Page 2 of Edge of the Wild

Amelia lifted her head and was met with a very up-close glimpse of the V of skin and chest hair visible at the open throat of Malcolm’s shirt. It was a very nice view. As was his strong neck, and his stubbled jaw, and his sharp-featured face, with its twice-broken nose, and slanted dark brows over sparkling blue eyes, half-obscured by sweaty, wind-tangled hair as the breeze tossed it over his brow. He reached to push it back with one gloved hand, a casual-seeming gesture betrayed by the spark of amusement in his gaze when she swallowed on helpless impulse.

“We’re out in the open,” she whispered.

He shrugged, and swayed forward – then swayed back. “So I’ll wait and kiss you later.” He smelled of horse, and sweat, and the leathers he wore. No fine silks and gleaming breeches and tall boots for Malcolm, no: a man at arms of the Drake family dressed accordingly, in brown leather, stamped on the sleeves with the Drake crest, a dark, travel-stained cloak, his hair too long and his boots dirty and every inch of him leaving herwanting.

He nodded toward the letter. “What’s that?” he asked again.

She passed it over. “A letter from my sister.”

Amelia had been the one to teach him to read, when they were children; she loved the way his lips still had a habit of moving when he did so. She watched him mouthmadly in loveand then his head jerked up, blue eyes wide.

“Oliver and theKing of Aeretoll? Is she serious?”

“When have you ever known Tessa to tell tall tales?”

He shook his head and returned to the letter, still wide-eyed. After, he whistled and handed it back. “Your mother’s going to befurious.”

Amelia tucked the letter down the front of her leather jerkin, a movement Malcolm’s gaze followed, gratifyingly. “She already is, I’m sure. I’m late for supper.”

Malcolm made a face. “With Sir Prance.”

“That’s Lord Prance to you,” she said, drawing a laugh from him. She tugged on Shadow’s lead and he lifted his head to follow. “Come on. If we’re going to be late, we might as well make a fashionable entrance of it.”

In the barn, the rest of her party waited, as covered in road dust and dried sweat as Malcolm, each dressed in leather, none of them bearing the poise and fashion of tonight’s supper guests.

All of them worth ten times as much as any lord.

Amelia put Shadow away, then peeled off her gloves and stuck them in her belt. Lifted her brows. “Shall we?”

Earned smiles and laughs in return.

Flanked, as ever, by Malcolm and Thomas, Amelia led her dusty party in through the side door of the mansion; across black-and-white check marble tiles and beneath soaring ceilings; down a hall, past the kitchens, to the dining room. Its double doors stood cracked, and Amelia didn’t slow; she pushed them open and strode into the room, found it full of all its usual shine: the crystal teardrops of the chandeliers; the gleam of candlelight on the polished mahogany table; the glint of silver and bone-white china.

Duchess Katherine sat at the head of the table, in the place her husband used to sit, in an ice-blue gown and layers of diamond necklaces, hair piled atop her head in an intricate Southern style. Pale and severe, she held a crimped scrap of parchment in one hand – Tessa’s letter – and her gaze snapped up to meet Amelia’s as she entered.

Katherine did not scowl in public, as it wasn’t becoming of a duchess. Her face remained perfectly smooth and impassive – but her eyes, if you knew what to look for, blazed brighter than every candle in the room.

Might as well get it over with. “Hello, Mother,” she called, and walked all down the length of the table – her party was too smart to follow suit; they hung back just inside the doors – and leaned down to kiss Katherine on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late, but the Strangers have come raiding again.”

In the breath before Amelia could pull away, Katherine’s gaze flashed toward her, the hazel more like flint this close up, and she hissed, “Later. Greet out guests.”

“The Strangers?” one of said guests asked, followed by a huff of disbelieving laughter. “The Inglewood outlaws? They don’t goraidinglike the old bear-skinned Northmen.”

Lord Reginald, heir of Hope Hall to the south, still possessed that particular, grating note of condescension Amelia had always loathed – but his voice had a cracked quality to it now, as if he hadn’t spoken for months. She saw why, when she finally looked at him outright.

Seated to Katherine’s left, there was no denying Reginald was a man who’d been through hell and back. Though an excellent jouster and tourney swordsman, he’d always been slender and faintly effete, with his cropped golden curls, and his elfin features, and his unrelenting dedication to all the latest fashions. He was fashionable, still, in watered ice-blue silk, with a froth of white neckcloth – one that failed to cover the scar around his throat. He bore the mark there of a man who’d been hanged – unsuccessfully. The grain of the rope had left a lasting impression. And his face was marked, too, in its thinness, in the scar that bisected one brow, in the haunted way that all youthful vigor had left him. He was only twenty-four, but he had gray streaks in his cropped golden curls now. Though he presented a haughty picture, with his rings flashing, and his mouth puckered faintly, there was a wildness in his eyes, now, one Amelia didn’t envy.

Pity didn’t spawn liking, though.

“They didn’t use to, no,” she said, “but something has changed in the forest. They’re coming onto Drakewell land, now, rather than hunting: stealing sheep from pens and milk from springhouses. The farmers are frightened.”

Reginald had brought his lady mother, seated beside him, the easily-alarmed Daphne, and she touched the pearls at her throat with a quiet sound of alarm.

Reginald tilted his head to a challenging angle. “And so you’ve gone to rescue them?” His gaze traveled disdainfully down her outfit, and back up.

The steward of Hope Hall, a grizzled older man who’d managed to win Amelia’s grudging approval years ago for his practicality alone, said, “Perhaps this is not the best topic while ladies are at the table.”

“Don’t change the subject on my account, Mr. Whitman. This lady isn’t offended – I’ve been hunting the bastards all day.”

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