul, made me right partial to them as well. No, this place wants a proper gate. About time you learned some arch work, lad.”

  Arch work? Making a dry-laid stone arch was a fearsome project. They were rare, though he’d inspected carefully the few he’d ever seen. Perhaps the pinnacle of an English master stonemason’s craft. He doubted if there were thirty men alive who could build a proper and traditional mortarless arch. He hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense that Trent was one of them. He’d also heard such knowledge was rigorously hoarded, so why was Trent willing to teach him, unless—

  “Stop looking at me like that. I’ll be kicking my clogs soon enough, but there’s no need to rush me on the way. I’ll teach you because I trust your eye and hand, not because I’m afeared that I’ll die before I teach you.”

  Trent was right. He was one of those small, wiry sorts who would probably live to a hundred-and-twenty just for spite.

  “It wants to sit down by the end of the wall. We’ll start on it next week. Do it before we finish the rest of the main wall as we’ll need to work it from both sides. Now you keep on, I’ve got to go up to ruddy Moreton.” He said it as if it was a teeming metropolis a hundred miles away.

  Moreton-in-Marsh was a bustling town of just four thousand people that lay all of five miles away. Stow-on-the-Wold was much closer—half the size and, because it didn’t have a train station, also much quieter. Except during tourist season. He’d take the added remoteness of Fosse. Five hundred people, it had bus service on Thursdays only. Thankfully, it was a short walk over the fields to Stow on the rare occasions he needed the bus.

  He liked it here—the English version of his childhood home in Jay, Vermont. Small, sleepy, out of the fray. For true locals, Moreton was “the big city” that was visited only reluctantly and he was starting to feel that way himself.

  “I’m going to get you a t-shirt, old man,” he picked up the next stone and waited for the question.

  “All right, you daft skiver. What will this wonderful t-shirt say on it?” Trent ground to his feet and pulled on his jacket.

  “ ‘Not Moreton! Again?’ ”

  It earned him a sharp bark of laughter that did Aaron’s soul good. Trent really did look ancient today and it worried him a bit.

  Trent slapped his tweed cap against his thigh as if to beat some shape into the miserable old thing, snugged it on his head, and headed up the garden path.

  Jane stood at the head of the path and watched Aaron working.

  She’d passed Trent on the lane, who’d given her one of his welcoming grimaces. She couldn’t tell if she amused or irritated the old mason. Were women not wanted on the jobsite where manly men did manly things? Maybe he thought they didn’t belong where any work was being done at all. Perhaps it was something about her in particular? Or was he just an irascible old man who scowled, like a groundhog exposed too soon to the sunlight when all he really wanted to do was hibernate another six weeks? There might have been a smile behind it, though she couldn’t make any sense of that either.

  The view from the top of the garden path had stopped her. The opposite hillside was thick with ewes and lambs. The sun sparkled off the practically phosphorescent green of new leaves on the scattered trees. Patches of daffodils dotted the spring-green grass.

  And once again Aaron had peeled his shirt off in the warm midday sunlight, definitely a plus to the view. He worked steadily and methodically, choosing and placing stone. He favored his knee, but he didn’t let it stop him for a second either.

  “Here is ‘man’,” she said it softly. She’d accused him of being so male, but that had been no more than a pale shadow of the muscled ex-soldier building a stone wall in her front yard this morning.

  Her front yard.

  She clenched the key tightly in her hand, felt it cutting into her palm, and didn’t care.

  Hers.

  Well, not really hers, but the owner had allowed her to rent it month-to-month while they were negotiating the final contract and she was arranging financing.

  Her cottage.

  It made her feel both giddy and slightly nauseous. She had a cottage, an English cottage, but no furniture. So she’d spent the morning running around getting only the very basics: a cooking pot, a can opener, a towel, and an air mattress with sheets and blankets. She’d never camped before, but she wanted to see just how little she actually needed. No condo with all the couches, chairs, and tables for entertaining—which she’d never had time to do. No need for a guest room that had never been occupied by more than dust.

  It was time to simplify her life.

  Her one luxury was awkwardly stuck upside down in the back seat of the earl’s MINI Cooper. In a Stow-on-the-Wold thrift shop she’d found the perfect wing-backed armchair for the upstairs window, cheerfully covered in all the shades of spring. Her last stop had been to purchase a bribe to elicit Aaron’s aid in getting the chair where she wanted it to go.

  And now in her front yard was Aaron Mason, right where she’d hoped to find him. But so much more of him than she’d expected to encounter. She wanted… Jane didn’
t know what.

  He didn’t hear her as she moved down the path. It offered her a splendid view of his back muscles rippling in the sunlight. Strong arms and hands selecting yellow rock from the pile with all the grace of a dancer. As if they selected the next stone without him.

  “Morning,” she had learned the slightly flat monotone that the locals used. She wondered if in different parts of the Cotswolds they used different notes or if the natives always used that same just-a-little-flat greeting with no sing-song at all.

  Aaron dropped a stone, thankfully a small one, but didn’t appear to notice as it bounced off his boot.

  “There you are,” he turned to face her, his smile huge.

  “You were expecting me?” She’d thought to surprise him.

  “I enjoy watching you run along Heart of England Way each morning.”

  She only had to arch an eyebrow to elicit a look of chagrin. Then he offered one of his you caught me shrugs.

  “You’re very easy on the eyes, Jane. Have to give a guy some latitude on that.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that. “Guys” had always been more of a problem for her than any help. However, she found herself willing to give Aaron that latitude even though he was the most guy she’d ever met. The fact that she was now babbling made her thankful it was only inside her head.

  Aaron made a show of inspecting her head to foot, then grinning like a lunatic.

  “Heart of England Way?”

  “Sure, that’s your footpath there on the other side of the wall. Runs about a hundred miles and connects to just about everything else.”

  “Really?” She’d seen signs, but never really paid attention. It was hard to lose track of Fosse since it was up on the hill, so she just ran wherever the path led her.

  “Really. What’s in the bag?”

  “My house key.”

  He looked at her strangely, “Must be a pretty big key.”

  She inspected her hands. One definitely held her new house key; it was still cutting into her palm like she was clutching onto a lifeline. The other was a brown paper bag from the Chinese take-out—no, takeaway—just down the street from The Princess of India.