Emyr's Smile (2 page)

Heilyn was about to
answer when he realized that he knew nothing about Emyr except his
first name. He clearly lived here, but beyond that he could be
anyone. He could even, Dwynwen forbid, be married. Well, today
would be for finding out more. To cover, he simply grinned at Elin.
“He’s a mystery.”

By the end of serving,
everyone working in the inn was teasing him about his mystery man,
but Heilyn just felt his mood bubble higher with every joke.

It was mid-morning
before he got back to the field, loitering his way along the lane
in the hope he might bump into Emyr. He’d taken a little extra care
with his appearance, combing his fair curls into a neat tail and
for once actually shaving before he got shaggy. He’d deliberated
over which of his three shirts to wear, eventually picking out the
green one that made his gray eyes look deep and alluring, rather
than the ever-so-slightly too tight one he wore when he was just
trying to get into a man’s bed. His Emyr was clearly going to need
a little courting.

Besides, the tight one
was paint-stained.

When he got to the
field, he glanced over the hedge, curious to see what Pumpkin
actually looked like after all that fuss.

There was no bull.

AGHAST, HEILYN stopped
and stared at the field, mapping every bit of it with his gaze to
be sure. No bull. No pumpkins, either.

Emyr had lied.

Righteous anger carried
him all the way back to the inn to get his painting, and back to
the field again at a fast stomp. He scrambled over the chained gate
and set up in the same spot as yesterday, scowling at the view.
He’d been satisfied with what he had done, but it wasn’t perfect
yet. So he’d make it perfect, and that might ease the sting of
being taken for a fool by a handsome man who probably turned those
tragic eyes on any gullible artists he happened to—

There was a noise
behind him.

Heilyn turned round.
Standing in a gap in the hedge, one which wasn’t at all visible
from the lane, was the biggest, ugliest, and most vividly orange
bull he had ever seen.

“You must be Pumpkin,”
he said to it, guilt surging through him. He should never have
doubted Emyr.

Pumpkin let out a
noise. It wasn’t the kind of gentle lowing moo Heilyn expected of a
cow. This noise was low and harsh and suggested a certain imminent
violence.

Gulping, Heilyn stared
at the bull.

The bull stared
back.

Then, rather
delicately, it pawed at the ground beneath its feet and lowered its
head.

Heilyn grabbed his
painting and ran.

He almost made it. He
managed to get one leg over the top of the head-high hedge before
Pumpkin hit it like a ship without a lodestone. Yelping, Heilyn
threw himself gracelessly over the hedge, painting first. He got
halfway over before his legs, his elbow and the back of his shirt
tangled in the branches and Pumpkin’s charges began shaking the
hedge hard enough to send leaves falling in showers.

If his hands had been
free, he could have untangled himself in moments, but the morning’s
rain had left a broad and muddy puddle right below where he was
hanging, and he wasn’t going to drop this picture, of them all,
into the mud, not after all this grief.

Pumpkin’s next charge
made the branches around his left foot snap, threatening to drop
him in the puddle anyway, and Heilyn squirmed desperately. “Shit,
shit, shit, shitting shit, shit!”

Which was, of course,
the moment when someone cleared their throat behind him and said,
very politely, “Would you like some help there, Heilyn?”

The best course was
usually just to brazen it out. Brightly, Heilyn said, “Emyr! You
were right. There is a bull in that field!”

“How extraordinary,”
Emyr commented, with a quaver of laughter in his voice he probably
was entitled to. He also took the painting out of Heilyn’s hands
and set it down gently on the dry side of the lane.

Pumpkin rammed into the
hedge again, shaking the branches. There was a creak and ripping
noise, and Heilyn’s good green shirt came apart at the seams,
dropping Heilyn headfirst towards a very large puddle. He flailed,
managed to grab Emyr in time, and found himself, shirt left behind
the hedge, caught in Emyr’s arms.

Emyr had a strong grip,
and there were muscles under his shirt sleeves. Mood suddenly
soaring back up, Heilyn pressed in closer and grinned up at him.
“Why, thank you.” He looked up to see a gratifying flush on Emyr’s
cheeks, and then got transfixed by those blue eyes again. From
close up, he could see that the irises were rimmed with a darker
hue. He could see Emyr’s mouth properly too, and the faint red
chapping which suggested he chewed his lips.

