Louise Allen - Snowbound Wedding Wishes

‘Happen you’ll have some company this evening, then, because you’ll not be going anywhere for a day or so and that’s a fact. We tried the lane towards the pike road and it’s drifted deep.’

‘Then I’ll have to stay put and do what I can to help out,’ Hugo said amiably. He didn’t miss the reference to company. Every man in the hamlet was going to be in the taproom that evening, sizing him up. It should do Emilia’s income some good, if nothing else. ‘Anyone else need digging out?’

‘No. I reckon we’ve got the old folks and Willie Piggott, who’s a bit simple, all safe and sound. Old Janes all right?’

‘He needs bread and potatoes.’

‘I’ll see to that.’ The smith nodded, but spared the boys a smile. ‘You look after your ma now!’

Hugo trudged back along the deep-cut path. ‘What are your chores now?’

‘We’d be going to Mr Hoskins, the vicar, for our lessons today,’ Nathan explained. ‘But we can’t because of the snow and the flood and the bridge,’ he added smugly.

‘And you have no lessons to finish?’ Two broad grins were enough answer. ‘Well, fetch your books out and I’ll set you some.’ It was starting to snow again and their mother wouldn’t want them racketing about the house, bored with confinement all day.

Hugo bundled them inside, ordered boots and coats off and, when he had them settled in front of the range, chewing their pencils over Caesar’s Gallic wars, he went in search of Emilia.

He had hoped she might have taken the opportunity to rest, but noises from the cellar told him otherwise. When he came down the stairs she was standing in the mash tun, her skirts kirtled up around her knees, scooping wet mash out into buckets.

Hugo went down the rest of the stairs two at a time, strode across the floor and lifted her bodily out of the tun. ‘What the blazes do you think you are doing?’

She turned, a small, damp virago, pink in the face from indignation and bending over. ‘What am I doing? What are you thinking of, Major?’ Her hair was coming out of its net, her bare feet and legs were shedding wet grains all over his shoes and her hands were fisted at her waist. Her small, vulnerable feet. Her shapely calves and ankles, the slim waist and the womanly curves.

‘Thinking?’ Hugo realised that he had not been thinking at all. But he was now. She looked edible, vital, alive. Infinitely desirable. He took her by the waist again, drew her close and buried his face in the luxurious mass of her hair.

Her mouth had been open to protest, but she was pressed against Hugo’s front, inhaling warm man as his hands shifted and he settled her more securely against himself. One hand pushed into her hair, sending pins falling free as he cradled her head, the other hand pressed open against her shoulder blades, moving in slow, devastating circles. Her hands were trapped between her breasts and his chest and his heart was thudding against her palms

All the air in her lungs and the blood in her head had vanished. It was wonderful and terrifying and she felt alive as she had not been for years. And it was wrong to be held like this, it had to be if it was this good. Emilia pulled a hand free, fetching Hugo a blow on the ear by mistake.

He set her back a little, just enough that their bodies were no longer touching. ‘Ouch! I am sorry—’

‘So am I. I didn’t mean to hit you.’ They stared into each other’s faces, their noses almost touching, their breath wreathing white in the cold air. ‘I didn’t mean for you to stop,’ Emilia blurted. She curled her hands around his waist and pulled and Hugo, with a groan that was either desire or despair and was, she thought wildly, possibly both, pulled her to him again.

Kiss me . Somehow she managed to keep the words in her head.

‘Major?’ called a treble voice from upstairs.

‘Hell!’ Hugo set her free so abruptly that she sat down on the edge of the tun. He was across the cellar and standing at the foot of the steps before she could gather her wits and realise where she was, what she was doing. What she had almost done.

‘Yes? I am down here. Are you stuck with that exercise?’ he called up, as calm as though they had been discussing hops and ale recipes.

Both boys came down the steps. ‘No, we’ve finished. Look.’ Joseph was waving a sheet of paper under Hugo’s nose. ‘See, Mama, we’ve translated a whole page! What are you doing?’

Goodness knows! Embracing a totally inappropriate man in the cellar. He is either sorry for me or he thinks I am pitiful and grateful for his attentions . ‘Emptying the used mash,’ Emilia said briskly. She pulled herself together and studied her sons. ‘Has Major Travers been setting you Latin lessons?’ They seemed unusually cheerful about the fact.

‘Yes, and they are all about wars and battles!’

‘How interesting. I just hope you aren’t both going to rush off to the next recruiting sergeant who comes around.’ They grinned back at her, knowing teasing when they heard it. Her feet were freezing now she was out of the slightly warm mash. Emilia slid her feet into her wooden pattens and tried to ignore Hugo, who shot her an unreadable glance, although whether it signified remorse at having embraced her or the strains of teaching small boys their Latin, she could not tell.

Hugo sat beside her on the edge of the tun and heeled off his shoes. ‘Where does this used mash go?’ He rolled off his stockings. Emilia averted her eyes from well-muscled, hairy calves.

‘We’ll show you.’ Nathan seized one of the filled buckets. ‘It all gets dumped over here and then when it is dried we use it for the animals.’

Hugo shed coat and waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves. Emilia kicked off the pattens and swung her legs over to get back into the tun.

‘No. I’ll finish here.’ He put one hand on her arm.

She still could not look at him, or think of anything to say with the boys so close. She was acutely aware of her wet skirts and bare calves, of the blood pounding around her veins, of the closeness of him and the warm weight of his hand against the skin of her forearm. From somewhere Emilia found her voice and something coherent to say. ‘Of course. I must get some food together. You will all be starving.’

She scrambled back out, jammed her feet into the pattens, let down her skirts and hurried upstairs without stopping to look back at Hugo or brush off the grains that clung to her legs. She heard the scrape of the wooden shovel on the stone base of the tun, the laughter of the boys as they fought over who was carrying the next bucket, then she was in the kitchen with the door safely closed behind her.

This was a disaster. What had she done? What had she risked, simply because of the aching need for strong arms around her, for the respite from being continuously in charge? And, yes, she thought, if she was going to be honest, she had wanted that fire in the blood, that sensual tingle between a man and a woman.

Emilia pulled onions and carrots out of their sacks and began scrubbing them to add to the soup that simmered on the hob. She worked as though she could rub away the feel of Hugo’s arms around her, the scent of him. She had made her decision when she had slipped away from that ball and fallen, laughing, into Giles’s arms. She had chosen love and laughter and joy for however long it lasted. And she had been blessed with four years of happiness and two wonderful sons.

But you paid the price of whatever your choices brought you. The boys had her total love and every moment she could devote to them, to building their futures. And the price for that was hard work and maintaining her reputation, not dallying with big strong soldiers. They were such good boys, so bright, so loving. She chopped the roots with savage swipes of the knife. They deserved the lives of opportunity their grandparents could give them.