Chapter 5

ALTHOUGH LUCAS was fairly certain the sun wasn't actually out to get him personally, still, it really didn't need to be so obnoxiously bright. Lucas squinted against the brilliance and let Alex lead him through the marketplace and onto the road toward home. He'd never had a hangover before, but he had to assume that the clinging nausea, the inability to convince his body it was not wading through neck-deep mud, and the way the sunlight had apparently turned hostile all pointed to the fact that yes, at the age of twenty-four summers, he was, in fact, experiencing his first hangover. Alex had been kind enough--or malicious enough; it depended on one's perspective--to force Lucas to choke down some slimy goo that had actually helped with the bubble-for-a-head thing, and the stomach-trying-to-escape-through-his-nostrils thing. But there was apparently nothing to be done about the sun-trying-to-fry-his-eyeballs thing.

Though, Lucas supposed, he shouldn't whine about sunshine, even in his own head. The late spring and wet summer had played havoc with the coming harvest, and they could do with all the sun they could get. Earlier in the week had looked promising, until the southern winds had kicked up and brought a haze of afternoon drizzle with them. A straight week of sunshine would be ideal, but no one was counting on it. Lucas had already put the word out to his own tenants that reaping would commence tomorrow, on the third day of dry weather--providing it held--and he knew the neighboring farms and villages were doing the same. Normally, they'd already have the second harvest in, and all attention would have by now turned to preparing for the Harvest Faire. This year, they'd be lucky to get half of it in by the Crone's Night festival.

It was a good thing, in retrospect, that there hadn't been any money to invest in the new silos Parry had been trying to talk Lucas into last year. If this second harvest ended up rotting or molding or freezing, they likely wouldn't even be filling the silos they had now.

"Stop brooding." Alex tugged Lucas deftly around a weaver's stall and shooed an unhappy goose from their path. The goose blatted a petulant honk but thought better of following after when Alex honked back. Lucas didn't know if the goose fled in fear or just plain confusion. Although, the presentation of the pointed toe of Alex's ridiculously expensive and oh-so-fashionable boot might have been what decided it more firmly. "It'll be what it'll be. There's no use fretting over things you can't change."

"Easy for you to say." Lucas huffed. "You don't have several hundred tenants who think you should be able to control the weather, prevent infestation, kill mold and mildew, and personally consult the Green Warden himself to make sure you're doing it all correctly."

It had been so nice last night, when his fuzzy head had conveniently decided ale was more important than all of... this.

"Well, there's your problem right there." Alex's tone was deliberately breezy. "You can't expect a Green Warden to appreciate a cuddly redhead." He emphasized the "cuddly" comment by pulling Lucas in tight to his side. "You need to beguile and seduce the Crone. All the old ladies go for the cute types." He tweaked Lucas's nose. "It's the freckles."

Lucas batted Alex's hand away and shoved him off with a snort. "Hence Mistress Singer forking the Evil Eye every time she sees me."

A rather inelegant guffaw burst loose from Alex. "Still?" He shook his head. "I thought she'd got over that when you charmed my father into buying two of her milkers for three times what they're worth."

"I don't think she'll ever get over it. She thinks I'm a changeling."

"Maybe she thinks you're responsible for that deformed pumpkin she calls a nose."

"She's at least four decades older than I am," Lucas pointed out. "And she was born with the thing, or so Mother says. How it could be my fault is quite beyond my own powers of reason."

"Well, the woman's battier than the Moonset Bell Tower, so what d'you expect?"

"Mistress Singer or my mother?"

"Is that a trick question?"

Lucas grinned then gave Alex a poke. "And I didn't 'charm' your father into anything. I only--"

"You charm my father by merely existing. All you have to do is flash those gemstones you've got for eyes, and he comes over all squishy and 'yes Lucas my lad what can I do for you.' It's sick-making."

Lucas rolled his eyes again, which were, he knew quite well, a rather boring hazel that sometimes--in very bad light and if he was wearing the right color coat--might take on a slight greenish hue, which, Lucas also knew quite well, was more of a muddy moss than the "emerald" Alex always claimed. A bald-faced flatterer, Alex, and an incorrigible charmer too. Lucas might find it in himself to complain more, if he ever managed to resist it.

Right now, he merely blushed and insisted, "I didn't 'charm' anyone. You said there was never enough milk about the house, and I merely gave your father a name. I was only trying to be helpful."

"And happened to mention how the unfortunate old dear Mistress Pumpkin-nose was having difficulty stretching her resources since poor Mister Pumpkin-nose was so cruelly done in two years past." Alex grimaced. "What a way to go. No wonder Mistress Pumpkin-nose went dotty."

