Heart of the Cotswolds: England Page 14

“Is it always this quiet?” Jane was looking up and down the empty street.

  “It’s a weekday. Most of the residents are probably in London working.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “But still it’s beautiful.”

  She nodded, but he could see she wasn’t happy about it. “Fosse is out of the way enough that its population is mostly permanent. It gives the town a different feel. That’s one of the reasons I landed there after kicking around the area for a bit. That and Trent. I was limping my way through town carrying my life in a pack and there was this old bastard building a wall. I stopped to watch and before you knew it, he had me lifting and carrying stone.”

  “I came here for a wedding,” she said it as if it was news he wouldn’t know.

  “Really? Anyone famous?”

  “They wish!” And now the bitterness was back on top of the sad.

  This was not trending the way a good date should be trending.

  He hoped he had the solution for that as he turned down a tiny street called Brook Lane.

  As they wandered down the narrow lane between stone walls protecting stone cottages, Jane kept trying to shake off her mood. After all, it didn’t seem fair to Aaron. He was taking a day off to show her places, to just be with her, and she was being all Miss Let’s-look-at-the-dark-side-of-everything.

  Perhaps it was because the day was being so disorienting.

  Without realizing it, she’d been “shacking up” with Aaron. There was no question how he felt about her body. Or she about his. He was like a drug her nervous system couldn’t get enough of. They also got along really well. She truly enjoyed sharing meals and laughs with him. Working together on the cottage, she was learning new things every day, hard things she’d never been trained in. Each night she’d plunge into bed, exhausted, aching, and supercharged to tackle whatever came tomorrow. Each morning she woke close beside a handsome man who didn’t put her down but instead, somehow, lifted her up.

  Oddly enough, despite sleeping, eating, and working together, today felt as if it was the first time they’d done something together as a couple.

  As a couple. In past relationships, the whole “couple” thing had been about going to a dinner party together or out to a movie or… It had never been about walking down a quiet lane on a day that couldn’t make up its mind between a little too warm and a bit cool as big puffy clouds slid across the sun. One sprinkled about a dozen drops on them as it passed by, then the sun was drying them off seconds later.

  At the bottom of the lane, the road turned to the right, and…went under water.

  Aaron stopped and let her stare at it until she could figure it out. A small sidewalk ran along the street that was now under six inches of smoothly flowing stream.

  “I…don’t get it.”

  He pointed at the far end of the lane where the stream flowed out from under one of the oldest buildings she’d seen yet. For the hundred yards that separated them, the road seemed to be consistently the same depth underwater. A glance revealed his big smile.

  “Stop enjoying yourself so much at my expense.”

  He ran a possessive hand down her back and over her butt.

  “Cut it out, Aaron. Stop being so damn smug or you won’t be enjoying anything at my expense.” She twitched her hips aside so that his hand slid free.

  He laughed and pulled her into a hug. “I feel better now. This had me totally stumped until I asked someone.”

  “Oh,” she let herself relax into his embrace for a moment, then looked back at the strange underwater street. Not teasing her after all. Okay, not only teasing her.

  “It’s—”

  “Wait. Let me try.”

  And unlike any male in her past, he actually waited and let her try.

  “The stream is actually flowing through that building. I’m guessing it ran a wheel for a mill.”

  He nodded.

  Mill house. Underwater street. The steep street they’d just walked down to one end of the watery lane. She could just make out another street coming down the hill in front of the millhouse.

  “Horses. Horses with wagons. They’d come down one steep hill with loads of grain and have to climb back out the other with loads of flour. This let them cool off a little in the brook without unharnessing them.” She could see the flow of the process and it fit, but that wasn’t all of it. “I’m missing something. Why is the underwater part of the lane so long?”

  “Damn but you are good at that. I bet you can see the horse and cart.”

  “Horses. That’s a steep hill. I bet they harnessed them in teams.”

