Spiced Molasses

Chapter 46

Rick was delivering a scolding almost as good as her father might have given. He had the suffering expression of consternation down perfect. It still wasn't quite as stunning a performance as the one her father had delivered when he'd caught Maggie smoking behind the barn but he was certainly hitting the same high notes.

Beth was finding it hard to take the rebuke to heart because Daryl was sitting beside her, his warm hand in hers.

"Of all the stupid, dangerous things you could have done!" Rick was shouting, trying to split his attention evenly between all the guilty parties, which included Beth, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn and Shawn, for not taking this as seriously as Rick thought he should.

"You could have been shout," he spat in Daryl's direction. Her lover's fingers tightened around hers, the only sign that he was affected by Rick tirade. Otherwise his face was a stony mask.

"It would have served you right," Rick followed up sullenly. His audience sat in uncomfortable silence, unwilling to interrupt until they were sure Rick was finished. Which he wasn't.

"You," he hissed, pointing squarely at Daryl, "this behaviour from you doesn't surprise me much. You always had a tendency to do stupid, rash things."

"Hey!" Daryl interjected, offense crossing his features. Beth subtly shook her head to discourage Daryl from wading into the argument, guns blazing. Daryl, of course, was too in tune with her now to miss her discrete message. He rearranged his shoulders tensely but didn't offer any more words.

"You, on the other hand," Rick continued, rounding on Glenn. "I expected better from you."

Glenn flinched and Daryl muttered a half-hearted comment about someone being the golden child.

"You drew valuable resources away from this family to pull this off."

"They weren't the Governor or his men," Shawn interjected, trying to be fair. Beth experienced a rush of affection for her brother who had never been much of a stickler for rules or regulation. In that moment, he reminded her a little of Daryl – unable to hold his tongue.

"Not this time!"

It was a sobering thought and Beth tried to ignore the way her heart swooped and thudded. This was the exact reason they were here, so that one night it would be the governor slithering in the window. Then they could end it with handcuffs or a well-placed bullet. Beth had deliberately not given too much thought to what she hoped for more.

It would be understandable to wish for the death of the man who had wrought such disaster in her life. But part of Beth knew that her father would be ashamed of her thinking that way, no matter what that person had done.

Daryl snorted after Rick's comment.

"Something funny, Dixon?"

"He ain't here, he doesn't even know she's here. That any of them are."

"How do you know that?" Maggie queried, leaning forward.

Daryl shrugged, suddenly unsettled now that all the attention was on him. He raked a nervous hand through his unruly hair. "Say what you like about the man but he ain't dumb. He's going to be looking anywhere but here. Because coming back here was dumb."

Daryl shot Beth a weak glare, which quite eloquently conveyed his thoughts on the matter. Beth bit her lip, trying to express her contrition but she was too busy considering the sense of what he'd just said.

"Which brings me to another thing," Daryl ploughed on abruptly getting to his feet, "How could you let her come back here?"

"It was our choice," Maggie snapped from the couch, trying to get up despite Glenn's calming hand on her shoulder.