Patricia Rice (3 page)

The impact of seeing that frail figure bent over a
flaming fire in his own hearth almost sent Jack back to his bed. He
hadn’t been drunk in years. He couldn’t be hallucinating. When had he
last seen a feminine cooking his breakfast? Not since Ireland, he was
certain. Was she a faerie from his lost past? A
bean sidhe
to haunt him for his sins?

She turned then, and the slim shadow became a child
with a glimmering mat of waist-length hair, prosaically setting a
skillet on the table. Jack released a pent-up breath of relief and
emerged from the bed.

Faith nearly dropped the skillet as the lean form
rose from the shadows. But he fastened his breeches like a man, and she
shoved her fears back in a box and faced her host. She did not recognize
him, though she searched her memory.

He had to be over six feet in height, for he was
much taller than her father. His hair was coal black and curled in
disgraceful disarray about his collarless shirt. His eyes were hidden in
the dawn light, but she could see the black stubble of beard on a long
masculine jaw that squared with a stubbornness she had learned to
recognize in others.

This one would be no easygoing farmer who jested and
produced a shy wife and half a dozen children. Faith gulped with fear
as she noted the breadth of his shoulders. She had thought him on the
skinny side at first, but she could see now that he was all lean sinew
and muscle—a formidable adversary if she ever knew one.

It was then that she remembered the prior night and
the nightmare of the highwayman, but she couldn’t piece the two
together. A highwayman didn’t offer beds to his victims. Perhaps he was
some farmer who had stumbled across her in the snow and carried her
here. She wondered where his wife was, and she threw an anxious look to
the loft ladder at the rear of the room. Perhaps the rest of the family
would be down in a little while.

“
Bean sidhes
do not remain after dawn,” her host commented oddly.

“Banshees?” Faith mouthed the word tentatively. His voice was a deep, resonant baritone with a soothing lilt.

“Faerie women. Do ye know naught of the faeries?”

Was he teasing her? Faith knew little of jests other
than the mocking taunts of children. She stared at him with
incomprehension, then ducked her head politely. “No, sir.” She waited
for him to abuse her for making free with his larder or to issue orders
for the day’s chores. She just prayed he would allow her to eat first.

The man sniffed the air hungrily, then glanced
toward the table. “I don’t suppose you’ve made enough for two, have you?
I’m that starved I could eat the hearth.”

She could very well imagine this giant chewing
stones, but the mention of the size of the meager meal brought a lump to
her throat. She was so hungry she was almost ready to fight him for
those two eggs, but a lifetime of her mother’s teachings warred within
her. They were his eggs. She had no right to them.

Even as her nose and throat filled with the
delicious scents of lightly fried eggs and bacon, Faith bobbed her head
and replied, “I fixed what I could find, sir. I’ll eat when you are
done, if you do not mind.”

“There’s plates in the cupboard. We’ll share,” he
answered gruffly. Leaving her to divide the bounty, he started for the
door and his boots.

“The horses have been watered, sir,” she said, almost timidly.

He scowled. “People around here call me Jack. I’ll just take a look for myself, shall I?”

Faith jumped, startled, at the slamming of the door.
Then, glancing hungrily at the food in the skillet, she swallowed and
tried to relax. For all his gruff manner, he didn’t look like he would
eat her for breakfast.

She went to the cupboard and found a few tin plates
and mugs and brought them to the table. Carefully she divided the eggs
and bacon between the two of them, giving him the larger portion, since
his appetite would have to be so much larger than her own, with his
size. Then, keeping the plates warm on the trivet by the fire, she
sliced the stale bread and soaked it in the skillet grease and heated it
over the fire until it grew soft again.

The expensive tea had finished brewing by the time
Jack returned, and she poured the steaming beverage as he shook the snow
off his boots.

The room possessed only one chair. Without
hesitation, Jack scooped up one of the plates and dropped to the floor,
picking up a slice of bacon with his fingers and biting into it.

Faith regarded him with a mixture of dismay and
outrage. “You cannot sit there! And that is my plate. Yours is here.”
She picked up the plate with the larger portion and set it at his
rightful place on the table. “Where are your forks?”

