Page 21 of Hastings (Brothers in Arms #15)
CHAPTER 21
“W hat’s your favorite flower, Mr. Matthews?” Maddy asked. She was sitting on a blanket in the garden while he tended his flowerbeds. He was pulling weeds and trimming off dead flowers. Maddy couldn’t tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. Some of the weeds were even flowering. What made them weeds instead of flowers, she had no idea. As with most things in society, there was a fine line between the two distinctions that she could not fathom.
“I’ve told you to call me Stephen,” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder with a distracted smile.
“It isn’t proper,” she told him. Mrs. Delancey had beaten that into her head. To call a man by his first name was to invite all sorts of familiarity. Based on what she’d seen here in the little village, which, admittedly, wasn’t much, it was just as wrong here as anywhere else. She couldn’t even imagine Mrs. Tulane’s reaction if she heard Maddy call the parson Stephen.
“Don’t you think I’m a rather good arbiter of what’s proper and what’s not?” Stephen asked. Maddy liked to call him Stephen in her head.
“Ha!” Hastings let loose with an amused shout from where he was balancing on the garden fence, walking it like a circus performer. He had the hardest time just sitting still. She’d never seen anyone so anxious to jump up and do something—anything—all the time.
“Do they pay you to be the sheriff?” she asked him, leaning back on her hands as she watched him balancing. “Because I haven’t actually seen you doing any sheriffing since I’ve been here.”
“I know,” Hastings said without a single shred of embarrassment. “It’s ridiculous. But if they’ve got to pay someone to do it, might as well be me.”
Maddy picked up a little pebble and threw it at him. He dodged it expertly without losing his balance. She gathered a few more and took better aim.
“He sheriffs,” Stephen said without looking up. “He just likes people to think he doesn’t. I heard you checked in on Grady and Tuck the other day, to make sure they were getting along.”
“Tuck still hasn’t built that wall back up,” Hastings said. “Someone’s got to get him to do it, or Grady will be shooting him in the dark one night as he’s stealing his sheep again.”
“From what I’ve heard, Grady ought to shoot him,” Maddy observed. She pinged Hastings in the side with a rock and grinned as he glowered at her. Besting Hastings was more satisfying than almost anything else she could think of right then.
“No one should be shooting anyone here in Ashton on the Green,” Stephen said, sitting back on his heels and dusting his gloved hands off. He had his ridiculously large, straw hat on and Maddy wanted to crawl across the grass and tackle him for a kiss. He had the most outrageous freckles across his nose and cheeks, just begging to be kissed. “Besides, they’re cousins. Can you imagine how devastating that would be for the family if they started shooting one another?”
“I knew a boy, Riggins, who shot his brother Tate over a girl and fifty quid,” Maddy said. “We just figured it was all within the family, so it wasn’t any of our business.”
“Rightly so,” Hastings agreed. “That sort of business is best left alone. But if I let Tuck get away with not fixing the fence he damaged, then people will think I haven’t got the authority to back up my decisions. And if I let Grady shoot him as a result, I’ll have lost all authority here and people will begin settling their own disputes, and pretty soon it will be chaos and then the duke will have to come down out of his castle and bang some heads together, and no one wants that.”
“Freddy does tend to bang heads together when his peace is disturbed,” Stephen agreed with a chuckle. “And he doesn’t live in a castle.”
“Maybe not to you,” Maddy told him, searching the ground for more rocks. “But to me,” she looked up at Hastings, patiently waiting on the wall for her to find more rocks, “us, it is.”
“You must admit it’s not as grand as St. James,” Stephen said. She saw him slyly watching her out of the corner of his eye.
“I’ve seen St. James,” she admitted, willing to give him that much information. “It’s all right for some, I suppose.”
“What a nightmare, living in a place like that,” Hastings said, dodging another pebble. She had no idea how he didn’t fall off the wall. It was grossly unfair that he was handsome and unduly coordinated.
“I wouldn’t like it either,” Maddy agreed. “You could hear your voice echo in the halls, I wager. And a stranger around every corner wanting to clean up after you. The horror of it.” She shuddered. “Too many people in my business, and too much territory to keep a look out for.”
“Exactly,” Hastings said. “I don’t like strangers in my business either.”
“It must have been very hard, then, to go to Sir Barnabas for help with such personal information,” Stephen observed, not bothering to hide his scrutiny of her now.
“Go to him?” she responded with a snort of amusement. “He laid a trap for me and lured me with promises.” She gestured around the garden. “He promised he’d protect me in a safe environment.” She pointed at Hastings. “With only his best agents to guard me.” She tossed a rock in the air, absentmindedly catching it over and over. “He promised I’d never have to go back.” She caught the rock one last time and looked over at Stephen. “I’m not sure how he’s going to keep the last one.”
