Wolfsbane

Wolfsbane, Chapter 11, By Ruth Nalio

Autumn…

How the hell had they known? If I hadn’t known I would have believed that Trystan was honestly mad. I pulled the skin off my rabbit and popped the bullets out. I thought I was convincing since I had spent the walk back to the horses getting myself worked up. Now I was pissed and wasn’t acting much different.

Neither of us had said anything since Jude had discovered us. If I had to guess I would say that Brain was honestly pissed now as well, pissed that our plan hadn’t worked. What were we going to do now? Everything we had tried so far had failed.

I had it! I whirled on Trystan. “Hit me!” I whispered excitedly.

“Wh- what?!” He looked at me like I was crazy.

“Hit me,” I said with a smile.

“No, what the hell for? Are you crazy?”

I laughed a little, “Possibly, now hit me.” He looked around as if searching for help or an escape route. “Look if you hit me and my father sees it then he’ll call off the wedding, now hit me.”

“No!”

“Hit me damn it!” I slammed down the knife.

“I don’t care how desperate I get, I don’t hit women.”

I rolled my eyes in disgust. “Just you wait, I’ll anger you so bad you’ll want to do more than hit me.”

“You’re making me want to call the jailer here to lock you away for your safety.”

“I wasn’t saying that you had to hit me hard enough to hurt, just kind of slap me across the face.”

“No.” I started to argue with him but he cut me off, “No, Autumn, just let it go, finish your rabbit.”

“Fine, but it’s a good idea.”

He stopped and looked at me, “No, Autumn, it’s insane.”

“If you say so. You still have a lot of deer to cut up.”

“Look, we can just keep going with what we started today. They were only guessing.” Trystan wasn’t looking at me anymore.

“If you say so.”

After finishing cleaning the game we all sat down to lunch on the back deck. Seeing as how I wasn’t interested in anything that either my father or his had to say, I decided to look around for the first time. The back of Trystan’s castle was very beautiful. There were rose bushes growing up the sides of the castle and all sorts of flowers spread out in neat little flower beds here and there. There was also a pond peeking around the edge of the castle.

The water in the pond practically beckoned me to dive in and escape the heat of the day. The light reflected beautifully in it. Lilly pads floated here and there and it was free of moss. I wanted nothing more than to feel the cool liquid wash over my body in a silky flow of relaxation and relief.

“Autumn, is there something in the water?” Jude pulled me from my daze.

“No, I was just admiring your backyard when the pond caught my eye. Are there any fish in it?”

“Yes, actually there are. Do you fish as well?”

“Yes, I love fishing. It’s so calming to just sit and wait for a fish to bite. It’s not anywhere close to being as fun as hunting though. Hunting is a challenge, and I love challenges.” I smiled at him and took a sip of my lemonade.

“You know, Autumn and I always come to your castle, why don’t you come to our house tonight for dinner and drinks?” Father asked Jude.

“We’d love to.”

“You aren’t opposed to women drinking are you?”

“I have no problem with women drinking. My wife used to have a brandy or two every night. Occasionally she would drink a scotch.”

“It’s settled then.” Father slapped his knee and beamed at Jude. They should be the ones getting married. They got along better than Trystan and I ever dared to. I began looking around again. Then I remembered that they raised hogs. I looked around for the hog pin but didn’t see any.

“Autumn dear, what are you looking for?” Jude asked almost laughing.

“I was looking for the hog pin and wondering why I can’t smell them. Father told me you raised them.”

He laughed, “We do, but we keep them on another part of our land, so you don’t smell them. We also are going to start raising cattle. Actually, in a few weeks, Trystan and I are going out of town to purchase some.”

“Oh. How many hogs do you have?”

“Well, about two hundred. We don’t sell all of them though. We keep a few for ourselves through the winter and we keep the babies for breeding. We’ll be buying as many as a hundred and fifty cattle and start selling next year. We’ll be selling half of the calves as well.”

“How much does one hog sell for?”

“It depends on what the offer is from year to year but usually a kindly sum.”

“Will the cattle sell for more?”

“The market on cattle has gone up recently, so I believe so, but we’ll be raising both so our profits will increase, although we will spend a great deal on feed. With the hogs, we can just give them spoiled goods from the village. Since we bring profit to the town they are more than willing to give us their spoiled goods. We will have to give the cattle hay and grain. A lot more through the winter than the summer though.”

