They walked without speaking for hours. She followed a path that veered off the main road, as she had done before, and he wondered how she knew these byways. But he didn’t ask. From the moment they had walked away from the market, he had been filled with a strange elation, a kind of relief that he did not question. His bonds had been cut nearly a fortnight ago, but only now did he truly feel his freedom.
It was likely a kind of terrible sin, to find some measure of joy only because he had beaten a man – even if the man was a thief who would steal Tiffin. But he was beyond caring about sin. It was not as real as this feeling, or the truth of this new life.
“I’m down in the muck with you, Bran,” he grinned at the dog, who seemed every bit as cheerful.
Nan did not correct him to say the dog was named Fuss, which told him she was not so lighthearted. She had fixed the braces of blades to her forearms again as they left town, but he thought it was not her watchfulness that caused her mood. He too had injured a man – done more damage than she had, undoubtedly – yet only she had suffered censure for it. He remembered well how her cheeks had burned when the townswoman told her to be gone.
After many miles a soft rain began to fall, and they ducked under the canopy of trees to take cover. They found a clearing, with a broad outcropping of rock and a small pool of water fed by a stream. The leaves on the branches above were so thick that the droplets barely disturbed the pool, and Nan knelt to gather water into a leather flask. He unbuckled Tiffin’s cage from his back and sat on a convenient stump to pull out the tiny loaf of dark bread that Mary had given him this morning as he said his farewell. It’s queer how quiet she’s grown to be, she had said to him with a nod toward Nan. She were the most chattering girl.
It was hard to imagine a chattering Nan, and even harder to realize that he would part ways with her soon. Their journey would end tomorrow. He should ask her everything he wanted to know now, before it was too late. He was debating whether to ask how she had learned to speak Welsh, or where she had learned her deadly skill, when she spoke.
“Why is it always me?” She was frowning down at her reflection in the pool, but glanced up at him briefly to see his confusion at her question. “There were other girls there, young and pretty. And smiling. Some small as me, too. But it’s me he come at. They always do.”
It was an earnest question. He considered telling her that he had noticed no other fair maids at all. Few men would, with Nan there. That was no kind of answer, though. He took a bite of bread and studied her troubled face in profile. He could say it was the graceful line of her brow, or the perfect proportions of every feature in itself and all of them taken together, or how her skin seemed to glow with a delicate golden light. Or her eyes, so blue and so expressive that they would inspire every bard and troubadour who ever caught sight of her to sing of her beauty.
But in the end he swallowed and gave her the crude truth she asked for.
“Your mouth.”
She turned a puzzled look to him, and he shrugged. He kept his eyes on the bread he held and spoke casually – or as casually as he could manage, when he thought of her mouth.
“God gave you the face of an angel, that stirs a man’s breast and will cause his heart to ache with the beauty of it. But your mouth is the kind that moves a man to think of naught but hot sin. That mouth in that face...” He shrugged again and looked at her. “Is an uncommon allure.”
Her eyes fell briefly to his hand holding the bread before she turned back to the pool. A crease appeared in her brow as she considered her reflection for a long moment. She let out a faint snort, either mockery or exasperation, before dragging her hand across the surface in a quick swipe and turning away.
Her practical air returned. From her bag she pulled a square of linen and a small jar and held it out to him. At his questioning look, she pointed down at his hand, where the knuckles were scraped and swollen from fighting. He recognized the jar from the priory; it held the salve she had used on the wounded knight. When he reached to take it from her, she pulled it back suddenly and said, “Is better you wash the wounds first.”
Her voice held the slightest tremor, so unexpected and so revealing that he felt it shiver through him. He savored the sweet echo of it as he went to the water and did as she instructed.
This morning seemed a lifetime ago, but her touch had not been a dream, nor a hopeful imagining. There was a curiosity in her, a thread of desire. He had seen it. It was in her even now.
He turned back to her and walked carefully forward, ever wary. He knew he must not move too sudden, lest she feel trapped with the wall of stone at her back. Nor could he be too timid. He had spent years in being too timid, and he was free of that, too.
When he held his dripping hand out to her, she did not give him the jar as he expected, but patted the linen over his fingers to dry them. She attended his cuts as she attended to every task – brisk and sensible, efficient in her every move.
But after she finished and tied a strip of linen around his hand, she did not turn away. When he dared to brush his fingers across her cheek, she did not object. She did not move at all, except to swallow and wet her parted lips in a more provocative display than he’d seen in five long and lonely years.
It took every ounce of discipline he’d ever learned not to pull her to him and crush her against his heat. Instead he bent his neck to bring himself closer to her. He tipped her face up to look down at her mouth, the way her lashes lowered and her cheeks flushed pink, and her breath – oh God, how her breath caught, the unsteady rise and fall of her breast.
He waited an eternity, hot and hard and desperate, until she leaned forward into the slight space that separated them and brushed her lips softly across his. Then he gathered her face in his hands and kissed her, careful and coaxing, finding that thread of her desire and tugging at it, pulling her to him as her mouth opened and the sweetest sound came from her.
