Page 96 of Bound

She went to the springhouse. Then to the kitchen.

Then back to release her disgruntled hesperout to take their ire out on the man perched on the far fence.

She’d have to deal with him, but she was suspicious that he was making her come to him rather than approaching her properly.

It was different. And different made her nervous.

She could ignore him. Hope he simply went away. But then Calliope gave him a rather powerful nudge with her large head and he slipped off the fence with a bellow of his own, and she supposed she did care if he was hurt. A little.

More than a little.

She shoved that thought aside.

Wren didn’t run, but she did hurry. But she needn’t have worried. He was back on his feet and was shaking his head, his hand delving into his pocket. “We were to ask your mistress first,” he was saying, eyes on Calliope. “What if your stomach is peculiar and you shouldn’t eat these?”

But Calliope seemed to think nothing of stomachs and asking permission as she nuzzled persistently toward his person.

His eyes came up, and he noticed her coming. His expression shifted, and he looked rather sheepish. It made him appear younger somehow, less worn. Was that because of her? The toll it took to be forbidden from one’s mate?

Her stomach squirmed unpleasantly. “I was going to ask you, first,” he insisted, as if he was committing some great wrong. Maybe he was. No one had ever tried to feed any of her animals before. “This one had other ideas.”

“You are fortunate it wasn’t Temperance. She’s pushed me across the stalls more than once if I get in the way of her grain.”

He glanced over her as if there were some bruises or marks that required his attention and she rolled her eyes. “I know better than to get in her way, now. You’ll have to learn that on your own.”

Braum’s attention shifted sharply, and there was something too near to hope kindling there. She hadn’t meant to say that. To suggest that his presence would become customary. But she’d said it, and to fumble through a half-hearted excuse seemed silly.

He was determined to come. She would get to decide in what capacity. Hesper treat-giver was not such a bad title.

Yet her fingers still strayed to her braid, and she fiddled lightly. Not a tug. She wasn’t anxious, after all. There was no reason to be. “You’ve so few chores that you have time to sit on a woman’s fence and tantalise her hesper?”

He stood up a little straighter. No longer sheepish—he seemed rather to be bracing himself. “I thought it prudent to make friends with the residences, seeing as I will be attending to their fence today.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, really.”

“It needed oiling,” he reminded her.

Her stomach twisted. “Yes. And I was to pay for it.”

She hadn’t noticed the canister at his feet. The spool of rags and large brush that accompanied it.

Her thoughts drifted to their last conversation. His peculiar insistence that those coins were now his—presumably to do with as he pleased.

He’d known even then how he would spend them.

Which would mean more of his time and his labour, more coins she would owe him afterward. And she had no intention of asking her father for more, not when she’d so soon settled her previous debt.

Did he think that something had changed between them? That she’d softened so greatly that she would let him bury her in guilt and obligation?

“I think not,” she stated firmly. “I’m sorry you wasted your pay, but that oil will not be going anywhere near my fence.”

His brows raised and his head tilted. “And why not?”

Her jaw clenched and she felt the hesper move away from them, their interest fixed on the sweet grass now that the treats had been collected.

“Because I will be back where I started!” she bit out, more harshly than she had intended. “Because I had to ask my father once already to pay you the last time. Because I don’t want to owe you anything.”

“Why?”