Page 48

The little bee began to crawl around frantically and as she studied it, she could see that it was missing a wing. It couldn’t fly. She tried to get it to crawl onto the stick so she could put it back in the flowers, but it kept crawling in her direction. Timidly, she put her hand down to it and it promptly crawled upon one of her fingers.

“My poor little friend,” she murmured in Spanish. “It seems that you are injured.”

The bee seemed quite happy on her fingers. Esme watched him for a few minutes, speaking softly to him as one did to tiny creatures, before putting it onto one of the wildflowers around the cottage. With her little friend safely on a yellow bloom, she headed back into the cottage to reconnoiter for more laundry.

Finding nothing left, she made her way up to the kitchen by the vegetable garden, bringing back the iron pot and having it filled with a delicious-smelling soup made from smashed peas and carrots. She collected more bread, some cheese, a jug of watered ale, and took it all back to the cottage for Titus when he returned.

As the day peaked and the afternoon set in, Esme did more sweeping and cleaning, including the ashes out of the hearth. When she went back outside, she noticed that her bumblebee friend had fallen from his bloom, so she brought him inside with a few flowers for nourishment and put him in a bowl on the windowsill.

With the bee tended to, she straightened out the pallet that Titus had slept on. She felt guilty about taking his bed last night, wondering why he should choose to sleep on the floor when he had a perfectly good mattress waiting for him. Surely it had been temporary madness.

Or chivalry.

The thought made her smile. Though she didn’t know what was going on in his head, she knew what was going on in hers. That arrogant warrior with the hidden heart who charmed an arena full of people last night had her interest.

She couldn’t deny it.

Emerging from the cottage to shake out the broom, she caught sight of Titus as he headed in her direction.

The flowers grew everywhere.

Cam said that women liked flowers and there were bushels of them along the edges of the Fields of Mars. White, purple, yellow – many kinds. His friends told him to be kind and sweet, and Titus saw those flowers as his opportunity. Perhaps he would give their suggestions a try because, after all, they had wives. They knew what he didn’t.

He was in uncharted territory.

Leaving Cam and Brody and the rest of them going through some exercises in the staging area, Titus headed back to his cottage to sleep for a few hours before the bouts that night, but not before he picked himself a giant bouquet of wildflowers for Esme. It was a warm day and the winds had picked up a little, coming in off the sea to the east.

Strange how he’d never really noticed things like that before – the brightness of the day, the beauty of the landscape. But he was noticing them now. The world looked beautiful in a way he’d never noticed before.

Inside, he felt… happy.

He was going to see Esme again.

With thoughts of her on his mind, he was halfway through the warrior’s village when he realized that people were giving him strange looks. It occurred to him that he was parading through the village with a giant bouquet of flowers and looking like a fool. He didn’t look like the fearsome warrior with the fearsome reputation. Everyone he passed looked at him oddly, to the point where he was so embarrassed that he tossed the flowers aside.

But that didn’t solve the problem.

With the wind whipping up, one of the flowers blew up behind him and stuck in his hair, so as he was closing the distance towards his cottage, he had a yellow daisy sticking up out of the back of his head. Now, people were looking at him and laughing, and he had no idea why. It got to the point where he was starting to scowl at people, who quickly averted their gazes, but somehow, he could feel them laughing behind his back.

Cam and his stupid suggestion of flowers!

Titus’ cottage was ahead on the rise. He could see Esme outside, smacking a broom against the side of the cottage. Puffs of dirt flew into the air, disappearing in the breeze. She turned around and caught sight of him, and he would never forget the expression on her face. Something between surprise and delight.

Was it possible she was actually glad to see him?

He was sorry that he’d tossed away the flowers.

“Buenos dias,” she said. “That means good day.”

He couldn’t help the smile on his lips as he closed the distance between them. “Good day,” he said. “Busy, I see.”

She nodded eagerly. “More cleaning, more washing,” she said, but her gaze was inevitably drawn to his head. “And may I say that you are looking quite lovely today.”

He frowned. “What do ye mean?”

Reaching up, she plucked the flower from his dark hair, her eyes twinkling as she showed it to him. Titus took one look at it and rolled his eyes.

“So that’s why everyone was looking at me strangely,” he said. “I had a weed in my hair.”