Emyr's Smile Read online

  “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.”

  Chapter 3

  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…”

  Oh, someone had made a horrible mess of this man, but Heilyn wasn’t going to let him stay that way. He crossed the kitchen in two steps and linked his arms around Emyr’s neck, smiling up at him. “No, with me, what you see is all there is, ask anyone. So, to be clear, I want to paint you and I want to kiss you, and if the kissing goes well, then I’ll want to take your clothes off and kiss you a little more, and then…”

  He almost saw it then. The first hint of a smile dawned on Emyr’s face, in a crinkling of his eyes and a softening of his lips. It didn’t blossom, didn’t even last more than a moment, but he saw it, and decided there and then, that he had a new purpose in his life. Before he left Sirig, he would make Emyr smile.

  To stop himself babbling, he stretched the rest of the way up and kissed Emyr. For the first few moments, it was a very respectful kiss, soft, gentle and careful. Even that was enough to make the hairs on the back of Heilyn’s neck stand up. Then Emyr shifted slightly against him, his arms coming tightly around Heilyn, and the kiss changed. Suddenly, Emyr was kissing him as if the world was ending, his mouth hungry and demanding. This wasn’t Heilyn’s kiss any more, he realized, his head spinning. He wasn’t in control. This was all Emyr, and it was amazing. He’d never been kissed like this, until his legs went weak and his eyes fell closed and he couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but take it, clinging to Emyr’s shoulders because nothing else in the world felt real any more.

  He went happily when Emyr moved them back across the room, pushing him back against the solid side of the table. When Emyr let go of him, pulling back, he barely had the presence of mind to catch himself on his hands. Then Emyr’s hands landed on his bare belly, and Heilyn simply sighed and let his head fall back, rocking his hips forward in invitation.

  “Take me to bed, Emyr,” he murmured, his skin prickling under the press of Emyr’s fingertips. “Make love to me.”

  And Emyr froze. Then his hands slid off Heilyn to brace against the table.

  Heilyn pushed himself up a little, dismayed. What had he said? “Emyr?”

  Emyr had closed his eyes, and his arms were taut, every muscle clenched. Heilyn looked up at him, not sure whether to reach out or not. At last, Emyr said, his voice tired and slow, “Is it that easy for you?”

  “It’s not supposed to be difficult,” Heilyn said.

  “But what about courtship? What about being sure that it’s right? What about being certain that you haven’t chosen someone who won’t be desperate to get away from you? What if it all goes wrong?”

  Heilyn wanted to reach out and just hold onto him, but he wasn’t sure that Emyr wouldn’t just turn and run if he tried. Instead, he said brightly, trying to dispel the tension, “It’s not as if I stay anywhere very long. I mean, I can stay, but if it turns out to be an absolute disaster, I can just move on. There’s always some ship in port that’s willing to let me rope onto the side, and then I just go where the wind takes me. And I think you’re being awfully pessimistic to—”

  But Emyr was recoiling back from him, his whole face going hard and unreadable. Heilyn stammered to a stop, not sure what he’d said to get that reaction, and Emyr turned his back on him and said, his voice completely flat, “Get out.”

  “Emyr? I was joking! I didn’t mean to—”

  “Get out!”

  Heilyn took a breath, ready to argue, but then looked at the tight line of Emyr’s shoulders and how his hands were clenched so hard they were white. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he still didn’t know what he was apologizing for. Then, before he broke Emyr completely, he went.

  He was halfway down the lane before he realized that not only had he left his painting behind, but he still had no shirt on.

  ELIN CAUGHT him as he came back into the inn that afternoon. She raised an eyebrow at the ragged remains of his shirt, which he had surreptitiously rescued from Pumpkin’s hedge, but didn’t comment. “If you fancy earning a little bit more than just your bed and board, I need someone to wait tables tonight. Aeddan’s wife’s in labor, and he’s needed at home.”

  “Dwynwen bring them all safe to morning,” Heilyn said, which got him an approving sniff. “And I’d be glad to help.” He’d planned to spent the evening in the bar anyway, because the idea of sitting alone in his attic after the day he’d had was unbearable, and at least this way he’d be earning money rather than spending it.

  He hadn’t got to know many of the locals yet, but he met a few more that evening. Most of the regulars were there, using the excuse of waiting to toast Aeddan and his wife to justify a few extra rounds, and more trickled in in search of news as the evening went on. Heilyn endured plenty of good-natured heckling until he learned to balance more than one drink on his tray, but he answered it all cheerfully enough, and some of locals, at least, seemed to take a liking to him.