"Mistress *Singer* has always been a bit dotty. And it's unseemly to make fun of the departed."

"Death-by-puddle!" Alex threw his hands out. "Making fun would be redundant."

Lucas tried very hard not to snort. Mister Singer had been a very sweet, very jolly man, and it was a shame he was gone. But still. "It's not nice," he chided.

"Mister Pumpkin-nose would have appreciated the macabre humor."

He probably would have, at that.

"And anyway," Alex went on, "if you're going to go out in the most painless way possible, passing out drunk and facedown in a mud puddle is probably at the top of the list. I like to think he's left us all an entertaining legacy. After all, I didn't even know his name before, and now I'll never forget it."

"'Mister Pumpkin-nose' doesn't count."

"I bet Mistress Pumpkin-nose and any little Pumpkin-noses would beg to differ."

Lucas shook his head. "You're the most irreverent person I know." He elbowed Alex sharply in the ribs. "You wouldn't get away with that if you weren't so bloody good-looking, y'know. Your pretty face is the only thing that's saved you from a lifetime of arse-kickings, I'll wager." Lucas knew it did wonders for his own temperament.

Alex more or less ignored the jab to the ribs and chose to preen a bit instead, stroking ostentatiously at his perfectly trimmed beard. "You," he said with that dazzling grin, "have no sense of humor."

"Of course I have." Lucas smirked. "I've not taken a mallet to *your* head yet, have I?"

"Only because it would ruin my pretty face."

"And mess up your hair."

"Can't be done."

Lucas rolled his eyes. Because it really couldn't. He'd tried. Lots of times. Alex was the only person Lucas knew who could emerge from the bottom of a rugby scrum with not a hair out of place. Or from beneath a pile of quilts and linens, after having suffered the abuse of Lucas's own grasping fingers, while Alex did those brain-melting things with his tongue that--

Right. Lucas was probably better off not letting his mind wander there just now.

"Are you coming to mine?" he asked as they turned onto the bend in the road that marked the boundary of Rolling Green.

"Well, you do know sex is a sure cure for a headache, yeah?"

"So you've told me." Lucas couldn't help a grin. "Funny how it only ever seems to come up when I've got a headache. Or you, now that I think about it."

Alex put his arm around Lucas's shoulders again. "And has it ever failed?" Alex waggled his eyebrows, because Lucas didn't have to admit it out loud--they both knew. "I thought we could maybe spend the morning in. Have a kip. Indulge in the fruits of the flesh, and then--"

"Fruits of the flesh? You are *such* a sap."

"--and then you could come to the match and we'll have supper at the Dark Horse." He dipped his head down to murmur in Lucas's ear, all singsong and seductive: "I hear they've been asking Ennis at the Duck about who supplies their blackberry wine and their apple brandy."

"Oh?" Lucas perked right up at that. Watching Alex ram around the rugby pitch in short pants, *and* the possibility of new business.... Optimism ran away with Lucas's mind for a lovely moment, until his memory kicked in. "Oh." He slumped. "I don't think I can. I'd planned to ride out to the vineyards and have a look at the--"

"Lucas, it's Sun's Day, for pity's sake." Alex sounded annoyed, but Lucas knew it was for him and not at him. "And you still look a little pale. Can't you take one day for yourself?"

"I always look pale." Lucas shrugged. "And the vintners and pickers have all been out there for days and nights with the smudge pots and torches. It's only fair."

"I thought one of the benefits of being a landlord and just generally the boss of everyone in a four-league radius is that you don't have to be fair."

Lucas snorted. "Said the man who 'accidentally' knocked over his own haystack last year so he wouldn't win the Harvest Pig."

"It *was* an accident." Alex sniffed. He slid a tight-lipped look over at Lucas then rolled his eyes. "That little girl had named the bloody thing. How was I supposed to feel comfortable eating bacon made of 'Sweetums'?" He glared when Lucas couldn't quite contain his snickers. "And anyway, it took me two days of sunburn and blistered hands and generally sweating my arse off before your people stopped looking at me like I was expecting them to go fetch me an umbrella and a cold drink. I wasn't about to queer it all by walking away with... with Sweetums! It's bad enough they still suspect I'm going to corrupt and walk away with you."

Lucas was having a hard time not laughing. "Did you just imply that 'my people' place the same value on a pig that they do on me?"

"Well." Alex very obviously angled out of swatting distance. "Sweetums was a very nice pig."