Just this one tiny space of time, that's all I want,he reasoned numbly,to watch her smile, to listen to her laughter—to feel what it's like to be warm again....
Stiff from sitting in one position for so long, he levered himself to his feet and stowed away his drawing materials.
He had just tied off the final leather thong on his saddlebags when he espied a splash of blue pinafore half concealed behind a boulder, and he was surprised to find dark, solemn eyes peering up at him from Meggie Kearny's pale little face.
"Shouldn't you be eating breakfast, girl? I can smell those johnnycakes from clear up here."
The little girl glanced back at the campsite, catching one pink baby lip between small white teeth in indecision. Garret expected her to dart away like a startled mouse, but she didn't. She only looked at him with eyes far too old in a child's innocent face. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the little girl held out her hand.
Garret looked at it a long minute, then carefully took it in his own.
Small, so small and fragile, her fingers felt in his, so damn tiny and helpless. He wanted to snatch her up in a crushing hug, to dare anything to try to hurt her. He wanted to jerk his hand away and ride hell for leather as far away as a horse could carry him.
Instead he let her lead him down the flower-starred hill to where Ashleen was waiting.
Chapter Thirteen
The sky dragons were locked in combat, slashing at the night with talons of tempered lightning, their battle cries the distant echo of thunder. Freshly awakened from troubled dreams, Ashleen huddled under the quilt listening to the storm buffet the wagon, the canvas snapping with the same sharp sound as the sails on the frigate Windsong.
Prickles of unease ran down her spine, not entirely from the knowledge of how flimsy was the shelter the wagon offered.
Even if she had been tucked away in her cell in the convent, with thick stone walls that had withstood the rage of kings, she would have felt the shameful urge to bury her head beneath the pillow, her fear of storms one last shadow from her childhood she had never quite been able to conquer.
Her only source of comfort the past two years had been that when the heavens thundered a terrified Meggie would allow Ashleen to stroke her brow, smooth her glossy dark hair, and whisper words to soothe them both.
Tonight Ashleen needed that familiar ritual more than ever before. Not only to ease her dread of the storm outside, but to calm the tempest Garret MacQuade had loosed within her from the moment he had walked into camp this morning, his sensitive artist's hand engulfing Meggie's smaller one.
He had seemed so embarrassed and disarmingly vulnerable standing there, staring at the toes of his scuffed boots. His voice was gruff but whiskey-warm as he said, "Don't mean to intrude. Meggie here seemed to want me"—his eyes had flashed up to meet Ashleen's, a dull red staining his cheekbones—"I mean she wanted me to come down here and..."
Ashleen had tried to laugh, to tease him, but her own awareness of the passion that had jolted them the night before had been too intense to be denied. Feeling every bit as uncomfortable as he was, she turned to slosh hot coffee into a tin mug, thrusting it into his hands as she hustled him to an upended box.
Their fingers had brushed for a heartbeat, but the sensation of that callus-roughened skin against hers had made Ash's heart slam against her ribs, made her fingers shake so badly a splash of the coffee had dampened his denims, bare inches away from that part of him that had been so hard, so intriguing, pressed against her in the dew-sweet grass.
With a distressed cry she had scooped up the edge of her apron, hastily moving to swab up the spill. Garret's hand had flashed out, roughly circling her wrist, yanking her hand away. But even in her innocence Ashleen sensed that the groan rumbling low in his throat had little to do with the coffee, and much to do with the feel of her hand brushing so intimately against him.
Even now, tucked beneath the coverlets, surrounded by sleeping children, heat sluiced through her at the memory of how that hard-muscled thigh had felt beneath her hand, the stricken, fiery expression that had pierced her from Garret's eyes.
A crash of thunder made her jump, and she looked out at the raging sky through the small hole in the end of the tight-drawn canvas. Maybe this was God's way of showing his disapproval of such wanton thoughts, as thoroughly as any scowl from Sister Bridget's keen eyes ever had.
But at least Sister Bridget had never battered anyone's eardrums with tantrums that shook the very heavens.
A stirring sound from the other end of the wagon made Ash sit up, draping the quilt around her. With an instinct gained in countless nights of walking the length of the wagon in the darkness to tuck little bare feet back under coverlets or straighten small bodies hanging half off of the feather ticks, she made her way to the corner where Shevonne and Meggie slept.
Carefully Ash smoothed her hand over Shevonne's shoulder, tugging the covers beneath that firm chin. Then, ever so carefully, she reached past the older girl, fully expecting to feel Meggie's tiny form rigid with terror, her eyes pools of tears reflecting images of monsters more horrible, more fierce than anything a mere adult could imagine.
Instead Ashleen's hand connected only with heart- stopping emptiness—a tangle of covers already cold with the night's damp chill.
Desperate, Ashleen searched the narrow tick with her hands, her heart sinking when she jammed her finger against the wagon's side board.
God in heaven, where could Meggie have gone? Stumbling over trunks and crates, raking her shins through the thin fabric of her nightdress, Ashleen made a hasty search of the wagon. Her hands quaked as she hurriedly lit a candle and held it aloft. The glow played over Liam, his lashes resting on his cheeks, his thumb stuck securely in his mouth in that most secret vice the little boy hid so valiantly from Renny. Beside the younger boy Renny slept, arms flung hither and yon, eyes suspiciously swollen, as if from crying.
Shevonne was patently oblivious to the storm, a crown princess never stooping to take notice of such vulgar goings-on.
Only shadows lurked in the rest of the wagon, their dark forms dancing on the canvas like a demon band.
They seemed to jeer at Ashleen, as if they had leapt out of some nightmare to snatch Meggie from her very bed.
"Sweet Mary, Mother of God, where could she have gone?" Ash whispered, her imagination running wild. It was then that she noticed a flap of the canvas loosened, the tugging of the wind revealing a narrow slice of the night beyond it.
