A feeling that was very much like …
Pleasure.
Her clear sense of righteousness and assurance didn’t falter. “I shall be accompanying Radish south.”
“Our caravan departs tomorrow at dawn,” he said. “You can simply up and leave the Grange?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll catch you on the road in a few days.”
She’d thought this through, her ready answer told him.
Then she pivoted on her heel and, with her stride sure, disappeared into the crowd—leaving him no opportunity for refusal.
But even if she’d stayed, would he have done?
For here was what was clear—she’d come after him.
Whatever it was between them, she couldn’t leave it, either.
Magnets.
For ten years, they’d had large bodies of water and continents between them, giving the impression the pull between them had diminished and disappeared.
Hope against hope was all it had been.
He and Artemis were far from finished with each other, that was clear.
Yet where could it possibly lead? Nowhere safe, of that he was certain.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SOMEWHERE ON THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, A WEEK LATER
“Abaker’s dozen,” came a voice as gravelly and time-worn as the road they were presently traveling upon.
From her mount beside the wagon, Artemis squinted and began counting sheep.One … two … seven … ten …
Thirteen.
“Mr. Scunt, you have a gift,” she said, all ladylike generosity, when in reality her molars wanted to grind together in deepening frustration. She could be a gracious loser, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
From the other side of the wagon bench drifted a skeptical snort, which, over the three days since she’d caught up with the caravan, had been Bran’s mode of communication regarding most everything.
“Me mam always said it were a gift I had,” said Mr. Scunt, with a humility that didn’t quite match the roguish tilt of his wide-brimmed hat.
No matter.
He was good company.
Better company than the man sharing the driver’s bench with him.
The sky a wide, open blue above, it was a beautiful afternoon to be riding, unlike the previous two days of rain and slosh.
Still, she shouldn’t have insisted on being here.
She understood that.
Though it hadn’t been precisely wrong to insist on continuing the terms of her bargain with Sir Abstrupus, it wasn’t precisely right, either.
