“Mmm,” was all she said, in perfectly thoughtful tones. But inside her head, her thoughts were tumbling over themselves, marveling at how with even his limited choices, he could still sketch out a future for himself that bounded beyond anything she had ever dared to hope for in her own life.

  “And what will you do, Miss Clegg? When you finally make your way to Bath, I mean.”

  She picked at a snag in her skirt, where a thorn or a twig must have caught in the fabric and pulled at the threads. “My original plan was to offer myself as a companion to my aunt. I also considered putting myself forward as a governess, because I do like children. Well, most children. Well, children who are not spoiled or cruel to their siblings or animals. But…” She blew out a breath and stretched her legs out in front of her. “I’m not as certain as I was when I picked up my bag and left home this morning.”

  “Does that mean you will go back to your family, then?”

  She dropped her hand and looked at him. “Would you?”

  “It is not my family. And I am not you.”

  Mary sniffed. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” he asked, managing to sound both irritated and entertained at once.

  She sat up straighter, as though she was back in her parents’ drawing room and not on a soft bit of decaying leaves in the middle of a forest that would not let them go. “You are supposed to tell me that I’m a little fool and that I should march back to my mother, beg forgiveness, and also accept the first respectable offer of marriage to come my way. As all young ladies are supposed to do.”

  Mr. Beechum studied her for a moment. “Is the prospect of marriage so intolerable to you?”

  “Well, I certainly have no desire to marry the likes of Eustace Haverstick.”

  “But, if there was someone else—”

  “Would you marry a person simply because your family approved of them?” she interrupted, frustrated all over again at the thought of every Mr. Haverstick in the world, chinlessly ambling their way through existence. “Even to save your family from financial ruin?”

  He considered her question before answering, the backs of his fingers brushing across his jaw while his gaze skipped away to focus on some unseen thing. “Would I sacrifice my happiness in order to amend someone else’s mistakes, do you mean?”

  “What about my sisters?” And her shoulders sagged, because it was what her mother had always reminded her of, the plight of her three younger sisters if Mary did not find a rich husband to better pave their way towards matrimony. “If I marry well, it will make it easier for them to do the same. Isn’t that how it works?”

  Mr. Beechum nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. But I have no doubt there are more than enough Mr. Haversticks to go around, even for your younger sisters.”

  “But we are poor, and if at least one of us doesn’t marry well, then—”

  “Are you so poor that you’re starving? Is there a roof over your heads? Do you have new gowns and ribbons for your hair? If you do, then you are not so poor as you imagine. Your family may not be able to maintain the style of life to which they’ve become accustomed, but you’re in no real danger. Not compared to many others.”

  There was a pressure in her chest after that. In her throat. Behind her eyes. As though what he’d said wrapped itself around her and held on until she had to fight for her next breath. But instead she sighed, and she glanced up at the sky, a dark expanse stretched out above her head. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” she reminded him, gifting him with a small smile, though she wasn’t sure he could see her expression from where she sat inside the shelter.

  “Then I will tell you to go to sleep, if you can. It will most likely be another long day tomorrow, and it smells like rain.”

  Mary took her bag and plumped it up as best she could in order to use it as a pillow. It was still warm, even with the scent of moisture in the air, and so she curled up inside the darkness of the shelter, one hand tucked beneath her cheek as she convinced herself she would not be able to sleep a wink with the sounds of the woods and the lack of a proper mattress beneath her. “Goodnight, Peregrine,” she said, testing out his name on a whisper she did believe he would hear.

  It was a minute or so later before she heard, “Goodnight, Mary,” as she closed her eyes and gave in to exhaustion.

  There was the telltale patter of raindrops falling on the leaves above her when Mary woke. There was daylight as well, or as much as the current inclemency of the weather would allow. She attempted to blink away the blurriness of sleep from her eyes, one eye working faster than the other as she practiced all sorts of careful movements to make sure everything was functioning properly. Her neck ached, and her shoulders hurt, and her hips and her thighs and her feet…

  Well.

  But the shelter had kept her dry, at least. There was no dampness, no dripping from between the layers of branches and ferns Mr. Beechum had laid the night before. And she was remarkably warm and cozy, her arms stretching out and quickly bumping against—

  Both eyes opened then. She sat up, barely wincing at the tightness in her muscles as she gazed at the form of Mr. Beechum sleeping soundly beside her.

  He must have joined her in the shelter sometime during the night, perhaps when the rain began to fall. Unfortunately, he was too large to fit inside with her entirely, his hindquarters and most of his back up to his withers still lying outside. He slept with his arms folded and tucked beneath his head as a pillow, his cheek resting on his forearms. His jaw had gained the shadow of a prospective beard overnight, softening the sharper angles of his face. Strands of hair decorated his forehead, curled from the rain, acting like little fingers beckoning for her to reach out and sweep them back from his brow.

  Her hand twitched at her side. She leaned forward, just a little, absorbed in all the details of him — his eyelashes, the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the curve of his bottom lip as unspoken words slipped out from his dreams — and wondered if she could push that errant lock of hair behind his ear without waking him, or if it would be too forward.

