Just to Have You (Blackwood & Friends #3)

Chapter One

Chapter One

Ben: "All I'm saying is that your moral compass isn't pointing as straight as you think it is. Simply because you will not eat this goose because its neck was wrung in front of you, doesn't make you virtuous, Griff. If you ate it and didn't witness or commit its miserable demise- that just makes you morally ambiguous. You should endeavour to stop eating them altogether if you want your logic to be any less flawed."

Griff, after several moments of contemplation: "Perhaps I will."

                                                                                 (B & G conversation on the topic of morality 7 years prior)

Henivieve was out the coop again.

Amy knew this due to the frantic clucking and flapping of feathered wings originating below her bedroom window at whatever ungodly hour it was. Wearily, she cracked open an eye and glared at her the paned glass, tossing a silent and ineffective wish down to the hen, mentally willing it to settle. There was some small relief in the knowledge that she needn't rush out of her warm bed to corral the cantankerous poultry back into her hutch because Henivieve would be quite content to scratch up the newly planted bulbs and sprouts in the front garden for hours yet. Besides, for all her chicken-wrath and ostentation, she never dared stray far from the cottage.

"Damn it all, Henivieve!" a familiar male voice broke through a mad bout of clucking and Amy knew now the reason for the chicken's discontent and thus her rude awakening.

Henivieve was never a very docile hen but for whatever reason in her tiny little brain she seemed to be most inclined and hateful towards the opposite sex. Amy half suspected it had something to do with the rooster they had acquired at the same time as Henivieve and he had proven to be quite the unfaithful husband once more hens were added to the coop.

Pushing the thought of Henivieve's contempt from her mind, Amy rolled from bed and plodded to the window. Her room was small and compact yet comfortable, littered with a menagerie of personal affects that wrought fond memories or pleasant sensations. On the windowsill sat a vase of yellow daffodils which she deftly moved to the desk beside it before throwing the window open and peering down at the cause of the ruckus below.

Oliver Bennet Hollingsworth, the future Earl of Gravewood, had returned from London and was fighting off the enraged attentions of a Cornish hen, swearing up a storm under his breath as he leapt and hopped out the jumping, flapping bird's path.

"Upsetting all the chicks tonight, Ben?" Amy called out to him softly, wary even now that perhaps the sound would waken her aging mother on other side of the house. Even though Heather Griffiths was a sound sleeper, and more likely her resounding snores would drown out any noise before they reached her ears, one could never be too careful, especially in a small village like Haventry where gossip could spread like a swarm of locusts- faster and with disastrous results, though oft times the sleepy village hardly kicked up enough dirt to cause a sneeze.

Through the evening shadows, Oliver Hollingsworth craned his head back and grinned at her roguishly. "Listen, Griff, I'm in a bit of a-" Henivieve chose that moment to launch herself at his face, an explosive cloud of feathers and squawking following the interruption, and Oliver dashed madly out the way, hastily beginning to haul his form up the side of the cottage by means of lunging onto the sill of the window directly below her bedroom's, then leveraging the rest of his body up onto the narrow wooden awning of the front door of the cottage. Luckily, Oliver was sufficiently tall and lean to complete the manoeuvre with effortless precision and grace, finally hauling his length through her open window with nary a sweat beading his brow.