“How interesting.”

“It’s smart for you to learn about the estate before you and Trystan are wed, this way you can help keep the books and know answers to questions when one of the hands asks you. You shouldn’t be asked much though, the hands will prefer to go to Trystan.”

“I don’t wish to know any more about your business. I don’t think that it's going to work between Trystan and me.” I said as I popped a piece of a roll into my mouth.

“Don’t start that again Autumn,” Father said dryly.

“I’m just saying is all.”

“You don’t need to say anything further about that.”

“I think she does, I think we both do. Neither of you seem to see that we do not wish to be married.” Trystan chimed in.

“Enough, or you’ll be getting married sooner than you think,” Jude said looking pointedly at Trystan.

“As you wish,” Trystan said coldly and fell quiet.

“I never thought of that,” Father said as he looked at Jude. “That just might be the answer. Move the wedding closer by a month.”

I took a deep breath through my nose and closed my eyes. This was just another challenge that I had to overcome. The question was, how? If I called their bluff and one or both of them weren’t bluffing, then I would be getting married sooner than I thought. Even if they moved it to be a month sooner I could still fight them, right?

“I think you’d best keep your comment to yourself, Autumn,” Trystan whispered in my ear. “I don’t know what you were going to say but with a temper like yours it wasn’t good.”

I bit back my words and shook my head. Father and Jude looked at us in curiosity. “Just what are the two of you talking about now?”

“He told me to keep from saying anything I would regret.” Trystan put a hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples. “What else was I going to tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“That may work with your father but it sure as hell doesn’t with mine.”

“Watch your language, Autumn, you’ll upset our parents,” Trystan warned me.

“You think that just because they say we’ll be getting married a month early I’m going to stop being me? I’m not that easily deterred.”

“You should be. Listen to your fiancé.” Father said in an amused voice.

I gritted my teeth to the retort I would have given him. “Yes, Father.”

“So after lunch will we head to my house? We can send the coach back ahead of us with a nice-sized roast off the deer Trystan killed?”

“That sounds perfect. The rabbit and squirrel made a wonderful lunch.” Jude took a drink of his ale and leaned back in his seat and motioned for the butler who wasn’t far from us. “Would you tell Sir Mason’s coach to take a roast off Trystan’s deer back to their house and begin preparing dinner for the four of us?” The butler simply bowed his head and walked into the house. “Autumn, do you cook?”

“Yes, actually I do, why?”

“I was just wondering, it's always a good thing for a woman to know how to cook.”

“I know as much as the cook at our estate does. Father made me learn from her. I think he just wanted some womanly figure in my life. She also is the one who taught me to sew.”

“I hadn’t expected you to willingly admit to anything womanly,” Trystan said smugly.

“Just because I have on a pair of pants doesn’t mean I cannot be a proper woman.” I shot back just as smugly.

“I wasn’t saying that because of the clothes you just happen to be wearing. I was saying that because of the way you behave so oddly.” He went to take a drink of his ale and I took it from his hand and sat it on the table.

“Don’t hide behind your glass after trying to get a rise from me, it's not a good idea.”

He lifted a brow, “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I desperately want to dump it over your head and you just make it easier when it is right in your face.”

Trystan…

I looked her up and down then right in the eye. “You wouldn’t.” Her chest rose and fell with her growing anger and a muscle twitched in her jaw. I put my hand on the wrist of the hand that was still holding my glass.

“I would and you know it.”

She wasn’t simply pretending to be angry with me anymore, she was. I let go of her wrist and took my drink. “I don’t think I’ve pushed you far enough, yet but I’ve got you damn close.”

“As amusing as it is to see the two of you pretending to be angry I’m going to have to tell you to stop,” Mason said.

I still hadn’t taken my eyes off Autumn’s. “She’s not bluffing. I can see it in her eyes; she’s fairly itching to hit me with something. Dumping this over my head would be nothing compared to the kind of harm she wishes to cause me at the moment.”

“Excuse me, I need to get out of the sun,” Autumn said as she abruptly stood and walked to the house. “I’ll just be in the sitting room if you don’t mind.” Without anyone saying a word she walked into the house.

“Bloody hell, she hasn’t been this pissed in years.”

“It’s because I called her bluff and I don’t think she’s too happy with the fact that I can read her so easily.” I sat back in my chair and took another drink of my ale.

