The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (53 page)

Thorne rolled his eyes. “But that’s what
uneducated people do, sir! People who can’t do anything else stick
things in the ground then pull them up again. There’s no
intelligence or science or thought needed for that. Animals do
that.”

Perrin blinked. “Animals . . .
plant
.
. . farms?”

Thorne gestured wildly. “In a way squirrels
do, but I mean, they
use
animals—”

“
So do we. We use animals
in our work.”

“
But we use horses! They
use impotent steers to pull plows. Sir, your daughter is capable of
so much more. Surely this is just a passing fancy of hers before
she becomes serious about something . . . more serious.”

Perrin folded his arms across his chest. “And
what should she become serious about, Captain?”

Perrin could see the answer on his lips. In
fact, for just a moment it seemed he would actually break out with,
“ME!”

But he didn’t. His mouth worked for a few
moments, trying to find the right words. “I’m . . . I’m not
entirely sure, sir. Perhaps work in a dress shop?”

Now Perrin rolled his eyes. “And that’s
‘serious?’ Keep that girl trapped inside, she’ll go mad, Captain.”
Then, heavily, he added, “Never,
never
keep her
trapped.”

It took Thorne a moment to register the
colonel’s meaning. When he realized it was a reference to the
incident in the barns, he actually had the decency to blush.
“Understood, sir. I’ll be leaving now, unless there was—”

“
There’s
nothing
else, Thorne.”

---

The next day Deckett was waiting at the fence
when Jaytsy arrived. “I have to take care of the cattle, but I’ll
be back later to help. Is that all right?”

“
Absolutely!” she
grinned.

Jaytsy’s morning fluctuated between rushing
by quickly to dragging on slowly, until Deckett met her in a row to
weed for a while before midday meal. As they ate together again,
Jaytsy asked about his cattle experiments.

“
You really don’t want me
to talk about that, do you? I can’t imagine that’d be interesting
to you.”

“
All right, I’m not that
interested in cows,” she confessed. “Just in what you’re doing.”
She turned pink.

His face flushed as he examined his hands.
“I’m doing on a small scale one of the experiments we were going to
try this Raining Season: finding ways to encourage cows to give
more milk. We wanted to see if . . . if we talk to the cows—well,
if they produce more when they feel
appreciated
,” he finally
finished.

Jaytsy stifled a giggle, but not too
well.

“
I know, I know. My father
had the same reaction. But that’s why we need to test it,” he
explained with an embarrassed smile.

“
You really like cattle,
don’t you?”

“
You could say that. I know
they’re not as graceful and beautiful as horses—”

He’s the very opposite of Lemuel
,
Jaytsy’s mind wandered. The Anti-Thorne.

“—
but there’s such an
honesty about cattle. A realness.” He sighed. “I wish I could
explain it. I just
feel
them. Always have.” Then he
chuckled. “Cow eyes,” he murmured.

“
Cow eyes?”

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“
No, no,” Jaytsy elbowed
him gently. “Tell me about cow eyes.”

“
It’s . . . it’s something
I would pull on my mother,” he said as his pink went wholly red.
“Whenever I wanted something, or was trying to avoid getting into
trouble, I would give her what my father called my ‘cow eyes’.
Melted her every time.”

Jaytsy grinned. “Show me?”

“
No! You wouldn’t
appreciate it like she did—”

“
Oh, come on. You can’t
tell me about cow eyes then not show me. Do cow eyes, in honor of
your mother.”

He squinted at her. “That’s really low.”

Jaytsy looked down apologetically.

“
Effective,” he admitted,
“but low just the same.”

She looked back up at him. “Show me just the
same?”

He groaned in embarrassment. “For my mother.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He looked down, shook out his
shoulders, then lifted his head with the biggest, brownest,
sweetest eyes ever.

She burst out laughing.

“
Augh, I knew you’d laugh!
That’s what I get. I knew that was a bad idea.” He turned away from
her and hid his face in his knees.

“
No! It was really
sweet.”

“
Sweet? Oh, that’s got to
be worse . . .” He moved to get up, but Jaytsy grabbed his
arm.

