Something warmed my back and as I stretched, my shoulder was gently shaken. Through sleepy lids I could see the sun streaming into the chamber. Guy’s voice spoke just loud enough to push the last threads of slumber from my consciousness. ‘Ysabel, wake you. It’s time to dress and break your fast. The boat leaves in an hour.’
Sometime ago, way back in October 2010, I wrote a quick post about it being . . . ‘almost summer.’ I love the song by Billy Thorpe and I swore it would become my anthem.
Well it did indeed become my song! Here I am at the little beachside cottage and I’m revelling in the sun and the sound of waves and walking through the water with the dogs. Tonight we’re having a BBQ with friends who also live by the beach and we contributing all the fresh stuff we’ve grown from the garden: snowpeas, fresh peas, Kipfler potatoes, mint, baby carrots. We’ll throw red and white wine into the basket, and beer and shall sit around their wood-fired BBQ into the darkling hours and chat about this and that.
(This next part of The Sheriff’s Collector is especially dedicated to MG, from Fly High, without whose friendship my love of all the series of Robin Hood would have been much less fun.)
The pain I felt as my ruined life rattled around me like a thunderstorm was stupendous, but Guy was there . . . as he had been every step of the way, and once again I let him take the pain away. I lifted my right hand to his and covered it as it lay on my jaw-line. There are times in life when one just wants to forget about concerns and cares. To ignore the shouted whisper of caution in the ear . . .
Dear Readers,
I can’t thank you enough for sticking with Mesmered over the last year. Your responses to my blogs, your willingness to engage with someone you don’t know from Adam, the way we have found so many things in common have been, for me, the stuff of legend!
I’ve seen dozens of writers blog about this question.
What question, you ask?
How much to write when you write about sex, of course.
Should we be explicit, they say, including every sweaty, gasping moment?
There are times in life when one just wants to forget about concerns and cares. To ignore the shouted whisper of caution in the ear. To believe that nothing could ever be wrong and that every dream or fantasy one has ever had is about to be fulfilled. This was such a time.
The dirt stained the cloth that had been left for me and the water in the bowl looked as if it had been collected from a moat. I craved a warm scented bath, for my nails to be clean, for my hair to once again fall in a silky swathe. But it was not to be and I could see myself arriving before my father so travel-stained that I doubted he would recognize me. There was a chance he might not recognize me anyway as it had been three years since I had seen him. But worse, I had gleaned a subtext from Vasey’s words; that my father was not himself. He could have lost his mind with grief, he could be a soak, he could be anything but the man my mother had loved. I turned from the bowl to reach for clothes . . .
Please dear followers, excuse my lack of posts just lately. Lots of reasons:
* Am reading. Rarely get the chance to read a lot and have read three books in last few days
* Am writing. Big spurt. Ideas must be written down.
Guy reached over my shoulder the next day and hoisted my saddle onto Monty’s back and I pulled the girth under the belly and cinched it up. Seeing that Guy had saddled his own mount and was even now amongst the merchants holding the animal by the reins, I took the opportunity to find a boulder on which I could place my foot and then stretch to the stirrup and climb aboard. All without attracting undue attention.
Writing The Sheriff, as I’ve said on the introduction to its page, is enormous fun. I mentioned the joy I have at being able to work on something that is just a first draft, where I am not as bound by the rules as when I get down to second, third, fourth and a million other edits.
