Page 2 of On Broken Bonds

I lean forward, squinting, looking for where the trail might pick up on the other side of the bank.

Then I hear voices.

Male voices, coming from beyond the reeds to my left. Heading this way. Coming down the hill from the direction of the east field, which means I have approximately four seconds to make a decision.

I make a terrible one.

I step directly into the reeds.

The water is immediately and aggressively cold. It closes around my ankles, soaking through my slippers in an instant. The ground beneath my feet is a treacherous landscape of slick rocks, which I discover the hard way as my left foot slides sideways and I grab a fistful of reed stems to save myself, heart lurching wildly.

Right. Fine. I am hiding in a freezing pond, in a nice gown, on rocks apparently designed to murder me. This is fine. I will catch the grain thief and it will all be worth it.

I arrange myself as best I can among the reeds, which are tall enough to conceal me if I keep still, which I absolutely intend to do. The ground squelches unpleasantly beneath my feet with every tiny adjustment. Something slimy touches my ankle and I firmly choose not to think about what it is.

The voices grow closer. I peer through the reeds.

Three of my farmhands come down the hill, easy as you please, their work done for the morning by the look of them. Edric is dark-haired, broad across the shoulders, and has a slow smile I have occasionally caught myself noticing from a professional distance. Bram is taller, fair-haired, with the kind of jaw that belongs on a decorative statue rather than a wheat field. And Alistair, whose eyes are so green they seem almost unnatural, and who has the endearing habit of talking with his hands.

I have always had a perfectly polite, perfectly appropriate, perfectly correct relationship with these three men since we all grew up in the general vicinity of each other, while their parents were working our farm. They work the fields. I manage the holdings. We exchange courteous words about the weather and the crops and nothing else whatsoever, because I am the lady of this house and they are… They’re taking off their shirts.

I freeze.

All three of them Are removing their shirts in the easy, unselfconscious way of men who have absolutely no idea there is a woman standing twelve feet away in the reeds. They are simply… undressing. Because of course they are. We’re at the watering hole. They’ve come to wash off after the morning’s work.

The shirts go. Then, they reach for their pants.

I clap a hand over my eyes, then realize that covering my eyes means I might slip, and slipping means falling, and falling means being discovered. Carefully, I lower my hand.

I look at the reeds in the water. I think about the accounts ledger. I think about literally anything else. I am a responsible and dignified young woman with a great many pressing concerns.

Still, my gaze drifts back. Because, how can it not? I’ve never had an opportunity to… I’ve never seen a man, at least not like this.

All three of them are now entirely, completely, without a single stitch of clothing between them, wading into the watering hole. Their bodies are tanned and muscular and impossible to ignore.

My cheeks are on fire. My entire face has become a furnace. As I glance away again, I try to think of what a smart woman would do in this situation. Some small, traitorous part of my brain points out that this is perhaps the most educational thing that has happened to me in years.

I look.

Edric is compact. Everything about Edric is, as it turns out, built to scale. He has broad shoulders, a broad chest, and broad everything. Just broad. All the way down. It’s short and stout and rather like a very determined thumb. Is that how it’s supposed to look?

My brain files this information away without my permission.

Bram, on the other hand, is long. Lean. Where Edric is built like a barrel, Bram is not. My mind isn’t quite working, but all I can manage to think is that he’s built like a, well, like a very, very long barrel. A barrel that has been considerably stretched. Long and thin and dangly in the way Edric is not. Almost like a rope. I find myself wondering, with a kind of horrified scientific curiosity, whether there are structural limitations to such a thing.

I find my mouth is hanging open and close it.

And then there is Alistair, who’s… different.

He has always been a man with a rather cheerful disposition. Even now, as he talks to the other two men, he does not appear to be troubled whatsoever by the fact that there is very little to, ah, gesture with. He seems to have misplaced a significant portion of what the other two have in abundance. It’s barely an introduction. A footnote. A polite wave from a great distance. A tiny, little cock that’s remarkably unintimidating, even for someone like me.

The three of them are laughing now, splashing water at each other, entirely relaxed, and I am standing twelve feet away, ankle-deep in freezing water, cataloguing information that I absolutely did not ask for and cannot stop acquiring, and all I can think is that if Lyra ever finds out about this I will have to leave the country.

Something cold and wet lands directly on my chest.

I look down.

A frog blinks up at me with its wide, absurd, completely emotionless face. We stare at each other, horror rising through me. Then, it jumps.