“
No, Deck.”

He stopped and looked at her hand on his
arm.

She looked at it too. “I’m sorry I laughed. I
just wasn’t expecting . . .” She didn’t finish, because she really
wasn’t sure what she was feeling at the moment, besides his ample
arm under her fingers.

He smiled timidly at her. “We need to get
back to the farm,” and he patted her hand with his free hand.

The touch was unexpected, startling, yet
somehow familiar.

And overwhelming.

Jaytsy had always thought it would be a
soldier. Likely an officer, but not Lemuel. Maybe someone like Jon
Offra, but not as tall. Or as nervous. Or as pale, or hesitant—

All right, someone not even
remotely
like Jon Offra or Lemuel Thorne, but in a uniform. Someone to argue
with, like her parents
argued
. Someone to chase up the
stairs . . .

Jaytsy forced away the blush that heated her
cheeks.

Deckett reddened as his hand stayed on hers,
which they both stared at. Their gazes traveled to each other’s
faces, which turned shades of purple, and they released each other.
Simultaneously and without a word they marched out to the rows of
onions.

The next two weeks flew by. They talked each
afternoon about everything under the sun as they pulled weeds. Life
in Moorland. Life in Mountseen. Life in Edge. Life in Idumea. Life
in general. Jaytsy even got him to do cow eyes for her again. And
each night she fell asleep giggling at his expression and hugging
her pillow.

---

“
There are a few reasons
why I like that boy,” Perrin murmured under his breath, but no one
was in his office to hear him and he’d shut the door to make sure
that he wasn’t disturbed.

He twisted the knobs on his spyglass a little
this way, then just a little bit that way . . .

“
The first reason is, his
last name’s not Thorne.” Perrin tapped the shaft gently and smiled
at the result. “The second reason is, he lives . . . right . . .
there
.”

Perrin pulled up a chair and made himself
comfortable as he peered into the eyepiece again. “Never takes her
into the house, but keeps her out in the open. Very safe. Very
manly. Kneels in the dirt close enough for conversation, but not
too close as to touch her.”

He twisted a knob slightly again.

“
He’s subtle about his
feelings for her, although, young Mr. Briter, I can read you like a
book . . . from several hundred paces away that is.” He chuckled to
himself. “I used to watch your parents this way when I was a bit
more paranoid,” he confessed in a whisper. “But this is a healthy
paranoia, and I’m sure you’ll agree once you have a
daughter—”

He sat up abruptly, the notion of who the
mother of that eventual daughter might be shoving itself in his
mind and causing all of his thoughts to stumble. It took him
another minute to regain himself, and as he hunched over to watch
the weeders in the fort’s farm he considered the prospect.

“
She could do much worse,”
he mumbled. “And likely . . . not a whole lot better. I never find
myself twitching when I have my weekly chat with him.”

Young Mr. Briter was gathering weeds to put
in a bucket, and reached past Jaytsy to retrieve what seemed to be
a particularly prickly one. He shook his head as she went to pick
it up. Perrin read his lips:
Don’t want you to get pricked by a
thorn.

Perrin smiled. “That makes two of us,
son—”

“
What in the world are you
doing?”

The loud voice at the door made Perrin jump
and jostle the spyglass. He sighed in exasperation. “Zenos, don’t
you ever knock?”

“
I did,” Shem chuckled,
closing the door behind him. “But whatever captured your attention
in the spyglass prevented you from hearing.”

Perrin deliberately turned the angle to point
it at the boulder field.

Shem smirked. “What, are Jaytsy and Deckett
Briter now heading up to the boulders?”

“
That’s not what I was . .
. I mean, what I was doing was—”

“
If you’re at all curious,
I approve of him too.”

---

Jaytsy was well on her way home that
afternoon when she realized she’d left her hat at the Briter farm.
She jogged back, picked up Joriana’s hat from the stairs that led
to the kitchen, and paused. There was a strange noise coming
muffled from behind the barn, but it took her only a moment to
identify it. She’d heard it too often over the past year, and there
was nothing quite as disconcerting as the sound of a man sobbing,
especially when the man wasn’t accustomed to doing it.