“Trystan, I think you should go in and apologize to her and calm her down.” Father gave me a stern look.

I tossed back the last of my ale, “Damn.” I got up and headed into the house. When I got to the sitting room Autumn was looking over my father's brandy and scotch collection. She picked up a bottle of scotch and filled a glass. She didn’t even turn around before she downed the entire glass. “So you’re a scotch person?”

She whirled around her eyes wide with surprise. Then they narrowed, as she looked me over. “Go away.”

“I can’t do that, as much as I’d like to. Father told me to come calm you down.”

“I can calm myself down thank you.” She turned back to the scotch and set down her glass.

“Yes, well I don’t think drinking is going to help you at the moment. If you drink anymore you won’t be able to walk, and my father won’t have to ask who has been in his scotch.”

“Good, maybe he’ll call this off because he doesn’t agree with my drinking all his scotch.”

“Autumn, you forget, we are going to your house for drinks later. Why not get wasted in your own house?”

“Why not shut up and leave me alone?” She snapped as she pushed past me and flopped down in an armchair.

“I didn’t mean to make you so angry. If you’d like I can not say another word to you or about you for the rest of the night.”

“Ha! You can’t keep your mouth shut any more than I can when it comes to getting under each other’s skin.”

“I can try really hard though,” I said in a teasing voice.

She gave me a wicked smile. “It takes more than you think to get me drunk. One glass of scotch hardly touches it. Now leave me alone, tell them I’m smiling and happy sitting by myself.”

“Yes but you see your father said he hasn’t seen you this mad in years, I don’t think he would believe that you were calmed down so easily.”

“Let me dump something over your head and then you can tell them it's out of my system.”

I smiled at her. “My father would kill me if I let you dump his good scotch or brandy over my head.”

“Then fix me another drink and be quiet.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to make a drink.” She looked at me with amusement.

“Well it’s not that, it’s that it won’t be long before our parents come to see if you’ve tried hitting me with something.”

“Is that why you’re standing so far away? You think I’m going to hit you?”

I walked quickly across the room, put my hands on either arm of the chair, and leaned down close to her face. “You wouldn’t want to hit me, Autumn, would you? Do you really think that would be a good idea?”

“You don’t scare me, Trystan. Nothing does.” She held perfectly still as she said this, never breaking eye contact. She hadn’t even made a move when I had put myself so close to her. I listened to her heartbeat and found that it was steady and I couldn’t smell any fear. She was telling the truth about not being afraid of me.

“You should be,” I said as I pushed away from the chair and turned my back.

“Why, Trystan? Are you going to hit me back if I hit you?”

“You don’t know what I could do.”

“I don’t care what you can do, what you will do, what you want to do, or what you have done, you don’t scare me.”

“You are a stupid woman,” I said as I turned to her.

“Trystan!” Father said as he walked in.

“No, please, tell me how I’m stupid, Trystan?” Autumn demanded as she crossed her arms.

“Everyone should be afraid of something, it’s how you stay alive, it’s how you stay rich, and it’s how you stay smart.”

“You don’t have to be afraid to know when to be cautious.” I just laughed at her defense.

“How did the two of you get on this subject?” Mason asked as he looked from me to Autumn.

“Does it even matter, Father?” Autumn said in a disgusted tone as she rolled her eyes.

“I think you should answer me when I ask you a question.”

“Fine, I told him to leave me alone and he told me that he couldn’t do that because the two of you would be coming soon to make sure I hadn’t hit him or thrown anything at him. That’s when I asked if that’s why he was standing at the other side of the room, and then he tried to intimidate me by getting in my face and asking if hitting him was a good idea. I told him I wasn’t afraid of him, or anything for that matter.”

“You were going to hit him?” Mason asked her.

She scoffed, “No.”

“You got in her face?” Father asked me.

“Yes, everything she said was the truth. I think I failed at calming her down, but she succeeded at getting under my skin.”

“That’s what I do best, isn’t it? That’s what we both do best, get under each other's skin.”

“I think you just do it to get under our skin,” Father said as he crossed his arms and looked at me.

“I think if the two of you try as hard to get along as you try to get out of this you’ll see that it isn’t hard at all. In fact, the two of you can start that now on our way to the estate.” Mason said as he looked from her to me.