Jack finished chewing his bacon and tilted one
arrogant black eyebrow at her. “The bacon is sliced too thin. A starving
man likes something substantial to bite into. Give me some of that tea.
I hope it’s strong.”

Orders, she understood. Faith handed him a mug. “I did not find cream or sugar,” she apologized.

“And you will not. Sit. Eat.” He gestured at the
table. “There’s a fork in one of those drawers somewhere, but the bread
works just as well.” So saying, he scooped his egg onto his toast and
filled his mouth.

No lack of manners could appall her any longer, but
being ordered to sit at the table while the owner sat on the floor went
against all she knew. Uneasily Faith searched for the errant fork.
Seeing he didn’t mean to move, she looked at the plate of mouth-watering
food. With decision, she took the fork, plate, and mug and sat on the
other side of the hearth.

He didn’t raise an eyebrow as she bit into her thick
slice of bread. They ate in harmonious silence. Faith neatly cut every
bite with her fork and chewed it thoroughly before cutting off the next
piece, as she’d been taught.

With eyes closed, she sighed in a quiet enjoyment as
she consumed the last bite of bread. Jack was startled by the bolt of
pleasure he received just from watching her.

Before he could find an opening for conversation,
she leapt to her feet and poured him another mug of tea. She then took
the heavy iron kettle from the fire and poured steaming water over the
skillet and efficiently began scrubbing their eating utensils.

To Jack, who had unconcernedly left his dirty dishes
to accumulate enough grease to feed the field mice, this efficiency was
nothing short of amazing. Unwilling to admit his astonishment, he sat
and sipped his tea and watched her work.

She could do with a good bath. Although it was
obvious she had made attempts to scrub at face and hands, her hair was a
tangled nest of filthy curls and her neck looked none too clean. The
hem of her tattered skirt was caked with filth, and her frayed cuffs
were grayer than the rest of the dingy fabric of her bodice. The bodice
itself hung in wrinkled folds, and he winced at the rail thinness of the
wrists sticking out beyond the cuffs.

“I’ll slice your bacon thicker on the morrow, if you like,” she offered timidly.

He raised his brows. “The snow has stopped. You would do better to be on your way. I’ll see you to the road.”

“I’m a hard worker,” she answered with defiance. “I
can scrub your floors, cook your meals, mend your linen, keep your
horses. I don’t eat much. I can even sleep in the bam, if you prefer.”

Had she been the most beautiful woman in the world,
Jack could have told her no. He had his goals, and a partner was not one
of them. He had women when he needed them and solitude when he wanted
it.

But she was a child—an oddly well-behaved child, to
be sure, but a child just the same. She certainly didn’t need the taint
of his life, but it could scarcely be worse than the deprivations of the
road. Jack found he couldn’t say the words that would throw her out.

“Have you no home? No family? This is no place for a female.” That was as firm as he could be.

She didn’t look back at him, but continued scrubbing
the skillet. “There’s no one will be missing me. You needn’t fear that.
I’ve been looking for a position, but there’s none to be had. I won’t
ask for pay, just room and board. What could be fairer?”

What, indeed? Jack sighed and stretched his legs and
rose to his full towering height. He didn’t have time for arguing with
stubborn little girls. Rubbing his hand over several days’ worth of
beard and his ill-kempt hair, he wondered she hadn’t run in horror from
him. Did she even realize he was the apparition who had nearly
frightened her to death last night? He suspected not.

“I’m not here much, and these woods are full of
villains. I’d recommend you look elsewhere. I’ll be off now.” He pulled
his cloak off the peg, swung it around his shoulders and stomped out
into the snow.

A few minutes later Faith watched his lithe figure
ride off on one of the smaller horses from the barn. The old cloak
billowed out around him, but he rode like a centaur, as one with his
beast.

And beyond the shadow of any doubt, she knew she had just broken her fast with a highwayman.

