‘Get back!’ The newcomer – a young man she didn’t recognise – was shouting. His voice was harsh over the cry of the gulls. ‘Don’t touch that animal!’ His tone was imperious and his accent aristocratic. Foreign.
She’d done nothing wrong – there was no need to feel afraid. ‘I mean no harm,’ she said, clearing her throat as he sprinted towards her. ‘I’ve not hurt him.’ In comparison to the stranger, she was conscious that her northern accent sounded thick and clumsy.
Steely fingers clamped round her arm. The stranger’s eyes were grey and hard as flint. Narrowing, they looked her over and then scoured the beach and cliffs.
‘Who’s with you?’
‘No-one. Ow! That hurts!’
‘And will continue to do so unless you tell me the truth. Who’s with you? Where were you going to take him?’
‘No-one’s with me. I weren’t taking him anywhere,’ she said, and noticed his lips twitch. ‘I were...’ swiftly, she corrected herself ‘...I was just talking to him. Then he ate my garland, and then you appeared, and now you are near breaking my arm.’
‘He ate what?’ The stranger sounded incredulous.
Rosamund gestured at the shingle. ‘See for yourself, you’re standing on it.’
Wintry eyes glanced down and a lock of dark hair fell over his brow. He relaxed his hold, but he didn’t release her.
‘Forget-me-nots,’ he murmured, as if puzzled. He sounded almost human.
‘Aye. At least they were forget-me-nots this morning, they have suffered much since then.’ Rosamund was still wary, but she sensed from the change in the young man’s demeanour that he no longer suspected her of trying to steal his horse.
Who was he? His voice was so strange. His was no rough country dialect, but a polished, cultured voice. His clothes were fine enough to mark him noble and if this was his stallion...
‘What’s your name?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Rosamund. Rosamund Miller.’
Impatiently, he brushed back dark, wind-ruffled hair. Hair that was clean, not matted and knotted like Alfwold’s.
‘I thought so, I’ve seen you at the mill,’ he said. ‘You’re the miller’s daughter?’
She nodded, he was easier to understand when he wasn’t shouting at her.
‘Your father Osric is not a popular man,’ he added bluntly, watching her reaction.
Rosamund lifted a shoulder, she didn’t want to talk about her father, it embarrassed her. The whole village knew he returned short measures of milled grain, sifting off a little from each milling for his own profit. Her father’s dishonesty had always rankled with her, but he never heeded her objections. ‘And you? Am I to know who you are, sir?’
He released her arm. ‘My name is Oliver.’
Which told her nothing. Rosamund was about to pose another question, but the young man parried it with one of his own.
‘Are you dishonest like your father, I wonder?’
‘I...no!’
A cool gaze swept her up and down. Rosamund bristled.
He sighed. ‘No, I don’t think you are. At least not to the extent of being a horse thief. Forgive me my suspicions, this horse is all I have.’
It seemed politic to ignore the insulting thought that this Oliver considered her capable of some dishonesty – even if he didn’t believe she was out to steal his horse.
She smiled tentatively up at him, she would far rather have him for a friend than a foe. He was tall, over six feet, and strongly built. Was he a knight? There was a determined cast to his jaw and he was watching her closely through slate grey eyes which seemed to miss not a detail.
She felt very conscious of her hair hanging down about her face in rats’ tails, tangled by the climb down the cliff and the sea breezes. She flicked it back over her shoulder, suddenly not so sure of herself, though Oliver’s stance had not changed. He said he had seen her before, but she couldn’t recall having seen him. The only time anyone had passed the mill mounted on such a fine horse, they had been in the company of Baron Geoffrey Fitz Neal. Was Oliver part of the baron’s retinue?
He was staring at her with such a supercilious expression on his face. Was he laughing at her?
Rosamund forgot her resolve to smile, she forgot the probable difference in their class and responded as she often did when uncertain of herself. She attacked. ‘There’s no need to stare at me as though I had crawled out of the midden. I haven’t. And there’s no need to look down that long nose of yours at my gown as though it were rags. It’s me – my – best. At least I’ve made more of an effort for the festival than you. Look at you, all plain, dull colours.’