“Toste!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper when he crept into the room without knocking. “You should not be here. ‘Tis not proper.” She indicated the young women sleeping.
“Since when am I proper?” he asked, also in a loud whisper, coming up to hunker down next to her.
“Go away,” she said.
“Come with me to the woodcutter’s hut. I need to talk with you.”
“Hah! I know what you want, and it is not talk.”
He grinned at her and tweaked a ribbon on the voluminous night rail she wore. “That, too. But, really, I must tell you what I discovered at Evergreen.” Esme looked glorious to him, with her black curls furling out about her shoulders and down her back. Her blue eyes appeared red-rimmed, though. Had she been crying?
“Well, tell me here, or out in the corridor. I am not going to that hut again… ever.”
“Esme,” he said in a wounded voice. “I have fond memories of that hut.” But almost immediately he pulled her to her feet and offered, “A compromise then. Get your cloak and we will go out on the parapet to talk.”
She did, and as they walked toward the doorway leading to the ramparts, she said, “I am angry with you, Toste.”
“For going to Evergreen?”
“Nay, for going to Evergreen without informing me first.”
“Ah. Well, I am angry with you, too. Did you have to tell everyone about the dog-sex?”
She gasped. “I only told Eadyth and Alinor. I did not tell everyone.”
“Same thing.”
He took her hand as they climbed the steps, and he found himself smiling for no reason at all. He liked Esme. A lot. And he had missed her. “Did you miss me, sweetling?”
“Nay.”
“Good. I missed you, too.”
“Do you hear only what is convenient for your ears?”
“Yea. ‘Tis the best way.”
“You are impossible.”
“I know. ‘Tis one of my best assets.”
“I do not want to know what the others are.”
“You already know most of them,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her.
There was a full moon out, but it was chilly up on the parapet. He nodded to a passing guardsman and pulled Esme back into an alcove where there would be some protection from the wind.
“You must be ecstatic to have found your brother alive.”
He nodded, still too overcome with emotion to discuss his joy at being reunited with Vagn. They had talked and talked for hours on end, bringing each other up to date, once they were able to remove themselves from all their well-meaning friends. Right now, Vagn was off somewhere trying to convince Helga to marry him. Who ever would have thought that his brother would end up with Helga the… nay, he must stop thinking of her that way. Helga the Handsome? Yea, that was how he would think of her now.
“Did you discover anything at Evergreen?”
“Yea, I did,” he said, brightening. “It is all about water, Esme.”
“Water? You mean water, as in wells, underground.”
“Nay, I mean water as in river, as in water rights.”
She frowned with confusion. “Are you speaking of Evergreen River which passes along the northern border of the estate?” The holding was a fairly small and narrow one, rectangular in shape, with the river going along its northern, longer length.
” ‘Twould seem that your father recognized some fifteen years ago that the neighboring estates had need of that waterway to feed their cattle and for passage of peat boats from the western shire to eastern towns. He has been charging exorbitantly for that privilege these many years.”
“I don’t understand. My mother’s family always permitted neighbors to use that water, which is abundant. It is an unspoken agreement.”
“Can I assume you have seen none of these toll monies?”
She shook her head.
“As I thought. In addition, your one brother owns a peat works and the other owns the boats that carry the products to market. Your father is a shrewd businessman.”
“My father is an evil businessman. I suspect that all that peat is contaminating the water for livestock.”
Toste shrugged, knowing nothing about that. “In any case, that explains why the property is so important to your father.”