Between Wolves & Doves

Chapter 14 Ambush

All was eerily quiet when she was returned home. The front exterior of the house is so cold and still. As cloudy as the overcast sky behind it.

The rain had eaten away all the lingering frost and snow. Cold slush now took its place. When night falls again all the wet will sharpened back into frost. More snow will doubtless come in this stinging winter. She can sense the chowder thick clouds far off in the heavens shudder with the possibility of more.

Even the icy landscape was unaffected by wind or noise. Everything was silenced. Blotted out and muffled. The woods seemed eerily quiet.

Means she could hear where her heart was thudding all the more noisily where it cowered scared in her ribs.

She alighted from Lord Ren's carriage, onto the gravel drive, sitting the door thereafter. Thanking Ramsey, the kind driver. When he cracked the whip to start the horses her whole being tensed. She flinched.

Her heart seized up with every crunching step on the gravel. She tried to clutch to her courage. Grit her teeth and prepare for the audible assaults soon to sting at her ears. As spewed words and vitriol will doubtless fall harsh from her mothers purse lipped mouth like stabbing hard hail.

Death by ten thousand blows of her sharp disapproving tongue.

Her whole body is roiling to head back into this house. She feels nauseas to consider stepping back into the foyer of her home. She knows there will only be nastiness and questions to welcome her into the enfold. Back into the waiting room of her life until marriage comes to claim her.

She'd far rather be back at one of the most handsome houses in the county. Sat fireside, in company with the most intriguing creature she's ever met. Knowing Kylo as she does, he'd find that most diverting.

Iris hungers much more after the presence of a deadly hulking great vampire instead. Yet she cannot fathom or stand to embrace the company of her acerbic fork-tongued mother.

He'd laugh at that crippling irony, she's sure. Kiss the back of her hand. His eyes would glitter like two discs of a far off starry night sky. Black and full of hidden knowledge and transient things.

The eyes that had completely seared her soul. Always had done. His smile had broken open her heart and scored his very name on her weak beating muscled thing. It flutters and lives for want of loving him - and yet she can't. Everything in her situation and home life decrees otherwise.

She wants a man she cannot have. The pain of it presses upon her greatly.

She approaches the stubborn old warped wood of the front door. Steps up onto the wonky sunken stone porch. The faded white paint. Chipped and peeling in many places. Grains of the bare wood poke through.

She wonders what censure awaited on the other side of this old chunk of oak.

She raises a hand but her veins clog with cloying uncertainty. Halting. She gathers herself up before she knocks. Stood there shivering in her laundered coat and dress. Kylo had insisted on seeing to some new boots for her. Sadly, her old-beaten cracked leather things could not be salvaged. He sent out for new ones from Mr Grassby's store. Finest in the county.

Now whenever she has warmed toes she'll think of him. Fur lined dark leather boots with strong laces. She can't thank him enough.

She tugs her old coat around herself. Not aware that Kylo would've had her an entire new coat and dress to go home in, if he wasn't so sure of her protest. He let her be. But he so badly wants to see her spoiled. He so badly wants to be the man who does spoil her.

Her clean cotton skirts sway about her legs. How the redoubtable Mrs Jones had gotten the mud stains out of her clothing she'd not a clue - the woman used witchcraft as an aid she's sure. In most things.