  Aaron surveyed the stream and nodded. “Could be. What you’re missing is that the cart wheels were wooden. If they dried out too much, the wood weakened and the joints loosened. By running the carts down the submerged lane with every trip, they kept the cart wheels sound.”

  Jane stood watching the water of a bygone era. A simpler time when a process engineer could just be some smart person in a remote Cotswold village and make a change that counted. The solution was elegant on so many levels.

  “Thank you, Aaron.”

  “For what?”

  She bent down and took off her sneakers and socks. Then she rolled up her pant legs and stepped out into the stream. The water flowed smooth and cool over her feet and around her ankles up to mid-calf. The roadbed of small, rounded stones felt soft under her feet, worn smooth by centuries of flowing water.

  Aaron followed her along the sidewalk, probably where the team’s drover had walked with a lead, guiding the horses forward.

  That’s what Aaron was doing. Somehow he was guiding her back toward something, though she didn’t know what. She let herself become lost in the flowing water. The cool shade from the line of cherry trees to the south, the last of their white blossoms fluttering down to slip by on the surface of the water. The line of pretty cottages lucky enough to spread across the hillside above the lane—the backyards of lawn and flower beds exposed, revealed only to those who wandered down this way.

  A pheasant wandered through one of the gardens. Another one of her guides? Perhaps so.

  “For what?” he asked again at the far end of the lane as she sat on a stone wall and pulled her sneakers back on.

  She rose and took her time kissing him there, at that perfect spot where millhouse, lane, cottage, past, and present all came together in a smooth flow.

  “For showing me why I did what I did for a living. No matter what went wrong with it, I loved the work. I loved understanding how to fit everything together. I’d forgotten that about myself. Thank you.”

  Chapter 11

  The crowd on Dover’s Hill roared with approval as the next pair of contestants stamped their way forward. The annual Roger Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games on Dover’s Hill outside of Chipping Campden had been in full swing when they arrived. Aaron had forgotten about them but some part of him must have remembered that today would be a good day for an outing.

  For a date.

  Jane’s kiss had almost made him collapse into the flowing lane in Blockley and drift back to where they’d started before her transformation. She had walked in the water with the gentle grace of a deer browsing through the deep Vermont woods. Her steps had left almost no impression, as if she wasn’t really there. No slogging and splashing for the Faerie Queen, instead she had flowed upstream in perfect harmony with the water, the sunlight, and the surroundings.

  She had come out of her walk in the brook with her shoulders further back, her posture even more perfect, and a smile that really reached her eyes as if it was happening for the first time since he’d met her.

  Transformed from merely incredible to outright stunning—as if she’d stepped into a different world.

  Now they were in his world. Or what might have been, during a different era.

  A great castle gate, complete with scaffold-built turrets and a rope portcullis painted black like iron, towered several stories high where it had been erected on the me
adow. Knights in full armor rode about on massive horses. Footraces, hammer-throwing contests, food stalls, and general mayhem abounded. Lords, ladies, and tourists all flocked together in one happy crowd.

  Dover’s Hill itself defined the northernmost end of the Cotswolds. To one side, its high bluff offered a sweeping vista down over the vast, flat expanse of the Severn River Valley. To the other, the rolling hills were sliced by dark hedgerows and aged stone walls dividing the yellow rapeseed from the green meadows salted with white sheep.

  The main event had drawn everyone into a grand circle before the castle gates. With a great trumpet fanfare (and only a few off-key notes) announcing: the World’s Grandest Annual Shin-Kicking Contest Dating Back Before Time Was Time To the Glorious Reign Of When King James The First Set His Royal Backside Upon The English Throne!

  The sport of shin-kicking was simple and insane—Delta Force-style insane.

  The first two combatants grabbed each other’s shoulders. After another great blast of out-of-key trumpets, they began kicking one another’s shins. Their only defense was trousers and such straw as they’d been able to tie to their own legs. The contest continued until the defeated finally declared, “That’s enough for today.” The crowd went wild, a fair amount of money changed hands among the various bettors, and the next pair was called forward.