Faith had never done anything remotely rebellious in
her life. Her father’s religion had demanded obedience, and to retain
his approval, she had learned to do as told. Not without question,
perhaps. Her father hadn’t been an unreasonable man, and as a scholar,
he had allowed intelligent questions. She could question, as long as she
obeyed.

But she wasn’t obeying now.

Faith glanced furtively out the window to the winter
landscape, then back to the kettle beginning to boil on the fire. She
had waited patiently all the morning for Jack’s return so she could
plead her case further. She had swept and scrubbed and tidied. She had
found a chest with his meager assortment of clothes and pressed them
with a flatiron she had found beneath the coal scuttle. It seemed an odd
place to keep a flatiron, but Jack obviously had little notion of
tidiness. She hadn’t been able to find needle or thread, for example.
She mourned that fact, and wished for her lost bundle, but she hadn’t
stirred outside to look for it.

She didn’t want to know where she was or how far
from the road. She didn’t wish to venture forth in that snow and ice
again. The wind still howled about the chimney, and there was nothing
promising in the heavy gray clouds that practically sat on the treetops.
If she went out, she might never find her way back.

So she sacrificed the possessions she’d lost last
night to stubbornly remain in this cozy haven where she sensed she was
needed. Or she convinced herself she was needed. The truth was, she
needed this cottage more than it needed her. This one night’s comfort
had given her enough strength to fight for what she wanted. Or she
thought she would fight. Jack hadn’t returned yet to put the lie to her
convictions.

But now that she had made his home clean, she wished
to do the same for herself. Perhaps if she were a little more
presentable, he wouldn’t object too strongly to her staying just a
little while longer, just until the weather cleared, perhaps.

It would not do to consider Jack’s occupation while
she contemplated his home. She didn’t know for certain that he was a
highwayman. She hadn’t actually seen the coach robbed.

Confident in her ignorance, Faith poured the hot
water into the large pan she had found tucked under the bed. She added
snow to cool it off and picked up the sliver of soap that she had found
in the pan. He might protest if he discovered she had used the last of
his soap, but she would have the satisfaction of being clean.

As she scrubbed, Faith produced visions of
scavenging for soapwort plants and doing his laundry, or if she saved
the ashes and he could provide some lye, she could make a year’s supply
of soap for him. There were so many ways she could help.

She should have fought for her right to stay weeks
ago, and then she wouldn’t be at the mercy of strangers now. But she had
never been forced to fight before. When the adults around her urged her
to do something, she did it. She was beginning to understand that that
was a mistake, but it was too late to go back.

As the day grew darker, Faith threw anxious looks at
the window and hurried. Once clean, she couldn’t bear to don her dirty
clothes again. Without her bundle, she didn’t even have a change of
linen. That thought gave her pause, but, determined now, she rummaged in
Jack’s trunk for an old shirt and wore it while she scrubbed her
clothes.

She wrung them out and hung them over the mantel and
chair to dry before the fire. Her comb had been lost with her other
possessions, but she had found a brush in Jack’s chest. It was old and
elaborately engraved with the initials JML, and her fingers lovingly
traced the etching as she drew the brush through her hair. Someone rich
and aristocratic had once owned this brush. Could it be Jack? The first
initial fitted, but nothing else did.

She had seen very few nobles, but she rather
suspected they didn’t sport three-day beards and unkempt black hair. As a
matter of fact, if she recollected rightly, they wore powdered hair and
silk and red heels with clocked stockings.

She smiled with her daydream of elegant gentlemen,
ladies in wide, sweeping skirts, each making polite bows and curtsies to
the other. She had never owned an elegant skirt with hoops and
panniers, but she knew how to curtsy in one. Her mother had taught her
all manner of frivolous things such as that, to the amusement of both of
them. She missed her mother dreadfully, but there had been years to
become accustomed to her death and learn to live with her absence.

Not so her father. That had been too sudden, too
violent, and Faith could not face it yet, might never face it. It had
been senseless. Her father was a sternly religious man, a scholar, a
gentleman who had forsaken his heritage for his beliefs. What manner of
madman would hate him enough to kill him?