Silent Nan, making sounds of pleasure. Distant Nan, pressing close to him. She was the most intoxicating mixture of shy and eager, her hand pressing at the back of his neck to hold him to her, but her pliant mouth making no demands of him.
He wanted her to demand. He trailed his mouth down her throat, teeth scraping softly at her hot skin, pushing her a step backward until she leaned against the stone. Now her hand at his nape clutched harder, fingers twisting in his hair. Now her body arched gently up against his, her breath harsh at his ear. Now she demanded.
He came back to her mouth and waited there, holding himself back from the lips that were a breath away from his. His reward was her sigh, the hunger with which she kissed him, the boldness of her tongue exploring his mouth. His hands moved over her slight body beneath the coarse gown, over the braid that hung down her back. He pulled it apart, running his hands through her unbound hair at last, cool silk slipping between his fingers as she kissed him breathless.
It inflamed him, a blaze of lust that overwhelmed his senses. His knee pushed between her legs and he felt her body stiffen, her lips still. But she did not take her mouth away, so he took control of the kiss. An old lesson, easily remembered – how to seduce a willing a woman, how to coax without words. The stiffness in her eased by degrees; it was a matter of moments until she was sighing again. He set a suggestive rhythm with his mouth, with his body. The thrust of his tongue against hers beat in time with the press of his hips. She seemed to melt under his hands, his mouth, so soft and yielding that he was mad with wanting her.
He did not know when it changed, or what exactly caused it. He only felt her mouth pull away with an effort – and it was the effort that mattered to him in the moment, so he moved his mouth to her throat, down to her collarbone. Her dress was modest, no way to reach the skin beneath it except to raise her skirt. When he had brought the hem as high as her knee, it dawned on him that her hands were not on him. He forced himself to pause, still tasting her throat, still pressed hard against her as he pulled back to look at her.
She had gone ut
terly still, her breath coming fast in shallow little huffs. She seemed impossibly fragile, as though she had grown smaller – because she had. She shrank from him.
She looked vulnerable. So small and vulnerable, like prey flushed from its hiding place and bared to the hunter. It called up the memory of her voice saying, I was no more than a timid mouse. A mouse he wanted.
He dropped his hands from her as though burned and stepped back. She looked at him, but for once there was no clear message in her face. She trembled all over, but he thought it was not fear. No more was it lust. Then his eyes found her hand, the knife clutched in fingers that shook, the first time he had ever seen her grip unsteady.
A protest hovered on his lips, a defense against the accusation she did not make. She had wanted it. She had kissed him.
And he had taken what she gave and more, not content with only a taste freely given. Her look damned him, made him one of those men in the king’s hall who had made sport of her, who stole a touch and demanded her body, because they could.
He turned away, unable to bear the mixture of confusion and fear and courage swimming in her eyes. There was nowhere to go, but he strode away through the trees. He must go anywhere at all so that she did not look like this. Anywhere that he might forget the sight of her unsure hand trembling around her only defense.
Chapter Eight
She watched him disappear behind the trees at the edge of the clearing, her mouth bruised with kisses, her body burning. She wanted to call him back. She wanted to bury the knife between his shoulders.
She wanted to stop wanting him.
Her fingers would not let go of the knife, and yet she had no memory of taking it from her belt. To be sure, she had had no thought of using it in defense against him. That had not been in her mind at all. It was she who had kissed him, even knowing that her mouth made him think of hot sin. It was her body that asked for more. He only answered.
Why then – why did she feel like this?
Once, years ago, she had watched as a boy was pulled from a lake, gasping for air. Don’t you never go out so far in deep waters, her mother had warned them as the boy coughed and wept.
Deep waters. This was how it felt to be saved from drowning, to have the suffocating waters recede and leave her dazed on the shore, struggling to learn how to breathe again.
Dim memories of her few nights as a wife had not prepared her for this. No more was she prepared to wonder why she had never felt this way with Oliver, who was kind and sweet and careful never to hurt her while slaking his lust. She did not want to think of Oliver at all, God forgive her.
She stared at the knife in her hand as though it held the answers to every question she had not dared to ask herself since she had cut the Welshman’s bonds. He looked at her in lust, as many men did. Yet he was somehow different. Other men looked as though they would devour her whole and leave naught but crumbs on a plate. There was no room for herself in their lust. There was nothing to her but what they wanted to have.
Yet there was room for herself in his eyes. There was room for herself in his kiss – until there was not.
Fuss was whining at her in confusion. He cast a questioning look at where the Welshman had disappeared, then back at her. She gave him the signal to sit and he did, but he looked at her doubtfully.
“He’ll come back, Fuss,” she said, which only caused the dog to look at her more confused. He was not used to her voice. No one was used to her voice. She liked it that way. “His falcon is here. Nor will he leave it long.”
She thought of how he had stopped himself from beating the thief too badly. She had expected the anger, but she had not expected the mercy. It was a rare quality in any man, whether lowborn or high. It was why she had not needed her knife. It was why he had walked away.
