The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (52 page)

“
Well?” Mahrree
asked.

“
Nice boy,” Perrin said.
“Took him a while to warm up to me—”

“
But you’re used to that by
now, aren’t you?”

He chuckled sadly. “We had a good
conversation. Solid young man, on the shy side though. He’s going
to be all right, but he needs some time. I’ll try to visit him once
a week, and I’ll be sure to tell Yung about him. Deckett used to go
to the Holy Day meetings in Mountseen, and I think Yung knows that
rector.”

“
What’s he going to do
about the farm?”

“
He’s staying,” Perrin said
with some surprise. “He quit school and decided to finish out his
parents’ commitment for this year through the harvest.”

“
Really? They would be
proud of him, I’m sure.”

“
His heart isn’t in
farming, but he wanted to honor his parents. He really wants to be
a rancher. At the university he was helping with experiments on
improving milk and beef yield, but decided he could do some of
those experiments himself.” Then Perrin chuckled. “He asked how
much I knew about cattle!”

“
Just don’t approach the
area when he’s working with them,” Mahrree warned him. “You’ll
scare them all away!”

“
Well I wouldn’t want to do
that
. I already like him too much.”

In the washing room, Jaytsy’s chest burned
again.

---

The next morning Jaytsy set out early for the
Briter farm to open the irrigation canal as usual. But noticing
that water was already rushing down the rows, she lifted her skirt
and ran to the main canal.

He was there.

He didn’t notice her approaching, which gave
Jaytsy a moment to evaluate him more fully. She decided that
Deckett Briter didn’t seem like someone who’d ever spent the night
raiding houses. He was a few inches taller than her, and his hair
was a perfect dirt brown. While his face wasn’t as outwardly
handsome as Lemuel Thorne’s, his rough features were somehow far
more pleasing. His body also wasn’t as proportionately muscled as
the captain’s, but his arms and chest seemed to be more than
adequate for tackling cattle.

He turned and saw her, his eyes no longer
red. They were . . .

Jaytsy gulped.

He smiled slightly. His face would
undoubtedly be even more agreeable when the grief eased. Right now
his light brown eyes still looked burdened, but a bit hopeful.
“You’re here early.”

“
I took care of the
watering when your parents were away,” she said and took a step
closer.

He stood a little taller.

She noticed. “I’m really sorry about them. I
was very upset yesterday when my father told me. Your mother taught
me a great deal. I guess you could say she was my best friend. And
your father was always so kind.”

Deckett stared at the ground. “My mother
really liked you. They both mentioned you a few times in their
letters. You were the only reason my mother wasn’t terrified of
your father.”

Jaytsy managed a chuckle. “My father was
having a few
problems
when your parents first arrived,” she
explained. “They weren’t the only ones to experience him that way.
There are still a few people in Edge who run to the other side of
the road when they see him coming.”

“
I don’t know why anyone’s
afraid of him,” Deckett said, still not meeting her eyes. “He
couldn’t have been any kinder than if he were my own—”

The sentence didn’t need finishing.

He squatted and inspected an ear forming on a
stalk of corn. “Should be a good crop this year. Thank you for your
help. With no rain lately, all of this would be wilting by
now.”

“
I come every day,” Jaytsy
told him. “One more week and school usually starts again, but
they’re postponing it for another two weeks because of all the
illnesses. I’m focusing all my efforts here, so that means I should
be able to get caught up in the weeding, as if one can ever get
fully caught up in weeding!” For some reason she said all of that
very quickly.

Deckett squinted at her, trying to catch up
to what she just said. Eventually he nodded. “I’ll be helping now.
Looks like you’ve been pretty busy already, so if you have
something else you’d rather be doing—”

Jaytsy took another step forward. “No! Not at
all! This is what I love to do, really.”

Deckett pursed his mouth as if trying to
decide if she was telling the truth. “Well, then. I guess you could
start wherever you planned to start this morning. I need to check
on a few things, then I suppose I’ll find a patch to work on
myself.”