  “Traveling, are you?” old Math demanded, draining his tankard. “When I was your age, I was holding down a good job and had been married a year.”

  “Only because his Lili was carrying a half-claimed baby, and her da had a punch that would sink a high island right down to sea level,” his brother Llyr, at the next table, confided to Heilyn in a whisper Math couldn’t hear. “Don’t let him bother you, boy.”

  “Oh, I’m not easily bothered,” Heilyn said cheerily, and swept up a few more empty cups as he passed.

  “I wouldn’t let any son of mine go prancing about from island to island,” Math proclaimed, as Llyr rolled his eyes. “Dangerous business.”

  “Ah, people have been taking to the ropes for centuries,” Heilyn said easily. “You can see the world for the price of a few drinks, if your nerves will stand it.”

  “Math has a point,” Llyr said, surprising Heilyn. He already knew that the brothers couldn’t even agree on the direction of the wind. “Don’t forget the poor souls on the Gwyfyn, Lady spare their souls.”

  Heilyn nodded, soberly this time. It had been almost five years since the cargo ship Gwyfyn had crashed out of the sky in a storm, with the loss of all hands and twelve young travelers who had paid the captain to let them rope onto the sides so they could get to the harvest fair on Blodyn cheaply. To this day, no one was quite sure why the ship had failed. Some claimed that she had been too near the end of her life to sail, and that her wood had lost its virtue on the way across the gulf. Others blamed the storm, or said the passengers had been roped on badly, upsetting the ship’s balance so she couldn’t ride out the sudden squall. By the time rescuers put out to sea on coracles, only the splintered remains of her floated on the sea. No one would have survived the fall, and their bodies had gone to the deep, beyond even Dwynwen’s gaze.

  “My mother said the same,” he said, “but it was one ship, and who can remember another disaster like it? I’ll take those odds.”

  Llyr shook his head, his eyes sad, and Math added solemnly, “We lost a Sirig boy on that ship.”

  “I’m sorry,” Heilyn said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Almost lost two,” Llyr added. “And there’d be a lot of folks my age the worse off if we had.”

  “Scroungers!” Math proclaimed and banged his tankard on his table. “Serve ‘em right if they were left to their own devices. Another drink, boy!”

  “Lemon and tonic, was it?” Heilyn asked, with an exaggerated wink, just for the fun of making Math growl at him.

  “Scrumpy, boy, and you should know it! No, I’d pitch ‘em all off the side of the island, if I were young ap Morgan. What a life, eh?”

  “He’s a good boy,” Llyr said. “You never were, so you wouldn’t recognize it.” Luckily, his brother was mid-swallow, so Llyr had time to turn to Heilyn and explain, “It was young Aneirin we lost, from the farm at Western Point. He was handfasted to young ap Morgan-the-shop, of course, and they would have both been on that ship, if old Morgan and his wife hadn’t both died within a season and left all their troubles to young Emyr.”

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p; Heilyn hadn’t really been listening until then. He’d learned that old men, no matter the island, seemed to think that everyone who passed by knew and cared about the same folks they did. Now, though, the pieces of the puzzle that was Emyr were suddenly clicking together. “Handfasted?” he asked.

  “Not by the time he left,” Math put in, putting his tankard down hard. “Broke it off, he did, when young Emyr suddenly got landed with all those old biddies, and that shop which was already run into nothing. Old Morgan was useless, of course…”

  “Math!” Llyr protested, but his brother just kept going.

  “…and his wife never got over the loss of her girls in the hard spring, carrying on as if she’d been the only woman to lose a baby that year. Couldn’t even stand up without her husband to lean on, which was a wonder given what a weak reed he was. Young one’s the only one in that family who still has the spine he was born with, and that’s not saying—”

  “Math!” More than one voice joined in that time, and Math subsided into his pint, grumbling.

  Luckily, at that moment, Aeddan’s brother burst in to tell the gathered village that it was a girl, a beautiful girl, and the next round was on him, and so Heilyn had time to breathe deeply and hide the sudden clenching of his heart.

  HE WAS STILL thinking about it when he woke up: orphaned, left by his lover, who then died, and all after losing not just all his cousins, but sisters too. It made Heilyn’s heart ache so hard that he kept thinking it should be raining, even though the dawn was shining palely through the thatch. No wonder Emyr didn’t smile.

  And Heilyn had joked about taking to the ropes again.

  He was distracted all through breakfast, even when Elin first teased and then fussed at him. He carried it back up to his attic after breakfast. He had the place to himself again, so he sat in a patch of feeble sunshine and doodled with plain pen and ink, trying to find the enthusiasm to step outside.