“He will,” Hastings told her. “Sir Barnabas doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.” He sat down on the brick wall, his legs dangling over the edge and almost touching the ground. He was so bloody tall. She couldn’t even imagine being that tall. You could see anything coming your way and no one would try to bully you into doing something you didn’t want to do.
“Everyone makes promises they can’t keep if it furthers their own agenda,” she told him, hating how jaded she sounded. She didn’t want that to mar the perfection of her time here. “Anyway,” she covered her lapse, “you didn’t answer my question. Stephen.” She looked pointedly at him as she said his Christian name for the first time out loud. He laughed as she’d hoped he would, distracted from trying to pry information about her past out of her.
“What was the question?” Stephen asked, a frown wrinkling his noble brow. His eyebrows were only slightly darker than the strawberry-blond hair on his head. He peeled his gloves off and set them down beside him.
“What’s your favorite flower?”
“What’s yours?” he asked instead of answering as he gazed around his garden. Not all the flowers were in bloom anymore. The weather was still warm, but it was heading into fall. This was Maddy’s favorite time of year, always had been, and she knew it always would be now, because she’d been here, with them, during it.
“I like wildflowers,” she said impulsively. She’d never really thought about it before now. “They’ll just grow anywhere, won’t they? I’ve seen them coming through the cracks in the dingiest alleyways, just struggling to survive and putting out blooms no matter what got thrown at them. They look so delicate, and yet they always survive, don’t they?” She gestured at the pile of Stephen’s pulled weeds. “I’d have left most of those alone. I figure if a plant blooms, it’s a flower and it’s earned the right to exist.”
“Well, I am put in my place,” Stephen said, nodding as he looked at the pile of weeds. “I shall never pull another flowering weed without a measure of guilt.” He took his hat off and set it on the ground by his gloves, and then ran his hands through his damp hair. He looked sweaty and delicious, his movements unconsciously seductive, and Maddy was enthralled.
She laughed. “I imagine that will be the first thing you’ll ever do to cause you a moment’s guilt,” she told him.
“If you believe that, then you don’t know me at all,” he said, his expression grave.
“There’s nothing you can tell me that will shock me or make me think you less than a saint,” she assured him.
“I am not a saint,” he insisted firmly. “Nor do I want to be. I’m just a man, and I like it that way.”
I like it just fine, too , Maddy thought. When their gazes clashed, she was shocked at the heat in his. He hadn’t looked at her like that before, with such obvious attraction. Her heart began to pound with surprise and elation.
“I like trees,” Hastings said. “Does that count as a flower? Some of them have flowers.”
Maddy watched Stephen switch his attention to Hastings, his gaze not losing any of its heat. It was almost as if he wanted her to see it, to see the desires that made him a man, and very much not a saint.
“They are indeed plants,” Stephen said, “so I will concede the appropriateness of your choice. What do you like about them?”
“They’re always there,” Hastings said simply. “They don’t really die, even when the leaves fall off, do they? You can come back in a year, and unless some damn fool has cut them down, you’ll find the same tree in the same place, looking the same. You can watch them bloom, die, and come back again in the spring. It’s like they’re eternal. Everything else changes, but the trees remain.”
“You’re right,” Maddy agreed, staring at the apple trees across the lane, and a couple of giant oaks in front of the parsonage. “I’ve never really thought much about trees. There weren’t very many where I grew up. They are very reliable and trustworthy.”
“Exactly,” Hastings said. He looked at Stephen. “Your turn.”
Stephen smiled and looked at them both. “I like any flower, or plant, that needs tending.” He turned and cupped a bright pink blossom in his hand. “I enjoy the act of nurturing them, helping them to grow and thrive, showing the world their beauty, or even their usefulness. I have no favorites. I love them all.”
“Spoken like a true minister,” Maddy said wistfully. “I don’t understand how someone like you exists in the same world that I live in.” She looked away and was ensnared in Hastings’s knowing and sympathetic gaze. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like growing up some place where they just expected you to follow your natural inclination to be good and kind. She might as well imagine living on the moon.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Stephen said, surprising her with his impatience. “I wish you would stop doing that.” He crawled over to the blanket and kneeled next to her.
“Stop doing what?” she asked, bewildered by his tone. He never spoke like that.
“Stop putting me on a damn pedestal,” he told her. “Madelyn, I went to war. I killed. I saw death and destruction, and I reeled from the horror of it. I drank, I was with…women, and I cursed God. The only heroic thing I did was come back and dedicate my life to trying to help people. It was the only thing I knew to do after what I’d been through. But I dragged myself through the mud before I got here. I’m no better than any other man.”
“I…” She didn’t know what to say to that. Stephen shouldn’t have to endure that much pain and heartbreak. Someone like him should never see death like that, or ever have to kill. That wasn’t for the likes of him. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, reaching out and placing her hand on his upper arm.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Treat me like a man, not some blasted saint you’ve built up in your head.” Then to her shock, he pulled her to him and kissed her.