“
Should you be doing all of
that work? You’ve recently been ill yourself,” Jaytsy reminded
him.

He shook his head dismissively. “I’m fine.
Always been a fast healer. And I need to work.”

Sensing the conversation was over, Jaytsy
nodded and turned, wondering why she felt disappointed.

She didn’t see him again until about an hour
before midday meal when she looked up between rows of beans to see
him weaving down a row to her.

“
At this rate, there’ll be
nothing left for me to do.” He smiled, almost genuinely. He seemed
a little lighter than before as he crouched to examine a plant, but
also a bit paler as the heat of the day touched him.

“
If you need to go rest and
cool off a bit,” Jaytsy said, sitting back on her knees, “I’m fine
here. You don’t want to dehydrate.”

He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very
polite, would it? Leaving you alone?” He watched for her
response.

“
I find it restful,” Jaytsy
confessed. “I get a lot of thinking done in the dirt. And I don’t
mind being alone.” Which, while true, was exactly the opposite of
what she meant.

“
Oh. Well. Then, I guess
I’ll go check on the henhouse—”

“
NO!” she
barked.

Deckett blinked. “Something wrong with the
henhouse?”

“
I mean,
no,
you can
stay,” she said, now more in control of her surprisingly flailing
emotions. “If you don’t need to rest inside, then you can . . .
rest here in the field.” That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to
her, either.

“
Sit and watch you weed?”
Deckett shook his head. “My mother would be disappointed if I just
left a young woman out here to weed by herself.” Blushing, he
added, “And resting would just give me too much time to think. No,
I’d rather work.”

He got down on his knees in the row next to
her.

She grinned at him.

He smiled back shyly and turned to the
dirt.

For the next hour they talked about Mahrree’s
hatred of weeding, Sewzi’s love of gardens, cattle’s fear of
Perrin, and Perrin’s fear of Cambozola. By the time they finished
the second full row, Deckett had chuckled three times. Jaytsy kept
count. She also noticed that Deckett was not as talkative and
lively as his father, but much more pensive and careful like his
mother. Fortunately.

At the end of the beans they stood up and
looked at the sun.

“
Midday meal. I’m ready for
it,” Deckett said, arching his back to work out a kink. “Your
mother packed me so much food,” he said, a bit timidly. “Would you
care to join me?”

Jaytsy bit her lip. “I’m kind of expected at
home for . . .” How could she turn down those sad eyes? And he was
all alone
.

Her mother wouldn’t want her to leave him
recovering, grieving, and
all alone
, would she? Nor would
her father, she was sure.

“
Well, my family knows
where I am.”

“
We’ll eat on the back
steps,” he suggested. “In case someone comes looking for you, they
can see you.” He flashed her a bashful grin and jogged into the
house, leaving Jaytsy at the beginning of the lettuces.

She took several deep breaths and tried to
calm her hands that wanted to shake. Noticing a couple of buckets
by the fence along the road, which she’d used a few days ago to
gather weeds in, she turned to retrieve them.

She skipped, fully aware that she hadn’t
skipped since she was seven, to the fence. Once there she saw an
ambitious vine growing along the posts threatening to come into the
row of corn. Knowing she couldn’t allow that to invade the garden,
she yanked on it.

That was when the shadow came over her.

“
Miss Jaytsy! Out in the
fields again, I see.”

Jaytsy looked up to see a gray horse, and
Lemuel Thorne seated on top of it. He wasn’t as pocked as her
mother or Deckett, but still looked pale.

Jaytsy felt again the same
disappointment—tinged with the tiniest drop of guilt—that she
experienced when she heard Thorne was expected to recover. She’d
run into him only a couple of times since their incident in the
barn, and he hadn’t bothered to apologize for trying to ruin her.
He certainly didn’t look contrite now, either, as he beamed down at
her with all the innocence of a mountain lion.

“
Captain Thorne. I see that
you’re recovering. You shouldn’t be in the sun too long, though.
Not good for your skin. You should probably be heading in right
now,” she hinted as she stood up with the buckets in
hand.

