He was still staring at her, silent. She could see regret in his eyes, but she knew it wasn’t the regret of a man who felt he’d made the wrong choice. He quite probably was sorry he’d hurt her, maybe even more so now that she’d let him know how much. Gareth had never been cruel, merely careless.
“I shouldn’t have come home,” he muttered finally. “Not like this, anyway. If I’d known—”
“Gareth.” Alice leaned forward and, carefully clearing a space, folded her arms on the table. “Of course you came home. It is your home. And there is no reason we can’t manage to share it, at least for the time being, until matters are settled. Yes, it hurt when you left. But you made me no promises then, and as it happens, I want nothing at all from you. You are not responsible for me; you never were.”
He studied her for a moment through narrowed eyes. “When did you take up serenity? You used to be such a feisty little thing.”
“I used to be a great many things, I expect, but I don’t think feisty was ever one of them.” She found herself wondering if he really remembered her as she did him—or whether time and carelessness had wiped memory away. “We were young. And cannot be expected to see everything as it was.”
“Mmm. You threw a rock at my head once.”
“Well, yes, I did that, but only after you’d tipped me into the pond.” She’d been eight, he twelve.
“You filled my best boots with water.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She remembered his face when he’d thrust a foot in. Then he had poured the contents of the second boot over her feet. She knew he had wanted to dump the water over her head, but had refrained. He’d been fifteen, on his way to manhood. “You promised to take me fishing, but went without me.”
“You tried to set my horse free.”
“I didn’t—”
“In the dead of winter.”
Yes, she’d done that, too, thinking he was going to join his father’s hunting party. She’d been fourteen, he eighteen. He’d yelled for a minute or two, then lifted her easily, plunked her down into a pair of boots several sizes too large for her, and made her come with him to retrieve the horse. Then he had, for the first time, talked to her as adults would, as equals. They had discussed the hunt, how they both abhorred it. She’d told him about her parents, how she still missed them so much it ached. He’d told her of his desire to see the world beyond Ireland. He had talked about stars.
It had taken an hour of plodding through cold, muddy fields side by side for her to fall in love. The horse, of course, had been waiting for them in the warm stable. Gareth, she’d decided, had known it would be.
She smiled now with the bittersweetness of her memories. “I half expected you to climb onto the horse the minute we returned and ride away toward the sea.”
Perhaps, she thought, it would be better for all if he got on his horse now and took himself back to wherever he’d been. Gareth was so much more Irish than he thought. The rover, the rambler, with his feet itching for the road, his eyes on the distant horizon. It was, she knew, part of what she’d once loved so about him. How easy it would be to condemn him for it now. How easy and how uncharitable.
“Had you not been with me, I might have.”
She hadn’t forgotten for a minute how very green his eyes were. She had forgotten how soft they could be.
“Oh. Gareth.”
“Well.” His gaze dropped to the apple core he still held, then to the crowded table. Alice watched as he strode over to the mantel and dropped the thing into a china vase resting there. Then he pointed upward. “Your handiwork?”
She glanced at the buck. “Yes. I thought he needed . . . some holiday cheer.” She thought Gareth might need some, too. He was looking so grim again. Heaven only knew why she was taking it upon herself to cheer him. Or prod him. ’Twas the season . . . “Here.” When he turned, she polished an apple on her sleeve and tossed it to him. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Outside,” was all she said as she rose gracefully from her seat.
The ribbon binding her bodice beneath her breasts was emerald green, Gareth noticed as he followed her from the room. The cloak she collected herself was a cheerful red. The combination, with her winter white dress, was charming. And very Alice. She’d always dressed well, with little touches of whimsy. Like the sprig of holly he could now see tucked into her hair as he helped her with her cloak. The top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder and he was tempted, just for a fleeting second, to brush his lips over the glossy curls.