  “I can’t believe that grown men have been doing this here for over four hundred years,” Jane sounded disgusted.

  “Since five years after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. It’s—”

  “I know that tone. Don’t even think about it, Mason.” The crowd was packed so tightly that he stood directly behind Jane with his arms wrapped around her waist and watching over her shoulder. She’d slid her arms over his, partly because there was nowhere else to put them in the press of the crowd, and partly, he guessed, because she wanted him to know what heaven felt like. His arms full of Jane Tully. Their bodies pressed together so tightly that he could feel her speak and laugh before he could hear her.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He actually had been considering entering the contest, which the mind-reading Jane would of course know. But having to let go of her in order to indulge himself wasn’t really an option.

  After the best man had won—best man in this case perhaps closely tied to cognitive dysfunction or too much alcohol—they headed for the food stalls. They ranged down a whole side of the meadow in crowds so thick it was hard to see what was being served.

  “Watch the locals,” Jane prompted.

  “Leave it to a process specialist,” but Aaron did. The active participants stood out by being dressed in costumes for the day. Even the shin-kickers had dressed as rustic peasants of old. Tourists flocked to fish and chips, pork pies, beef pasties, and Scotch eggs. But the knights errant, standing out with the elegant plumage on their steel helms, were invariably going to a small booth to the far right along with the rest of their attendant courts and servants.

  They were already in line before he noticed what they were serving.

  “Uh, you sure about this, Jane?”

  “What?”

  “Pulled lamb sliders.”

  “So?”

  “They’re made with…” Aaron couldn’t think of any way to be subtle about it, “…lamb.”

  “And?”

  “As in this year’s spring lambs that they didn’t need for next year’s breeding season.”

  “Oh.” And most of the color drained out of her face.

  “We can go somewhere else.”

  “No,” she shook her head and resolutely took a step forward when the line moved. “We bought lamb chops at the butcher’s just two days ago. Even if I didn’t think of it, I live here now. I’m going to eat like the locals.”

  Aaron decided to keep to himself what he saw on the rest of the sign; instead he needed to distract Jane from reading it for herself. He started by kicking her lightly on the shins.

  The others in line laughed and cheered as they started their own version of the shin-kicking contest right there—thankfully done with the sides of the sneakers and not very hard. Though Jane was escalating and he was glad when they reached the stall.

  “Sliders with what?” Jane definitely needed her hearing checked.

  “South Carolina barbeque sauce,” the stall’s proprietor answered cheerfully but she must be hearing it wrong. He was like the comedy-relief sidekick in a movie: mid-twenties, blond, just a little disheveled, with an outrageously English accent.

  Aaron was grinning like a lunatic and pointing upward. There, clear as day on the sign, it said that there was nothing wrong with her hearing: Lamb Sliders—“with Genuine South Carolina BBQ sauce!”

  She could smell it now that they were close. The breeze had been from behind them and kept her from smelling the bite of vinegar, the tang of mustard, and the rich depth of cooking meat. Then she understood why Aaron had worked to distract her in the line.

  “You!” She turned on him.

  “Yes?” Aaron raised his eyebrows like Mr. Innocent, which didn’t fool her for a second.

  She kicked him in the shins—sharply this time. As he yelped, she turned back to the merchant. “Two servings, please. And a couple of sodas.”

  “Is there a problem?” The man looked worried.

  “Not for you. Only for him,” she aimed a finger at Aaron, who was still rubbing his shin. “I’m from Charleston, South Carolina, and he did his best to hide what you served from me.” Aaron was finally upright again, so she kicked his other shin and received both a very satisfying second yelp and a huge smile from the merchant.

  “South Carolina? Charleston? Oh, that be music to me ears, luv. Here! Here! Ye’ve got to try this. Tell me if I done it right. I spent a month tromping all over the Carolinas eating not a thing but barbeque. In August! Had me no idea how crazy an idea that was. I had the vinegar-and-pepper up north.”