Heilyn’s heart was just
starting to beat faster in anticipation when Pumpkin rammed the
hedge again, and Emyr said, a little stutter in his voice, “If you
were to let go, we could get away and let the poor bull calm
down.”

“I need my shirt,”
Heilyn pointed out, stepping back reluctantly.

“I think it might be
wise to come back for it later,” Emyr remarked, picking up the
painting. “I can lend you one, and you’ve got some cuts which need
cleaning.”

Heilyn hadn’t even
noticed, but now the excitement was starting to wear off and he was
suddenly aware that he was scraped and battered and nowhere near as
well-presented as he’d been when he left the inn. On the other
hand, he’d just been issued with an invitation to Emyr’s home,
which was probably more than he deserved, given Emyr had tried to
warn him. “Thank you. You’re too kind.”

“It’s my fatal flaw,”
Emyr said and headed off down the lane towards the end of the
island.

Heilyn scurried after
him, surprised. “Aren’t we going to the farm?”

“I’m not a farmer.”
After a moment, clearly deciding that needed some elaboration, Emyr
added, “I owe one piece of exceedingly bad-tempered livestock. I
inherited him.”

“And to think I was
aggrieved to get a garden gnome instead of Gran’s pearls,” Heilyn
remarked. “I obviously got off lightly. What do you do, then, when
you’re not rescuing artists from hedges?”

“Run the shop.”

“The lady I know is
Dilys.” And a very sweet old lady she was, though she had to squint
to read the labels on the shelves and had a habit of trapping him
at the counter while she told stories about her cats. She had a
soft spot for ‘boys with nice smiles’, though, and had been known
to slip him an extra honeycake if he looked forlorn enough.

“She’s my cousin. Well,
my mother was her cousin.” Then he added, a little defensively, “I
pay her a very fair wage. She won’t ever go hungry and she likes to
be busy.”

“She’s lucky to have
you.”

“Some of the others
think I’m exploiting her.”

“Others?”

Emyr gave a faint
shrug. “My parents had a lot of cousins. I’m the only one in my
generation, since the hard spring.”

Heilyn nodded. There
wasn’t a family in Ys that hadn’t been devastated twenty years ago,
when a variant on the common spring sickness had cut swathes
through the children of Ys. “There’s six years between me and my
next eldest brother,” he offered. He’d been born that summer, after
the worse was over. How many elderly relatives was Emyr supporting
if he didn’t have any cousins?

“Brothers? More than
one?”

“Oh, yes,” Heilyn said,
cheering up. He had enough funny stories about his family to last
him from here to Challoner if he ever needed to talk to the same
person for that many miles. “There’s five of us boys. Should have
been seven, of course, Dwynwen cradle them, but five’s a good
enough number, especially with the girls as well. I’m the youngest,
of course.”

“I could have guessed
that,” Emyr murmured.

“And my da was a
seventh son too, and Mam’s one of eight. Can’t go anywhere on
Rhaedr without bumping into a cousin or two. Which,” he added
reflectively, “is part of the reason I left, of course.”

“Seventh son of a
seventh son?”

“That’s right,” Heilyn
said and unleashed what he hoped was his most dazzling smile. “I’m
lucky, see, like a rabbit’s foot. You should stroke me to see if
the luck rubs off.”

After a moment, when
Heilyn glanced across to see a definite blush rising over those
elegant cheekbones, Emyr said, “I don’t think “lucky” was the word
you were looking for.”

“No?”

“Try “shameless,”
instead.”

“Oh, no,” Heilyn said,
sidling a little closer. “If I was being shameless, I would have
said I was like a wishbone and you needed to spread my legs to make
your dreams come true.”

“Heilyn!” And, yes, now
the man was really blushing. Excellent.

Widening his eyes,
Heilyn added, trying and failing to look innocent, “But I’m not
shameless, so I wouldn’t say that.”

“Clearly not,” Emyr
managed and stopped by a gate in the hedge. “In here.”

