Page 53 of Forget Me Not

“Today has been nice,” she said. “Spending time together, talking easily like we did when we were children. Then again, when we were children, you didn’t make comments about my legs.”

His laugh rang through the hut. She had always loved the sound of it. That was one admittedly nice thing about being married to him—she would get to hear that laugh for the rest of her life.

He stood, his long legs unfolding with a fluid grace.

“Are you leaving?” The question emerged more plaintive than she’d intended.

“I am fetching you a blanket,” he said. “Your hands are like ice.”

Until he walked away, she hadn’t realized that she’d nearly been holding her breath. Why did he have her so quivery?

He sat beside her once more and tucked a blanket around her shoulders. She clasped the front of it together with one hand. He had brought over another blanket. That one he laid over their laps.

They sat that way for long minutes, both watching the flames. It wasn’t the miserable silence that had punctuated the first weeks of their marriage. It was very nearly... comfortable.

“James and I didn’t engage in fisticuffs often,” Lucas said without warning. “But we had an enormous row when you were six years old.”

She leaned her shoulder against him. “Why were you arguing?”

“Because he let you fall out of a tree.” He put his arm around her shoulder and tucked her up cozily against him. “You might have died, Julia, or broken one of your arms.”

“Or one of my very nice legs,” she said cheekily.

She could feel the rumble of his quiet laugh. She tucked herself into a ball and curled into him. “The fire is helping,” she said. “It’s not nearly so cold.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Without pulling away from him, she looked up and directly into his beautiful blue eyes. “Do you not feel warmer?”

He bent a bit closer. “Oh, I do.”

She swallowed, though doing so was oddly difficult. So was breathing. And thinking. Looking away was entirely impossible.

“What is happening?” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and pushed out a breath. “That answers the question I was asking myself.”

He folded the blanket off his lap and over onto hers before standing and walking away.

The question she posed silently to herself nearly matched the one that had, for reasons she couldn’t explain, put distance between them once more.

What just happened?

Chapter Nineteen

Lucas sat atop Cuthbert’s Wall,the ruined remains of an ancient castle, feet dangling over the edge in front of him. Kes sat not far away.

“I still can’t believe the local people attempt to climb the face of this wall,” Kes said. “When one considers the perfectly serviceable stairs along the back, it seems the height of absurdity.”

“The ‘height’?” Lucas clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Word play this early in the morning is nothing short of cruel, Kes.”

“It was...punintentional.”

Lucas groaned, but beneath the sound was a laugh he couldn’t entirely hide. “There is a reasonyouweren’t named court jester among the Gents.”

“No one would ever aspire to steal that title from you, my comedic friend.”

Lucas dipped his head in mock acknowledgment of the tongue-in-cheek compliment. “A trick of Fate to lend me our Grumpy Uncle instead of our General. Aldric would have my messy life sorted before I even finished explaining it to him. Do you think he would come up from Cheshire? Give me a spot of advice?”

---