  “Too thin,” she couldn’t help getting swept up by his enthusiasm as his assistant helped the next in line.

  “Absolutely. And that ketchup they be using out west and into Kentucky I never understood.”

  “Me either.”

  Aaron had recovered, but when she cocked back her foot, he dodged back, nearly creaming a court jester in a three-pronged hat complete with little bells at the tips. She enjoyed the bright tinkle of the little bells as the two of them tried not to plummet to the ground.

  “I finally settled on the lovely Carolina Gold sauce, which is from right in your Charleston. I done changed half the Dijon mustard to Colman’s to bring out English flavor and more heat to the vinegar. And I use an artisan-distilled local malt vinegar for a wee bit more depth. You must tell me if I’ve strayed too far—I keep worrying about that, I do. I bake me own rolls ’cause I wanted something heartier than white and not as dense as brown. I’ve never served a native Carolinian before. I find my nerves are suddenly gone dodgy.” He gasped in a breath, perhaps his first in the entire speech.

  She was about to protest that she was no expert when Aaron took one of the sliders and bit into it.

  “Oh, my god,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “That’s so good! I’m not a native like she is, but wow!”

  Now Jane understood what her role was here. Compliment the man on his research and testing. He’d clearly put his heart into the meal. Once she bit into one, it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t like any BBQ she’d had in Charleston—it was better. “Wow!” She felt as if she was just mimicking Aaron, but it was sufficient. The man lit up as if they’d just introduced him to the girl of his dreams.

  She glanced at Aaron, but he was happily chowing down on another monstrous bite and thankfully couldn’t mind-read that latest thought.

  Was she the girl of his dreams?

  Hard to imagine that being true of her for anybody. Yet “dating” and the phrase “practically living together” were both being bandied about today. She knew she was just unnerving herself, but couldn’t figure out how to stop it.

  Jane took another
bite of the delicious slider and knew that was the answer, the same she’d given to Aaron: Shut up and eat your goddamn slider.

  Aaron truly regretted turning down the footraces, especially the five-miler. That one was just long enough that a soldier’s ground-eating pace had a chance of pounding the sprinters into submission. He didn’t need Jane’s reminder about his knee to know that it wasn’t an option.

  And after someone tried to recruit Jane into the “Married Women’s Footrace”—and refused to accept Jane’s denials because of the way she and Aaron had been “cozying up together”—they decided it was time to go. It was done with a mutual glance of pure horror and the speed of foot worthy of any race.

  Chipping Campden itself, a half mile down the hill, was a center of peace and serenity. The High Street was populated only by idlers like themselves, more interested in strolling than rushing into shops. The former wool-trading town was sleepy in the warm afternoon, especially in comparison to the lively riot continuing up on the hill.

  “It’s old,” Jane offered the first comment since their breathless escape from Dover’s Hill.

  “Some of these buildings go back to the Dark Ages, though the settlement dates back to when years only had three digits in them.”

  “Over a thousand years,” her voice dropped to a whisper. “Can you imagine a thousand years?”

  “A thousand years ago, both of our ancestors could have lived right here. Columbus wouldn’t be finding the new world for another five centuries. First cousins fifty generations ago. What do you think, cuz?”

  “I think that’s a weird thought that you should never mention again.”

  It really was. This day kept being a day of connections. It was supposed to be a day of fun out and about with the most amazing woman he’d ever met. Yet every turn seemed to lead to a more serious place. Or perhaps a deeper place.

  To distract himself, to distract both of them, he made a point of noting everything he could about Chipping Campden. He took a photo of all four of their feet standing on the yard-across, stone medallion that marked the start of the Cotswold Way at the center of town. There was the old Market Hall, also dating back to the early 1600s, an open-arched area with a slate roof so that traders could meet out of the rain.