It was a very narrow
gate and it led not to a cottage but to a derwen copse,
the gnarled trees arching closely over the path, heavy with white
buds. The starflowers were closed to the sun, their glow dimmed
until the moon came out, but their scent filled the air, and the
woods were very quiet, with the soft peace that
only derwen woods held. Heilyn touched his lips to honor
Dwynwen, and followed Emyr along the path quietly, jokes
forgotten.

The late summer light
slanted down between the boughs in slim golden shafts, but
everything else was green. A stream was trickling through the
woods, its banks mossy, and Emyr held out his hand to help Heilyn
across. He looked entirely at home here, like he was one of the old
pilgrims who had first settled the islands.

There was a cottage on
the edge of the woods, and he could glimpse the sky and the sea
beyond it, but its shutters were closed and its door barred. They
walked around the side of it, past a neglected weedy garden, and
back into the woods.

“We used to have family
to stay,” Emyr said quietly, “in the guest cottage there, but all
the surviving cousins are too old to travel now, or too local. I
remember playing with the other children there, when I was a
boy.”

When they emerged from
the woods, they were at the bottom of a long garden. This one was
neglected too, the roses overblown and the borders bright with
tatty cornflowers and ragwort. It framed a wide white-walled house
with gabled windows and a long curving wall that sheltered apple
trees from the sea winds. Beyond the house was the coastal road,
and the edge of the island, with wild flowers swaying over the edge
of the cliff. Heilyn knew where he was now, not all that far from
the village, but he’d always thought this house stood empty when he
glimpsed it from the road, as all the front windows were always
shuttered closed. If it had been his, he’d would have thrown them
back to breathe in the view of the sea.

“In here,” Emyr said
and led him through the back door into a cool, dim kitchen. It was
spotlessly neat, but there was nothing in it to hint at any
personality. Back at home, the kitchen was always in chaos: nieces
and nephews running underfoot, sketches and letters pinned to the
doors, ten children’s and twenty-seven grandchildren’s worth of
clay models and badly planted birthday herbs cluttering the
windowsills, crossed lovespoons mounted over the windows, and
usually a few cats sleeping in inconvenient places. Emyr’s kitchen
looked like it had never been cooked in, save for a single dirty
bowl sitting beside the washbasin.

“Sit down,” Emyr said,
breaking through the growing sense of discomfort Heilyn was
feeling. “Those scrapes are full of thorns.”

Heilyn perched on one
of the kitchen chairs, where he could see out into a hallway that
was just as neat and austere. He was distracted enough that he
didn’t notice that Emyr was back with a pair of tweezers until he
coaxed the first thorn out of Heilyn’s shoulder. “Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“You could kiss it
better,” Heilyn suggested.

“Do you think at all
before you speak?”

Heilyn looked down at
the sleek top of Emyr’s head where he knelt in front of the chair
and wondered if his hair would feel as soft as it looked. “Not
usually,” he admitted. “If you stop to think too long, you won’t
get heard.”

“You also get into far
more trouble,” Emyr commented. His hands were gentle and very
steady. Why was this man living alone, Heilyn suddenly wondered. He
was beautiful, of course, but he was kind too. Why hadn’t someone
snapped him up?

“Life would be boring
if I was good all the time. Are you married?”

Emyr went still, his
shoulders tensing. Then he said, all the sly humor gone from his
voice. “No. I’m alone.”

“People on this island
are obviously very stupid,” Heilyn said grandly and reached out to
tilt Emyr’s face up. Why was such a self-possessed man so defensive
on this topic? Who had hurt him? How dared they? Captivated by
those sad eyes again, Heilyn murmured, “You’re beautiful. Let me
paint you.”

EMYR FLINCHED back,
scrambling to his feet. “Paint me?”

He’d obviously said
something wrong, so Heilyn decided to try caution for a few
moments. “If you’d be willing,” he said softly. “I would very much
like the opportunity.”

Emyr turned around,
reaching out for the empty side as if he was hoping to find
something to fidget with. His head turned away, he said, his voice
a little stiff. “I’m embarrassed. I thought… I assumed you were
interested in something more—”

“Which I am,” Heilyn
said, surging to his feet. “And I worried I was being too
obvious.”

Emyr turned around a
little, his face uncertain. “I thought, perhaps, but you can’t
just… One has to be certain, and it’s hard to be sure, even if you
think…”