“We could have had the mule for nothing, after that,” said Thomson, as they gathered their things after breakfast, preparing to leave. But they’d paid fairly for the mule, enough to let the family buy another to replace it in the spring, when they would need it for their plowing. And standing saddled at the door and waiting for them patiently, it was a welcome sight to Mary, for her ankle had begun to ache.
Her heart ached more. She watched the children gathering round Frisque to say good-bye to him, and saw his joyful, wagging tail, and she was well aware of what she ought to do and say, and of the choice she ought to make, but it was very difficult.
She felt MacPherson watching her, his hard gaze steady on her face. He slung the gun case on his back and looked from Frisque to Mary, and he told her simply, “Call him.”
Mary looked at him, not understanding, knowing that her anguish must be showing in her eyes.
He said again, more slowly, “Call him.”
Mary could have told him that it was no use, that she had called her father back and it had made no difference, that if something once desired to leave you it was lost already and forever. But she yielded to the pressure of those unrelenting eyes, and cleared her throat, and called out, “Frisque.”
The dog’s ears perked, and his head turned towards her, and he left the children and came bounding over happily to paw the hemline of her skirt and ask to be picked up. She could not do it, for her eyes had filled quite suddenly and foolishly, and she feared if she moved at all those tears would fall and shame her. Without words, MacPherson scooped the spaniel up and placed him safe in Mary’s arms and lifted both of them to sit upon the mule.
Then taking the bridle into his strong hand he remarked, “Not so easy to leave after all, it appears.”
And they started to walk.
Chapter 32
Luc bent forward from where he was standing behind my chair, leaning his hands on the armrests and bringing his cheek close to mine as he read the transcribed pages over my shoulder. It usually bothered me when people hovered, invading my personal space, but with Luc it felt…nice.
It was comforting, actually, having the warmth of him there at my back like a shield, and the press of his arms against mine was surprisingly pleasant. I might balk at the more random contact and touching that most people took in their stride as a matter of course every day, but I liked being held by the people I liked to be held by, and how Luc was touching me now felt a lot like a hug. I relaxed deeper into it, resting my head in the strong hollow curve of his shoulder and liking the freshly ironed scent of his smooth cotton shirt.
Luc said, “He’s taking care of her.”
“He is their bodyguard.”
“Well, technically he’s Mr. Thomson’s bodyguard, but here you see he’s starting to care more about protecting her than Thomson.”
He pointed a few entries back to the lines that read:
We are to spend another night here. Mr. M— claims it is to confound any who have sought to follow us, but I believe it is because I slightly hurt my ankle in my fall and he would let me rest a little longer before I must face a full day’s walk on it. In truth he seems to disapprove my smallest movement, and when I stepped outside on waking to dip water from the barrel there so I could wash, he came behind and took the bucket from my hands and would not let me carry it. And yet for all he shows concern, he has today been more withdrawn than I have seen him, and more sullen. Truly, never have I met a man more difficult to fathom.
Luc maintained it wasn’t difficult at all. “She’s his Achilles’ heel. He’s fallen for her.”
“I’m sorry?”
He smiled at my skeptical face. “It’s OK, you won’t see it because you’re a woman. A woman can start with a man she might find unattractive and slowly begin to see good in him, grow into love with him, but this is not how it happens with men. We’re much simpler,” he told me. “We see and we want.”
I was still unconvinced, so my tone sounded dry. “Really?”
“Really. This bodyguard would have found Mary attractive the first time he saw her in Paris, I promise you, and he’d have wanted her right from that moment, those feelings won’t change. But how much he wants her, the strength of his feelings—he may not have realized this till he was watching her run from that wolf.”
I sorted this out. “So he’s been in love with her all along, but he didn’t know he was in love with her until the moment he thought he might lose her?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re saying men aren’t complicated?”
“We see and we want,” he repeated and shrugged. “Very basic.”
“And what do you do when you get what you want?”
“We look after it.” He turned his head and I felt the warm brush of his kiss at my temple. “What’s this over here?” he asked, reaching to pick up a page to the side of my stack of transcribed ones. “It looks like Noah’s writing.”
“It is Noah’s writing.” He’d been in my room earlier, at first just sitting quietly and playing with the cat. So very quietly, in fact, it hadn’t bothered me or hindered me from working. I hadn’t even been aware how closely he’d been watching me until I’d stopped to stretch and he had asked an intelligent series of questions. “I gave him some samples of ciphers to work through.”
“You’re teaching my son cryptanalysis?”