“
Nothing could improve me
more than seeing you.” He smiled broadly, and it struck Jaytsy to
be a practiced expression. “And I see you’re still concerned for my
welfare. That means a lot to me.”

Jaytsy ran her previous sentences through her
mind to see if that was really what she’d said. She wanted to be
cautious with what she said next before Thorne misinterpreted it as
a proposal of marriage.

She nodded once, which she assumed would be
safe. “Good day, Captain,” and she started toward the Briters’
house.

“
How’s the kitten?” he
called after her.

Jaytsy stopped. The burning in her chest
which she’d felt earlier as she looked at Deckett had now dropped
as a nauseating knot into her belly.

She sighed and turned around. “The Cat is
very well, thank you. He’s very . . . entertaining. Seems to have
taken to my father. I’m sorry, I really must go now. And so should
you.”

Captain Thorne apparently heard what he was
hoping to hear. He smiled, tipped his cap, and turned his horse
back to the fort.

Lighter now that the shadow was gone, Jaytsy
pivoted in time to see Deckett standing at the open kitchen door.
How long he had been watching the two of them, she didn’t know, but
he stood stiffly, watching Thorne ride off.

“
No,” Jaytsy whimpered. She
didn’t know Deckett well enough to interpret the look on his
face.

His gaze shifted from the retreating figure
over to Jaytsy as she ambled to the house. His eyes looked a little
hard.

Jaytsy put on a real smile. “Found the water
buckets! I forgot them there the other day. Sorry if you’d been
looking for them.”

“
Is he from the fort?”
Deckett nodded to the road.

“
Him? Oh, yes. Every
uniform is, by the way,” she pointed out. “He was asking about the
farm. He eats from here, you know. You better get used to the army
in your life now,
sir
.”

Deckett analyzed her carefully as if looking
for something that remained from her talk with the officer.

Jaytsy gave him her brightest face.

He didn’t see anything but her smile, so he
smiled back. “Well, don’t just stand there. I
order
you to
get some water!
Please?
”

She grinned and saluted.

When she came home that afternoon from
weeding, her mother, going over some papers at the table, looked up
at her.

“
Missed you at midday
meal,” she said, giving her daughter a deliberate look.

“
Oh. Yes. Sorry about that.
Deckett invited me to stay to eat. I thought it would be rude to
leave him
all alone
. You sent over so much food, you see,
and . . . and . . .” Jaytsy bit her lower lip, hoping she wasn’t
turning colors.

Mahrree smiled at her and nodded. “As long as
you’re safe.”

Jaytsy smiled back.

“
Perfectly!”

Chapter 20
~
“Tell me about cow eyes.”

K
nock-knock . . .
knock-knock-knock.

Perrin dropped his quill and held his head in
his hands. Couldn’t Thorne be one to get the pox twice? There’d
been a few cases . . .

He felt cheated as he sighed, “Come in.”

It wasn’t fair that Thorne’s pocks were
fading so quickly. He’d still have the faint scars, but at least
those added a hint of ruggedness that the captain was so severely
needing.

“
I just wanted you to know
that I spotted your daughter working in the fields across from the
fort. She looked quite well and happy.”

Not because of you, Thorne!
Perrin
wanted to say, but he wasn’t entirely sure why Jaytsy looked happy.
“Yes, I’m sure she’s just fine. She enjoys farming. Seems to be her
calling.”

Thorne frowned. “Calling? Farming?” he
scoffed lightly. “Not Miss Jaytsy, sir. Surely not.”

Perrin leaned back in his chair. “Why not?
Working the land to produce food for others—what could be more
important?”

Thorne chuckled mirthlessly. “Why, lots of
things! People who work in the dirt are so . . . dirty.”

“
So are men whose hands get
stained with blood, Thorne,” said Perrin. “But when our work’s
done, men are injured or dead. When farmers are done, people live.
I find that exceptionally valiant.”