It’s way preferable to hanging around here, twiddling my thumbs, getting the brush-off every time I dare to ask a question about my brother.” She was leaning toward him, knuckles braced on the table. “Unless…”
He looked bleak. “Tell me.”
“Well, I might be willing to change my mind, if you were to decide you’re finally ready to trust me. If you’d agree to take me to my brother…”
“How can I do that? Your brother is dead.”
“You keep saying that. Why don’t I believe it?”
“You don’t want to believe it.”
“That’s right. I don’t. Because it’s not true.”
They enjoyed a short, angry stare down.
Brit was the one who looked away. She pushed herself back from the table and stood fully upright, wrapping her arms around herself, turning from him, toward the stove. “I’m sick of it.” She tossed the words over her shoulder. “I’m through with it. I’m not going to learn anything more staying here.”
“Your injury—”
She whirled on him. “Is better. Better every day. Yes, it’s still tender. But it’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do. I prevented a rape yesterday. I was slapped to the ground by a big, bossy kvina soldar. I rode bareback for hours—yesterday and today. My shoulder is no worse for all the activity. Don’t you even try to use it as an excuse to keep me here. There is nothing more for me to do here. I’ve asked all my questions and I’ve gotten too few answers. I’ve got to look elsewhere. Otherwise, what’s left for me but to return to my father’s palace with nothing to show for all I’ve been through but an ugly burden of guilt over my dead guide and a gross-looking scar from a renegade’s poisoned arrow?”
The look of fury had left his face. Now he regarded her with dangerous tenderness. “There could be more than that. There could be—”
“I know where you’re going.” She was shaking her head. “Don’t.” Just because she couldn’t stop imagining what it might be like to roll around on the bed furs with him didn’t mean she was ready to wear his medallion and bear his children.
When she bound her life to a man, that man was going to respect her as a full equal. And he was always going to be able to trust her with the truth.
He was coming around the table toward her. He stopped about three inches away.
She groaned. “Why am I always standing here waiting when you get to me?”
He lifted a hand.
She should have backed away. But as usual, she didn’t.
His finger brushed the line of her jaw, leaving delicious little tingles of longing in its wake. “Perhaps you like it, when I’m near you.”
She lifted her chin and looked at him dead-on. “Maybe I do. Maybe I wish…” Oh, what was she saying?
“Don’t stop now.” His voice had gone velvety, lovely, warm.
She pushed his tender hand away and stepped back as she should have a moment before. “Forget all that. What you need to accept right now is that tomorrow I am going to have a look at my plane. Short of locking me up and throwing the key away, you’re not going to stop me.”
He was looking bleak again. “It’s more than thirty kilometers from here, over rough, steep terrain. The hazards are endless. You won’t only have to worry about the occasional renegade and other fierce bands of kvina soldars. There are also large meat-eating animals with sharp claws and long teeth.”
“In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ve spent my life going to places where the terrain is rugged, the animals predatory and the locals restless. And yet, here I am. In one piece. And ready to go.”
He was the one who stepped back then. “There is no stopping you, is there?”
“Finally. You’re getting it.”
He gave her one of those long, unwavering looks—to let her know he was about to make a point that would not be negotiable. “If you’re going, I am going with you.”
She smiled then.
He grunted. “So. That was your plan all along.”
“Well…”
“What?”
“I have to admit, the idea makes me a little edgy. You know how it is with us….” She let him finish that thought for himself. “I don’t need the distraction. However, you know the way and I don’t. I can use a good guide, not to mention…”
“What?” he prompted, when she didn’t finish.
She shrugged. “You’re quick and strong. I have no doubt you know how to handle a weapon. You’re a good man to have on my side if I have to fight my way out of a sticky situation.”
He didn’t look happy, exactly. But he definitely looked a little less fed up. “Let us hope for good weather, for an absence of ‘sticky situations.”’
“Hope for the best, be ready for the worst. It’s the only way to go, if you ask me.”
* * *
They set out at six the next morning, before the sun crested the hills to the east. Asta had loaned Brit a saddle. She stood outside to tell them goodbye.
“Bad weather coming,” she warned, as they mounted the horses. “If you must go, then leave on the morrow.”
“Oh, Asta.” Brit stroked the side of Svald’s sleek neck. “Come on. There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
Eric, on a muscular gelding, gestured at the barometer beside the front door. “Falling fast.” Brit only looked at him. He turned to his aunt. “It appears the coming storm will not stop us. We are going today.”
Asta’s frown deepened, but she said no more. She stood out in the street and waved as they rode away. Pure foolishness, she’d called the venture the night before, when she returned to her house to learn that Eric had failed to talk Brit out of going. An idiot’s quest.
To a certain degree, Brit had to agree with her. But she wasn’t going to learn a damn thing sitting around the Mystic village, being coddled by Asta and the other women, getting no answers to her questions, daydreaming too much about Eric while she plucked the occasional game bird and helped Sif with the wash.
And wait another day in case the weather turned bad? No, thanks. A little rain wasn’t going to slow her down. And, anyway, it was warmer than it had been. Felt like in the low forties already. A much more pleasant temperature for traveling than yesterday or the day before.
She felt eager. Ready. Felt… a sort of happy shiver running beneath her skin to think that they were on the way.
She glanced at the man on the gelding beside her. Taking her daydreams right along with her. Oh, yes, she was. Hey.
