By the Sunday before All Hallows’ Eve, the village abounded with Allan apples, bright red and polished to a beckoning shine. The market and shops were brimming—even the Mermaid’s Kiss Inn put a bowl out on the taproom counter.
But instead of buying an Allan apple—what little pocket money Nessa had for such an indulgence had always gone into the poor box—she decided to pick her own from the small orchard behind the manse. If magic existed, surely it lived in the unusual, the out-of-the-way and overlooked, and not in the shouty, shiny distractions of the everyday.
And so with a whispered prayer to Saint Allan to vouchsafe her first foray into heathenism, Nessa chose an unblemished Pendragon Red for its small size and good stem, important considerations for bobbing. She carved her mark—a tiny feathered arrow shot through the Roman numeral II, “Nessa” being Cornish for second born—and secreted the apple deep in her pocket, polishing it surreptitiously throughout the day as she fetched and toted and did one chore after another in preparation for the village festival. And if her mother or father thought it odd that she should volunteer to take charge of the apple bobbing barrel instead of the cakes, they were too busy and too thankful for Nessa’s usual thorough competence and gift for managing youngsters to question her motives.
“Good, harmless fun,” her father judged. “Better for the younger set than the cross.”
“The cross” was a game played by the more daring of the lads. Apples were suspended from a flat cross with lit candles on the top face, like a chandelier—the object being to bite an apple without tilting the cross and dripping hot wax onto one’s face. Good harmless fun.
If one were a child. Which she probably was for hoping Captain Lord Harry Beck would remember the last time he had played such a game, and lost, and come to her for consolation.
Better to keep her mind on practicalities—what she was to say to him when she saw him. Or even if she saw him. Indeed, all her hopes were pinned upon the castle folk at least attending the Allantide fair, for even if they did not mix with the villagers, or play the games, she might at least see Lord Harry, and impose upon their old friendship enough to gift him with her enchanted apple. It might have some magic if it were only in his possession.
Aye. It was a lovely, diverting daydream: He would be drawn to her and take her apple and look at it—really look at it—as if he could somehow tell it was different from all the others. As if he could tell it was special. Special for him.
“Nessa Teague.” His voice would be just as she remembered it—low and pleasing, easy and warm. And he would say her name the old-fashioned, Cornish way, with a sigh at the beginning: “Ah-nessa.”
How she longed to hear him say it again.
“Nessa Teague?” A real, actual male voice drew her from her reverie. “Is that really you hiding behind that bonnet? I thought I recognized you. You’ve grown even taller.”
Oh, Saint Allan preserve her.
The man himself was there, in front of her, standing not two feet away, looking as amused and tall and handsome as ever in a bottle green coat. And he was looking at her as if she were a demented, too-tall looby who towered over all of the other female villagers and most of the menfolk.
“Harry,” she answered faintly, working furiously to school her gaping stare into something more pleasant than demented. “Aye, ’tis I. How kind you are to remember.”
“A kindness I must share with you, Nessa. ‘Twas you I saw the other day in the street, was it not? With your mother? But I should have known you instantly, with those blue eyes and that wonderful smile.”
Kind was far better than demented. And wonderful was—wonderful. “Thank you. Captain, isn’t it now? How is your leg?”
The moment she spoke, Nessa felt heat blossom in her chest and creep up her neck. If her mother heard her, she would be aghast—Nessa ought to have said “injury” and not “leg” if she were going to talk of his body parts at all. Which she oughtn’t. Because it was undoubtedly vulgar.
But Harry didn’t seem to mind her ogling of his leg. “Still attached,” he reported with a wry, pleased smile that pushed devastating dimples deep into his cheeks.
He was exactly as she had remembered him and yet different—he was taller, too, and his once lean shoulders were filled with a rangy power that came more from his stature than from any of the muscles that were sure to be flexing beneath the well-fitted coat. And though his eyes were as deep and warm a brown as ever, there was a depth to his gaze, a steadiness, that was new. As was the slight bump on the right side of the bridge of his nose, as if he’d been coshed across the face a time or two.
Poor beautiful Harry.
“And you are home, in England”—she had to swallow over the strange lump of heat and awkward yearning blocking up her throat—“for how long?”
“Until I can be declared fit enough to command a ship again without being a danger to myself or, more importantly, to others. It shouldn’t be too long, so long as the shot stays embedded in my bone.”
The thought that anything so ugly and evil could be embedded in such a beautiful young man was like a physical pain. Poor, wounded, brave Harry. “I am so sorry.”
“Whatever for?” His quick smile snuck up one side of his mouth, as if his amusement were a surprise to him. “You didn’t shoot me.”
It was so like him—that marvelously mischievous sense of humor—that Nessa couldn’t help her own reflexive smile. Which unfortunately gave way to stammering stupidity. “No, but… I reckon as you’d been shot on my behalf. I mean our behalf—the country and all, not me personally.”
God help her, she was babbling. Just like the looby she swore she wouldn’t be.
He laughed good-naturedly at her inanity. “I had reckoned the French shot me on behalf of Napoleon, but I don’t think I would have minded half as much had I known I was being shot on your much more pleasant behalf.”
It was just like him to try and make her feel less like an idiot. He always had, all those years ago when he had taken tuition from her father—those halcyon days when Papa had not objected to her joining his students at their studies.
But such days were long gone. Now she was meant to be an obedient, helpful young lady who was seen and not heard. To pay the servants and see that beds were changed, to arrange flowers for the altar and copy out her father’s Sunday sermons in a clear hand.
But Harry looked as if sermons would be of little interest to him—he was eyeing the shifting crowd from under the brim of his hat, his gaze scanning faces, as if he were looking for someone. As if he were trying to find a friend.
She could be that friend. And so much more.
Nessa swallowed her nervous misgivings and forced her voice to an unstudied, casual tone. “Would you be so kind as to do me the favor of starting off the apple bobbing? It would be a grand thing to have Captain Lord Harry Beck take part in the Allantide fête.” There, she had asked, even if her heart began thudding in her ears like the waves against the rocks along the coast.
“Ah, well—” He looked not exactly skeptical, but as if he were thinking of a way to get out of it. “Isn’t this for the youngsters?”
“Aye.” She cleared the lump of awkwardness from her throat. “But I need someone whom I know won’t cheat to show the lads how it’s properly done.”
“Ah. I never cheat. Hands behind the back, isn’t it?”
Nessa belatedly realized that his injury might make the balance of such a posture difficult. She’d let him do whatever he wanted if it meant he would take a chance with her apple. That’s all she wanted, all she could ask for—this one chance.
“Oh, Harry. You can put your hands wherever you like.”