“Odette will be staying at the house for one more week, until our marriage, and she will help with managing the women’s workhouse at Rutger’s old storehouse. We are still trying to get that set up since the storehouse needed to be cleared out and made a bit more comfortable.”
“Excellent,” the margrave said. “I shall come and inspect it and the orphanage when all the work is complete. And I hear the townspeople are being generous, but I shall not allow anyone to outgive me.” Lord Thornbeck gave a half smile.
“Yes, my lord.”
And now that things were working out so well, Jorgen was more and more preoccupied with getting the chancellor’s manse ready to bring Odette home as his bride.
But first . . . He and his mother had prepared a basket of food, and Jorgen left Thornbeck Castle, bound for the orphanage. He found Odette playing a game with several of the younger children. When she saw him, her eyes widened and she smiled. She left the children to play with Kathryn and walked toward him.
The children were making a lot of noise, so when she came near, he figured it would be safe to say quietly, “I wish I could kiss you. Would you think it improper if I did?”
“Yes, I would.” Her cheeks turned a gratifying pink.
“Then will you go on a picnic with me? I have not been able to talk with you alone since the day you agreed to marry me.”
Her lips curved deliciously, and she leaned toward him. “That sounds lovely.”
He waited while she went to tell Kathryn that she was leaving, and after giving some instructions to those in the kitchen, they were on horseback and headed to his favorite spot by a small stream, deep in Thornbeck Forest.
“I don’t think I have ever gone on a picnic.” She smiled at him from atop her horse.
“Never?”
“Never alone with a handsome young man.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. If she was trying to be flirtatious, she was doing a worthy job.
They reached the spot, and she jumped down from her horse before he could help her. He unstrapped the basket from the back of his horse and carried it to where she stood with the blanket still folded under her arm.
“This is beautiful. Look at the blue flowers there, and the pink ones. And the stream sounds peaceful.” She spoke in a hushed voice. “I have never seen this place . . . well, not in the daylight, leastways.” She spread out the blanket on the ground and he set down the basket.
She was quiet as they set out the food, sat down, and began to eat. Perhaps she was listening to the birds or the stream gurgle over the rocks, but he got the feeling that she was thinking, hard, about all the things that were still between them. Or maybe that was only because that was what he was thinking about.
When they had eaten their fill of the bread and cheese and drunk some water he had brought, she took a handful of walnuts and raisins and picked them up one by one with her fingertips and put them in her mouth. A strand of blond hair fell loose from her braid and waved against her cheek. He longed to brush it back, imagining how it would feel against his palm.
But that was not why he had brought her here.
“Odette?”
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and innocent. Then her face sobered. “What is it?”
“I want to know, honestly, how you feel about marrying me. I would have asked you to marry me anyway if Lord Thornbeck had not practically ordered you to. That is not the way I would have wished to have done things.”
She gave him a half smile. “I meant what I said to the margrave. You are the best man I have ever known, and I love you.” Her tone sent a shot of warmth through him.
They were seated a little too far apart for him to touch her. He should have brought a smaller blanket.
“But I keep wondering, what must you think of me?” She looked away, then down at her hands. “I know you were very angry with me, and rightfully so, when you realized you had been telling me about your struggles to find the poacher, and all along I knew exactly who the poacher was. You cannot deny you were furious with me. Why would you want to marry me?”
Jorgen stood and held his hand out to her. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. The pained-but-hopeful look in her blue eyes made his heart expand and fill his chest. “I wanted to avenge my father’s death so much that I wanted to shoot the poacher. But I only wanted to wound him, not because I had mercy on him, but so he could suffer execution for what he had done to my father.”
He closed his eyes a moment. When he was able to speak again, he went on, determined to say it. “When you were bleeding, and then again when your leg turned septic, I thought it was my fault . . . because of my hatred for the man who had killed my father.”