  She did not touch him. She tucked her traitorous hand beneath her thigh and shifted back from him. Her lips were held tightly closed, as though every part of her had to withdraw to prevent herself from coming in contact with him. Another small squirm away and Mr. Beechum’s eyes fluttered open, his lips parting as he drew in a deep breath between his teeth.

  It took him a moment. A few more blinks, and then he seemed to realize both where he was and who was with him. “Ah,” he began with, as he scrambled into a partially upright position. The shelter was too small for him to fully sit up, and his front hooves scraped at the ground while he struggled not to take up too much room. “You’re awake.”

  “I am, yes.” Mary pushed her own hair back from her face, tangled whorls and limp waves that had seceded from all that was left of her pins while she slept. She knew very well what she looked like most mornings, having been gifted with glimpses of her own reflection on that first stagger from her bed after sliding her feet down towards the floor.

  “How did you sleep?” He cleared his throat, then glanced down at his shirt, the collar twisted to one side and the hem bunched halfway up his waist. “Oh. Um, I should…” He did his best to set himself to rights, and Mary wondered if she should turn her head and give him some privacy, but she could not bring herself to do it.

  When he looked at her again, his gaze seemed to catch on her and hold with the force of an anchor. At first, she wondered if something was wrong with her appearance. Her family would no doubt find something to criticize, but he studied her as though she was a wonder, a discovery. And before she could do anything to stop it, that light, frothy feeling bubbled up inside of her again.

  “Do you have an idea what time it is?”

  His question was enough to break the spell. She shook her head and wiped at a spot on her chin that felt suspiciously like a rough patch of dried saliva. “I’ve not been awake for very long. And with the weather, it’s difficult to say how many hours the sun has already been up.” What she did not say was how rested she felt, as though she had been gifted with her best night of sleep in months.

  “I suppose it is time to go, then,” he said. And was that disappointment in his voice, or had she only imagined it?

  They took turns performing their morning ablutions. Mary went first, washing off her face and hands in the stream, rinsing the taste of the morning out of her mouth with a palmful of water. Mr. Beechum went off when she returned, and she flumped down inside the shelter again to put on a clean pair of stockings and her boots. She did not bother to search for any pins for her hair, satisfied to merely comb her fingers through the worst of it and leave it hanging in a plait over her shoulder, tied at the end with a scrap of ribbon from the depths of her bag.

  “I wish I had something to offer for breakfast,” Mr. Beechum said when he returned. He had made an attempt to subdue the riot of his hair and smooth the wrinkles from his shirt, but there was still an edge of unkemptness lingering about him that drew Mary’s attention over and again. “Are you ready?” he asked, and reached down to offer his hand to her.

  She took it and let him help her stand up. He didn’t release her hand immediately, and she was reluctant to pull away. It seemed a small thing, nearly inconsequential, and yet she noticed the strength of his grip on her fingers, a pressure she returned in kind.

  “Miss Clegg,” he said suddenly, in a way that made her think there was something more to come. But that was all.

  Mary licked her lips, and she swallowed, and she performed all the various overtures of speech until there was nothing left but for her to open her mouth and say, “What if we cannot find our way out of here today? Or tomorrow?” She thought of her original vision, of herself living in the woods like a wizened woman from a fairy tale, shuffling about a tiny cottage made of earth and logs. Only now, her vision began to expand to include Mr. Beechum, and the possibilities that rippled out from that inclusion were more tempting than she was prepared to admit.

  His hand still held hers. It was uncommonly large, and yet the light stroke of his thumb across the underside of her wrist was remarkably gentle. “I don’t believe that will happen,” he said. His voice was a low rumble of sound. Not quite a whisper, but something in the same family. “But if it does, then I suppose we will just have to make the best of it. I won’t leave you to fend for yourself, if that is what you’re afraid of.”

  “Oh, you would never be able to abandon me so easily,” she told him, her cheeks aching with the sudden urge to grin. “I can be an incorrigible pest when I set my mind to it.”

  They lingered for a few more minutes at their campsite. Mary found another dozen blueberries and shared them with him, though the small bursts of juice between her teeth only served to heighten her appetite for additional food she could not have. The rain had stopped a quarter of an hour before, leaving a dripping dampness on everything that pattered down on their bare heads as a breeze picked up and shook the water from the branches above.

  Mary picked up her bag and fell into step beside Mr. Beechum, their pace slow despite the ease of the path before them. The ground had leveled out to a slow downward slope, the brook trickling along through the middle of it, made invisible by the thick ferns that carpeted the forest floor. So they followed the sound of it, while the wet leaves of the bracken smacked against their legs, soaking Mary’s skirt from the knees down and leaving Mr. Beechum’s coat glistening.

  “Have you decided what you will do?”

  Mary glanced up at him, her attention having been fixed on the ground and where to place her feet for the last several minutes. “Hmm?”

  “If… When we find our way out of the forest,” he revised. “Where will you go?”

  “Do you mean will I return home to the censure of my family and the continued attentions of Mr. Haverstick, or shall I try my way in a vast world decidedly tailored against the interests of unmarried ladies who read too many novels and have an unhealthy fascination with various kinds of cheese?”

  “Cheese?” He stopped walking and stared at her.

