Wizard and glass - Stephen King [136]
She smiled; couldn’t help it. “Ye also said ye’d heard he was fond of strong drink and berry-girls.”
Roland hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. If his friend Arthur Heath had done that, she would have taken it as a deliberate, comic gesture. Not with Will. She had an idea he wasn’t much for comedy.
Silence between them again, this time not so uncomfortable. The two horses, Rusher and Pylon, cropping contentedly, side by side. If we were horses, all this would be much easier, she thought, and almost giggled.
“Mr. Dearborn, ye understand that I have agreed to an arrangement?”
“Aye.” He smiled when she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “It’s not mockery but the dialect. It just . . . seeps in.”
“Who told ye of my business?”
“The Mayor’s sister.”
“Coral.” She wrinkled her nose and decided she wasn’t surprised. And she supposed there were others who could have explained her situation even more crudely. Eldred Jonas, for one. Rhea of the Cöos, for another. Best to leave it. “So if ye understand, and if ye don’t ask me to return your . . . whatever it is ye think ye feel . . . why are we talking? Why do ye seek me out? I think it makes ye passing uncomfortable—”
“Yes,” he said, and then, as if stating a simple fact: “It makes me uncomfortable, all right. I can barely look at you and keep my head.”
“Then mayhap it’d be best not to look, not to speak, not to think!” Her voice was both sharp and a little shaky. How could he have the courage to say such things, to just state them straight out and starey-eyed like that? “Why did ye send me the bouquet and that note? Are ye not aware of the trouble ye could’ve gotten me into? If y’knew my aunt . . . ! She’s already spoken to me about ye, and if she knew about the note . . . or saw us together out here . . .”
She looked around, verifying that they were still unobserved. They were, at least as best she could tell. He reached out, touched her shoulder. She looked at him, and he pulled his fingers back as if he had put them on something hot.
“I said what I did so you’d understand,” he said. “That’s all. I feel how I feel, and you’re not responsible for that.”
But I am, she thought. I kissed you. I think I’m more than a little responsible for how we both feel, Will.
“What I said while we were dancing I regret with all my heart. Won’t you give me your pardon?”
“Aye,” she said, and if he had taken her in his arms at that moment, she would have let him, and damn the consequences. But he only took off his hat and made her a charming little bow, and the wind died.
“Thankee-sai.”
“Don’t call me that. I hate it. My name is Susan.”
“Will you call me Will?”
She nodded.
“Good. Susan, I want to ask you something—not as the fellow who insulted you and hurt you because he was jealous. This is something else entirely. May I?”
“Aye, I suppose,” she said warily.
“Are you for the Affiliation?”
She looked at him, flabbergasted. It was the last question in the world she had expected . . . but he was looking at her seriously.
“I’d expected ye and yer friends to count cows and guns and spears and boats and who knows what else,” she said, “but I didn’t think thee would also count Affiliation supporters.”
She saw his look of surprise, and a little smile at the corners of his mouth. This time the smile made him look older than he could possibly be. Susan thought back across what she’d just said, realized what must have struck him, and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “My aunt has a way of lapsing into thee and thou. My father did, too. It’s from a sect of the Old People who called themselves Friends.”
“I know. We have the Friendly Folk in my part of the world still.”
“Do you?”
“Yes . . . or aye, if you like the sound of that better; I’m coming to. And I like the way the Friends talk. It has a lovely sound.”
“Not when my aunt uses it,” Susan said, thinking back to the