My Mate Gave My Wolf to His Mistress novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Aldane Hall

Hesper's POV

He stood at the Stonefell gate in the lantern light, a lean young man in a miller's coat.

A sack lay at his feet.

I came down the steps in Bram's shirt with my hair still wet.

The man looked at my chin, then at my hands, and then at the white scar across my left palm.

"Mother said it would be the chin," he said.

"Whose mother?"

"Mine. Your mother's sister." His voice cracked. "I was thirteen. She put me in the miller's cart that night under the sacks, and I didn't see any of it."

"Maud wrote to all eleven of us, after. She never said where you were, in case the letters were read."

"I've sent a coin to the chapel every autumn for seven years, for a candle."

He swallowed.

"I didn't dare come. I thought if there was anyone left, they'd rather not be found."

I crossed the last three steps and put my arms around him.

He smelled of flour and horses.

He was shaking so hard I thought I would shake with him.

"Nobody came," I said into his coat. "That's what I thought."

"We sent a candle."

"I know," I said. "I know. I know."

Three weeks later we raised the first beam of the Aldane hall.

The spring was early on the river.

The weir had been rebuilt in stone this time, with the water gate open and a new keystone in the arch.

Nothing was driven into it.

The ash tree had survived the fire.

Somebody had cut down the old swing and rehung it on new rope.

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