“I’m going north.” Hot tears pushed against her nose.
He nodded, then paused. “That’s a very general area.”
She tried looking fierce. He appeared undeterred, kept staring at her with those unfathomable eyes. She began again with frigid dignity, her only defence against the panic and tears welling up inside her. “I wish only to go north and am beset with people who wish otherwise. May I not simply walk along the king’s highway—”
“No.”
Angry tears pricked harder.
A dark gaze slid down her cloak and up again. “You are not safe on the highway, and certainly not alone.”
She could feel the tears coming, poking hotly at her nose. “That is unfortunate, because that is what and where I am. And it comforts me. Being alone is a common state. Whereas sitting in the mud is not.”
He shifted on the horse and when he spoke this time, it was softer. “So come with me.”
“I don’t know where you’re going.”
He laughed, a low, pleasing sound that smoothed the edges of her fear. “You don’t know where I am going, mistress? I am going to warmth and a bed. Whereas you are going into certain danger, if you continue on alone.”
“I am well used to being alone. What I am not used to is my feet hurting as they do, or my dress sticking to me as it does, and…Perdition!”
She stared glumly across the highway. Wind rustled the reeds and grasses along the side, making a soft hissing sound. Dark clouds were rolling in, blotting out the stars. She glanced up to find him, of all things, smiling. She frowned darkly “Think you ’tis amusing?”
“Nay.” He shook his head back and forth, a swipe of enigmatic darkness against the blackening skies. “I just…did not expect such…candor from a maiden.”
“Oh, that. Well, I’ve had much exposure to many of the things men do so well.”
He arched a brow.
“Poor governing and rich cursing,” she responded to the silent enquiry with an airy nonchalance. Mud pressed against her buttocks.
“Rich cursing,” he mused, his gaze travelling over her hunched figure. “And poor governance. What else, I wonder?”
“Being witless when it comes to direction and a distinct desire to not ask for help,” she said in a warning tone.
It did not seem to deter him. His slate-grey eyes were warmer now, almost blue, and fairly danced with mirth. “But I am not lost, mistress.”
“I am.”
“Thank heavens you are with me, then.”
She snorted in a very unladylike way. It was sinful really, Gwyn decided glumly, getting to her feet. Such handsome amusement in the face of her plight.
She glanced back down the road and caught sight of a hand peeking out of the bushes. Small and white, it could have been anything at this distance. But she knew it was a hand. A dead man’s hand.
It was too much. She squeezed her eyes shut as her belly rolled over. Her head lolled to the side and she stumbled sideways a step.
He slid off his horse and was at her side, steadying her.
“I am sure I can make my way if I could but find my horse,” she said weakly. His hand rested on her back, his hip pressed up against hers. He pursed his lips as if about to speak, but said nothing.
She started disentangling herself; the heat from his body was too unsettling. As she pulled away, her hair tugged as it caught on the innumerable and exposed metal rings of his mail hauberk. They stared at one another through the webbed strands of dark hair, then, with a faint sigh, he bent to disentangle her. She waited patiently while he unlaced each curl and set it free.
“You could lash goods on a ship with this kind of netting,” he muttered at one particularly stubborn knot.
A trickle of soothing heat ran around the edges of her heart again and she sighed. Startlingly long-lashed eyes lifted and peered through her hair. “You are fine, mistress?”
The pain in the back of her skull started travelling forward. “Absolutely fine.”
He loosed the last curl and arranged it around her face in soft, knotted waves. “You might have just flown away.” His breath floated past her ear as he spoke.
“W-what?”
“You could have simply flown away to escape. Your hair is as soft as a bird’s feather and as black as a raven’s.”
She blinked vapidly. “Raven?”
“The bird?”
“Oh, ravens.” A wave of nausea rolled through her. Her head whipped with a new surge of pain, and she moaned softly. “My head hurts.”
“Be gentle with it.”
She pressed her hands against her temples. Watery mucus flooded in her mouth. “By all the saints, I am a fool,” she muttered.
“We’ve all been the fool one time or another, myself more so than the rest.”
She couldn’t respond. Her stomach was roiling and rolling, its contents burbling and burping and demanding to be freed. St. Jude, not in the middle of the king’s highway!
“Oh God,” she moaned softly, her head lolling to the side.
He lowered her gently to her knees. Palms splayed out in front of her, she knelt on the ground like a dog and rocked back and forth, filling the air with soft moans.
“Go ahead,” he murmured, lifting the hair that had fallen in front of her face. He tucked it behind her ear, but when the curls slipped out, he swept them up and kept them in his hand.
“Oh, I can’t,” she cried, then did.
After, he led her to a hollowed tree trunk filled with fresh rain water and cleaned her up. He helped her wash her face and hands, cooled her head, and made her laugh twice, which was really more than she could have expected, given the circumstances.
“Well then,” she said in a shaky voice, after it all was over. “I suppose we can see to the defence of the bridge now.”
He stared a moment, his jaw opened slightly, revealing even, white teeth, then he started laughing. Rumbling, self-assured masculine laughter. “They wouldn’t have a chance against us, Green-eyes.”
She laughed weakly. “None a’tall.” Then she passed out.
Chapter Six
When she came to, she was sitting on something soft. Moss. She ran her fingers over it, then realised she was propped against the crunchy bark of a tree. She sat up. Her saviour was crouched on the balls of his feet, watching her.
“How long?” she murmured in a broken whisper.
One of his shoulders lifted and fell. “A moment. Two.”
“Good heavens.” She pushed herself straight. “My apologies.”
He rose and brushed his hands across his thighs. “Not required. You’ve had a fright, a fight, a serious knock to the head, and almost got married. ’Tis enough to send any maiden swooning.”
“I didn’t swoon,” she retorted, stumbling to her feet. “I fainted, which I have ne’er done before.”
“Mmmm.”
She looked at him glumly. “What now?”
He clucked to the black behemoth of a horse standing a few paces away. The fur-knotted beast came and her