  “Cheese,” she repeated. “It is the first thing I will eat once we find our way back to civilization. Enough to make me mildly ill, if possible. My mother finds it to be vulgar. The eating of cheese, that is,” she clarified. “Supposedly, cheese is only to be enjoyed by farmers and assorted others in the lower classes.” A few more steps and she banged the side of her bag against her shins and sighed. “And yes, I know I’m taking great pains to avoid answering your question. Mostly because I’m not certain of the answer anymore. I had everything planned out, you know? I thought I was doing some grand, independent act, taking charge of my own future. And yet here I am.”

  “Lost in the woods, with only me for company?”

  She smiled. “Well, when you phrase it like that, it doesn’t sound so very dire.”

  The breeze picked up again, sending another scattering of raindrops onto them. Mary laughed as a few drops landed on her face, and she wiped them away as she looked up at the sky, at the heavy lines of clouds breaking up to reveal faint patches of clear blue.

  “Miss Clegg,” Mr. Beechum said, after another hundred yards had passed beneath them. “Whatever you decide, whether to return to your home or to go on to Leeds, I would like to… Well, if you would prefer to not travel alone, I offer myself as a companion. If you wish.”

  The path before them was blocked by a boulder, one that Mr. Beechum moved to walk around while Mary tugged at the hem of her skirt and climbed atop. “I thank you very much, Mr. Beechum. But I’m sure I can make my way back to Millcross or even all the way to Bath without—” She stopped speaking when she realized Mr. Beechum had halted. He stood beside the boulder, nearly at eye level with her. There was something bleak in his expression, and… frustrated was the only word Mary could think to describe it. “What is it? I’ve said something wrong, haven’t I? I have a tendency to do that, but I usually think nothing of it since I don’t really care what other people think of me. But you…”

  He walked up to where she stood. He raised his right hand as if he would reach out and take her own, or do something more before he let it fall back again to his side. He swallowed, so loudly she heard it. Her gaze dropped to the open collar of his shirt, lingering there for a moment before it returned to his face. “Miss Clegg, I am not a gentleman,” he said finally. “I have no barons or lords in my family, no ancestral homes tucked away in the country or grand townhouses in the fashionable parts of London. But I work, and I have some money put away, enough for—”

  “What are you talking about?” But she knew what he was talking about, what sort of preamble this was. Men did this sort of thing, didn’t they? Cataloguing their strengths and attributes to a prospective partner as though there was a list to be checked off, one item at a time, before the other person would consider them. She thought it was all rather absurd, and she certainly didn’t want to hear it from him, so before he could answer, she leaned forward and she dropped a kiss on the top of his nose.

  Actually, she had intended to kiss his mouth, but he had lowered his chin an inch at the last moment and so she had missed the mark by an inch or so. “I-I’m sorry,” she said, pulling her head back quickly. It had been a thoughtless thing to do, as much a reflex as breathing or blinking her eyes. He was there, being thoroughly himself, and she had suddenly wanted to kiss him. “I’m very sorry,” she repeated, adding the additional word to stress just how repentant she was. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “What was that?”

  She took a small step back, careful not to stumble off the edge of the boulder without realizing it. “It was a kiss,” she said. “At least, that’s what it was supposed to be. I’ve never actually kissed someone before. Well, I’ve kissed my parents and my sisters, but that was different. And Mr. Haverstick tried to kiss me once, until I swatted his head and told him there was a spider in his hair. But—”

  There was more she intended to say, but it was swiftly cut off when Mr. Beechum leaned forward and kissed her in return. Though he didn’t mistake her nose for her mouth or her chin for her cheek. His lips found hers as easily as an arrow to a target. The hairs of his beard scraped across her cheek, and his teeth nipped at the corner of her mouth before he pulled away.

  “I am not sorry about that,” he told her, his breath a warm sweep of air across her skin.

  Mary placed her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs fiddling with the place where his collar ended and the sides of his neck began. Above them, a bright shaft of sunlight cut through the woods, illuminating the ferns beside them, setting the raindrops still clinging to them to shine like diamonds.

  “But…” he said, and that was enough to draw her attention back towards him. He tipped his head to one side, leaning into that light touch on his neck, his eyes closing for a moment before they fluttered open again. “I am not the sort who should be doing this with you.”

  “Doing what? Cavorting about in the woods?”

  “And a bit more than that,” he reminded her, with another quick kiss to her mouth. “Your family will not approve of me.”

  She snorted. Not a laugh or a gasp, but a full snort that scraped its way up the back of her throat and into her sinuses. “My family does not approve of me,” she pointed out. “I hardly think you could lower their opinion of their eldest child any further.”

  He straightened up, his shoulders growing tense beneath her hands. “So do you forgive me for thinking you looked like a witch?”

  She knotted her fingers together behind his neck. “No. And only because I’ve decided to take it as a compliment. It will be when you cease to think of me as some magical being that I will take offense.”

  The breeze that had become a near constant thing blew strongly enough to make the branches creak around them. Mary looked around at the swaying crowns of the trees, her gaze settling on something in the distance, something that made her blink and blink again in case it was nothing more than a floating shape in her vision.