Free The Glass Casket by Mccormick Templeman Page A

with a boyish beauty. “Ah, Rowan. When will you ever learn?” Then he shook his head and went back to his work.
    Staring at him, she felt rage burning in her chest. How was it that he could make her so angry? How was it that he always seemed to know how she felt without her saying a word? It was unfair. He had no right to her feelings. Her temper getting the better of her, she strode over to him, her hands clenched into fists, and took a single wretched swing at him. The force she’d put behind the blow was intense, but she never connected, for he caught her forearm gently in his hand, and looking deep into her eyes, he held her gaze.
    “You’re making a mistake,” he said.
    She wrenched her arm away from him and smoothed down the sleeve of her cloak.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sneered, unwilling to let him see any more of her heart. “I’ve just come round to speak with Tom like I always do.”
    “Why? Why are you trying to marry him off? Surely that can’t be in your best interest.”
    “Jude, you’re not making any sense,” she said, changing tack and feigning concern. “Have you been at your mother’s ale again?”
    “No, I’m just observant,” he said, something like kindness in his eyes. Rowan recoiled at that more than she would have from a blow. Kindness from Jude was disorienting, and it could mean many things, but she was sure that sincerity wasn’t one of them.
    She took a step back but was unable to look away from him. His gaze seemed to pull her closer, to see deep within her. She wondered just how much he knew. “Why wouldn’t I want Tom to marry?” she asked, testing him.
    “Do you want me to say it?” He raised his eyebrows. “Out loud?”
    She opened her mouth to speak but found that the words refused to come.
    “I don’t think you do,” he said, and shaking his head, he broke eye contact and went back to his whittling. “I don’t think you want me to say it.”
    She stood there, breathless. Her cheeks began to burn, and she started to feel that familiar dizziness that usually accompanied making the mistake of engaging with Jude at all. It was always the same. She knew he meant to make her uncomfortable, and that was the pain of it all. He always succeeded.
    Turning on her heel, she walked away with short determined steps, all the while looking at her feet.
    “Don’t go,” he said, and she could hear him stand up.
    She turned, fighting back the tears, and saw him standing there, arms out to the sides, something like regret in his eyes.
    “Rowan,” he said. “I was only teasing. Don’t act like that.”
    “Don’t tell me how to behave. I will act how I want to act, and I will feel how I want to feel.”
    “Don’t go,” he said, his voice cracking. “Listen, I’ll go, okay? You can wait here for Tom.”
    He didn’t wait for her reply. He climbed over the wall and walked away, slowly disappearing into the trees.
    Rowan stood there a moment, watching Jude go, wondering how two brothers could be so completely different.
    Then, as she always did when she was nervous, Rowan began to pace, slow steps, her small black boots sinking into the snow. She liked to count her steps … fourteen, fifteen, sixteen …
    Somehow things didn’t have to be so bad. It wasn’t as if the world were ending or anything like that. Tom liked a girl and the girl liked him back. A beautiful girl, yes, a bewitching girl, true, but that didn’t have to mean anything so bad. Maybe he would get to know Fiona, and he would find her tiresome.
    Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen …
    Or maybe he would marry her.
    And then there was a snap, a crack far out among the trees, and she found herself slowly backing away from the forest edge, staring into the darkness therein with eyes that didn’t want to see. Surely, she thought, it was only a rabbit or a deer, but maybe it wasn’t the right time to tell Tom after all. She found herself moving quickly out of the empty yard,