Page 27 of The Good Daughter

“Alright, alright, it’s good to see you too.”

“They adore him,” Martha whispered to me, quite unnecessarily I thought.

The first thought in my head was, of course, that were these Devon’s children. There were many inhabitants of the wilderness who saw their children only at brief intervals through the year because they were away with the herds or on trading trips. This could easily be a scene from such a household. But they were calling him ‘Devon’ which made it seem less likely. Though still not impossible. He could be that elusive ‘uncle’ who showed up with presents and stayed in a spare room in which the bed suspiciously never needed making.

I could have stood there all day, making up possible relationships between Devon and Martha, torturing myself with what might be and quietly hating a woman who was very generously opening her home for two people on the run, or I could be a better person.

“Thank you for letting us stay.”

Martha waved this off. “Devon says you are good people who need a place to hide. Well, you won’t find a better place than this. We’re off every beaten track. Stay as long as you need.”

“That’s unbelievably kind of you.”

Martha smiled. “I’ve never been able to say no to Devon.”

I wished she hadn’t said that; I was trying so very hard to like her.

“Would you like something to eat?” Martha offered.

“That would be wonderful. Wouldn’t…”

I turned to look for Uther but he’d wandered off and was now running his hand through the wild flowers that grew around Martha’s property. It was amazing how swiftly after our escape from captivity, Uther had picked up again. He was still vague and wandering, still more interested in the natural world than me, but he seemed happy again, and up here he seemed happier still.

“Colm… Keiron… Romain… Siobhan…”

I realized he was giving all the flowers names.

***

With each passing day at Martha’s croft, it seemed Uther became calmer. I wasn’t sure if that meant anything positive towards his eventual recovery—if such a thing was even possible—but it meant more than I could say to see him smiling and at peace. If his mind were to remain broken, then at least it had done so in a good place.

A very good place.

It was not just Uther who felt the calming effect of life up here in the wild hills. My own stupid jealousy meant that I almost resented how pleasant I found our time at Martha’s. I liked waking with the sun in the little loft that I shared with Uther. I liked going out to milk the goats before breakfast (I’d insisted on helping out with chores). I liked watching the children having their daily lessons with Martha and their daily games with Devon. I liked washing at the stream and carrying buckets of fresh water back to the house. I liked helping Martha with preparing the food. I liked sitting out in front of the house as the sun sank, watching the stars blink into life with a drink in my hand and good company around me. I liked the pleasant ache in my limbs when I sank into my bed at the end of a long day.

I didn’t know where Devon slept, and I hadn’t summoned up the courage to ask.

Now that I knew what a good man he was, I’d started to dismantle the wall I’d constructed in my mind to hold back the feelings I’d developed for him. It turned out that there were a lot of them.

But if I was ready to acknowledge my attraction to Devon, who seemed to spend most of his time here with at least one child hanging off him, then I was not ready to act on those feelings. The timing was obviously all wrong; we were on the run, we were in hiding and I didn’t know what would happen when the danger was past; would he stay with us or move on?

Then there was Martha; though I saw nothing between them that would say definitively that they were together, they were clearly close. One morning, I’d woken early and looked out into the greying dawn to see them both walking toward the house. Where they’d been together during the night I didn’t know and didn’t ask.

But beyond those practical factors, there was something more. Devon had saved me and my father from being prisoners of Latran, and likely from death. But he’d also handed us over to them. Looking back, I didn’t think that Buck and his motley mercenaries would have caught us without Devon, and if they had, then I did think I would have escaped them.

He’d done it for money. Perhaps as a princess, it was easy to forget that everyone has to earn a living somehow, but for someone as skilled and smart as Devon, I had to believe that there were other ways.

Though I liked him so much that he invaded my dreams by night and left me hot and flushed come the morning, he was still that rogue I’d seen in the tavern in Casper’s Relief. Maybe that roguishness was one of the reasons I liked him, but that was not necessarily a good thing. What would happen if he ever had to choose between Uther and me and a fistful of gold?

It was a chilling moment when I realized that, despite all this, I trusted this man completely. I’d so easily forgiven and forgotten him tethering me to his horse, treating me like a cargo to be traded, and threatening to spank me like a disobedient child. I trusted him because I wanted to trust him, and that was a blinkered reason that I might yet regret. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help but remind myself that he had come to my father’s and my rescue—he’d pretended to turn us over but then he’d rescued us. And there had to be a reason why.

It was hard to think that anything bad could find us up here. Hell, surrounded by such beauty it was hard to believe that anything bad even existed. And when I saw Devon playing with Martha’s children, and my father sitting nearby smiling and laughing, then I couldn’t stop myself from dreaming and wishing that we could stay in this moment forever.

***

“Why did you come back for him?”

It was one of those rare moments when Devon’s attention wasn’t occupied by the children, who were off with Uther picking flowers—they’d become fond of him too. I’d been watching them from a distance, leaning on a fence and smiling to myself when Devon came up to stand beside me.

---