Quietly she crept around the barn to see
Deckett sitting on the ground, his head on his knees, quivering. He
was supposed to be setting the cheese—

Jaytsy knew what to do, having seen her
mother do it many times last year. She sat down next to Deckett,
who suddenly stopped. His head came up as she gingerly placed a
comforting hand on his back, and he stared at her, startled.

“
What are you doing back
here?” he asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve and trying to appear
as if nothing was wrong.

“
I forgot my hat,” Jaytsy
said, her eyes brimming with tears to see his still overflowing.
“Deck, how often to cry back here, alone?” she asked
gently.

He rested his chin on his knees. “I don’t . .
. it just . . .” He sighed in surrender. “Not often.” He closed his
eyes as a new batch of tears fell from them.

His shoulders heaved and Jaytsy flung her
arms around him, hoping to hold him tightly enough to stop his
convulsions of grief. Deckett leaned against her, resting his head
against her shoulder and letting his tears seep between his
fingers.

“
I miss them too,” she told
him. “I’m sure you loved them much more than I did, but I came to
think of them as my aunt and uncle. They were so good to me, and
they’ve left such a hole—” She couldn’t say anything more, but
sobbed right along with him, aware that some of her tears were
sliding on to the back of his head. But that didn’t matter. Nothing
mattered except that Deckett didn’t mourn alone and that Jaytsy
held him as tightly as she dared.

It was several minutes until their weeping
subsided, and Deckett, his head still down on her shoulder,
attempted a few words.

“
After you left, I headed
into the house and . . .” His chin trembled and he held his face
with his hands. “I started to call out to my parents to tell them
something . . . and I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten they were gone,”
his voice quavered. “I’d been working and was happy and . . .
What’s wrong with me that I forgot?!”

“
You did nothing wrong,”
Jaytsy told him, now rocking as she embraced his shoulders. “It’s
not as if you actually forgot them being gone, because you still
feel them here. They love you so much! They’d be thrilled to know
you felt happy again. Deckett, I don’t think they’re really gone. I
mean, they’re still around us, in so many ways.”

He shrugged against her, still keeping his
face covered.

She squeezed him tighter, forgetting the fact
that she’d never done more than touch his hand or arm before.
Sometimes a moment demands a closer presence, and forgives it as
well.

With her own tears flowing she said,
“Remember earlier today, when we both suddenly remembered the canal
water was on, and we got to the onion patch just before it flooded?
Deckett, as we were running I thought of your mother. She seemed so
close, and maybe it was her who reminded us. They’re still your
parents, and they’re still watching and helping. Paradise isn’t far
away; it’s here!”

The heaving of his shoulders slowed as he
listened to her.

She realized that she was stroking his hair,
but it seemed important to do. “My mother lost her father when she
was 15, and she told me once that she still hears him from time to
time, that when something’s very important he still advises
her.”

Deck roughly cleared his throat. “The calf
yesterday, the one that wandered? I could have sworn it was my
father telling me to check the cattle fence along the forest’s
edge. That’s where I found her.”

“
I think that was your
father too, Deckett,” Jaytsy said, realizing that she was twisting
bits of his coarse, shaggy brown hair between her fingers. She
subtly slipped them out, and slid her hand back to hold his
shoulder. He’d removed his hands from off of his face, and one was
now resting lightly on her knee. But still he didn’t look
up.

“
My hat there,” she nodded
to it, dropped on the ground a few feet away from them, “was my
grandmother’s. When I stabbed the holes in it to make it less
Idumean, I was sure I heard her giggling.”

Something in Deckett’s shoulders relaxed,
collapsing him ever so slightly in her direction. She felt his
breathing against her throat and she smelled his hair, realizing
that his scent was, in its own unique way, a form of earthy-sweet.
Mixed with cow. It took all of her effort to keep her chest calm,
worried that if it burned any hotter Deckett would feel it
emanating from her dress.