Slowly, she slid the blade back into its sheath and tried to return to plain, sensible thoughts. They should make camp here. There was an overhang of rock to protect them from rain, if it became strong in the night, and there was water. She should make a fire. She should bring out the pork pies she had bought at the market, her favorite, a treat for their last night together because it gave her joy to see him eat.
Instead she sat on the damp ground and called Fuss to her. He came readily, as though she were still herself, still the Nan he had always known. But he looked back again as though to follow the Welshman. “He don’t need you, Fuss,” she whispered, running a hand over his head, scratching his chin. “I do.”
She knew who she was. She knew her place and her purpose. She had never doubted it, until now. One kiss, and everything was crumbling.
Fuss settled beside her, his little body curled against her leg, a heavy warmth that was as familiar as her own breath.
They would go to Lincoln. She would find her sister. The Welshman would part ways with her and find his new life, whatever it may be.
One kiss. She should regret it. She did regret it, even as she separated out the parts of it she wanted to keep. Be selfish, she reminded herself, and stored away the memory of the stirring in her belly when he moved against her, the pleasure of tasting him, the thrill of feeling what she’d only seen in others: desire.
It was the falcon that finally made her move. The Welshman always let it out of the cage and onto the perch as soon as they stopped. But this time she had distracted him from it, and she could not bear to think it might suffer for its confinement. He was forever fretting that the cage was too small as they journeyed, lowering the side of it so the bird might stretch its wings and carrying the falcon on his arm for hours at a time.
“Tiffany,” she said, before she opened the cage. He always talked to it, murmuring in that soothing way. But Nan found words to be more useless than soothing, and so she could think of nothing to say beyond its name.
She knew enough not to be afraid, but was nervous of doing it any harm. If she had more courage, she would fashion a gauntlet and try to transfer the bird from the cage to the perch. Instead she lowered the bars as she had seen him do and watched as the falcon moved restlessly on the block. It was not hooded, and it looked at her with interest from eyes that were the same dark, dark brown as his.
They blinked at each other for a very long time while she turned her mind to her sister and what would happen. Somewhere just outside the walls of Lincoln, Aunt Mary had said. It should not be difficult to find. And that’s what she would do. Find the place and circle over it and then swoop in, like she had seen the falcon do. Catch her sister and carry her away. Or dive and miss, as she had seen the falcon do even more often.
Would her sister be starving still? Would she look as the Welshman had looked, hungry and haunted and grateful to be found? Nan prayed not. But then she tried to imagine her sister fat and happy, content with her lot, and failed at that.
The only way was to be like the falcon: wait for the moment, react to the circumstance. Do not anticipate beforehand. Never forget that all is potential, until it is truth.
She knew the Welshman had returned by the way Fuss pricked up his ears in the same moment that the falcon’s eye focused beyond her. Nan stood and moved away from the cage, never turning to face him. There was no way to know what was in her face, but she knew that she would not be able to hide her thoughts. Now the sun was going down and she had done naught but sit still, and that was telling enough.
She busied herself and watched surreptitiously as he set the perch in the soft ground, put on the gauntlet, and took up the bird. It did not escape her that he kept a careful distance from her while she built a small fire to warm the water. She washed the dirt of the day from her hands and feet, and he did not come near the water so that he might do the same. When she spread her square of waxed linen on the ground to make her bed, he moved far in the opposite direction – farther than he’d ever placed himself from her – and made his own bed there.
They seemed to prowl about each other like wary animals, and it gave her a deep and abiding satisfaction that he was just as cautious of her as sh
e was of him. He was like so many of the men she had known from fine households, the way he had kissed her without an instant of hesitation, so sure of himself. So sure of her. After days of uncertainty, at last he had found his confidence again. And he found it by putting his hands on her, of course. A man who looked so appalled at Aunt Mary’s house – while she was amazed to find Mary had a house at all – such a man took what he thought was his due, so long as nothing stopped him.
It was a good thing he was wary now. Let that be what he remembered of her, if he would remember anything at all.
There was still daylight enough but she smothered the embers of the fire without thinking and snapped her fingers for Fuss. When he did not come, she looked to see him seated by the Welshman. In the dog’s mouth was the scrap of bread that must have dropped from the Welshman’s hands when he had reached for her.
The sight of it reminded her they had not eaten this evening, and the realization shocked her as much as anything that had happened today. In her life, she had never once forgotten to eat so long as there was food to be had. Especially on this journey, when she ignored her usual appetite in favor of feeding him more.
Fuss looked reluctant to come to her, and he rarely ignored her beckoning. The dog was looking up at the Welshman, dropping the bit of bread at his feet, nosing his hand. She dared to raise her eyes to his face, to the features that were still sharp but no longer gaunt with desperate hunger. He looked back at her, and there was no arrogance in his expression, nor did she see the sullen resentment of a man rebuffed. There was only chagrin and, she thought, regret.
She turned away from the sight of it, and felt the kernel of anger in her dissolve a little.
The pork pies were each as large as her two hands together. She had bought three, and when she broke one in half so that they could share it all equally, she had to bite her tongue against apologizing that she had not put it on the fire to warm it. She set the portion on the stone next to him, avoiding his hands, and retreated to her own spot.
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