He didn’t like it, but reined both himself and Sword in; drawing her hand from the rigid steel his arm had become, she knew how much it cost him.
Could sense how much, behind his stony face, he fumed and railed while being forced to watch the potential drama from a distance—a distance too great to help should one of the children slip and fall.
“What happened to the damned bridge, and when?”
“A bore last spring.”
“And it’s been like this ever since?”
“Yes. It’s only used by the crofter children to get to the church, so…” She didn’t need to tell him that the welfare of crofter children didn’t rate highly with the aldermen of Harbottle.
The instant the last child stepped safely onto the opposite bank, Sword surged down the rise and thundered toward the bridge. The children heard; trudging over the field, they turned and looked, but after watching curiously for several minutes, continued homeward. By the time she and Rangonel reached the river, Royce was out of the saddle and clambering about the steep bank, studying the structure from below.
From Rangonel’s back, she watched as he grabbed the remaining beam, using his weight to test it. It creaked; he swore and let go.
When he eventually climbed back up and came striding toward her, his expression was black.
The glare he bent on her was coldly furious. “Who are the aldermen of Harbottle?”
He knew she’d manipulated him; the instant he’d seen the two girls he’d known. Despite that, his irritation with her was relatively minor; he put it to one side and dealt with the issue of the rickety footbridge with a reined fury that brought vividly to mind ghosts from his ancestral past.
There was a wolf in the north again, and he was in a savage mood.
Even though she’d had high expectations, Minerva was impressed. Together they thundered into Harbottle; she introduced him to the senior alderman, who quickly saw the wisdom of summoning his peers. She’d stood back and watched Royce, with cutting exactitude, impress on those unwitting gentlemen first their shortcomings, then his expectations. Of the latter, he left them in absolutely no doubt.
They bowed and scraped, and swore they would attend to the footbridge expeditiously.
He eyed them coldly, then informed them he would be back in three days to view their progress.
Then he turned and stalked out; entirely satisfied, she followed.
Royce set a furious pace back to the castle. The dark look he cast her as he swung up to his saddle made it clear he hadn’t forgotten her tweaking of his temper, but he’d wanted an urgent and dramatic reason to give him justification for browbeating the aldermen into fixing the footbridge, so she’d given him one. Her conscience was clear.
Something she suspected he realized, for even when they reached Wolverstone, left their horses with Milbourne, and started toward the castle, other than another of his piercing, dark looks, he said nothing.
By the time they reached the west wing and were approaching the turret stairs, she’d stopped expecting any reaction from him. She was deep in self-congratulation, pleased and eminently satisfied with her day’s achievements, when his fingers locked about her elbow and he swung her into the shadowed hall at the bottom of the stairs. Her back met the paneled wall; he followed, pinning her.
Startled, her lips were parted when he crushed them beneath his and kissed her—filled her mouth, seized her wits, and stormed her senses.
It was a hard, bruising, conquering sort of kiss, one she responded to with damning ardor.
Her hands were sunk in the dark silk of his hair when he abruptly pulled back, leaving her gasping, her senses reeling.
From a distance of inches, his eyes bored into hers. “Next time, just tell me.” A growled, direct order.
She hadn’t yet regained breath enough to speak, managed to nod.
His eyes narrow, his lips grimly set, he drew back a little—as if realizing how hard it was for her to think with him so close. “Is there anything else that bad on my lands? Or not on my lands but affecting my people?”
He waited while she gathered her wits, and thought. “No.”
He exhaled. “That’s something, I suppose.”
Stepping back, he drew her away from the wall, and urged her up the narrow stairs. She went, her heart beating just a little faster from knowing he was directly behind her and not in a predictable mood.
But when they reached the gallery, and she turned for her room, he let her go. He stepped up from the last stair, halted.
“Incidentally…” He waited until she paused and glanced back at him; he caught her eyes. “Tomorrow morning I’ll want you to ride with me to Usway Burn—we can check on progress and I want to speak with Evan Macgregor.”