Chapter Five
“Susanna, please come here,” Gerhard asked. He had been traveling with the princess for three days, and although they’d been blessed in that they hadn’t been approached by anyone of the original party that might have been looking for her, she was still silently protesting him. “I want to keep you in sight.”
She appeared, though slowly, back into his line of sight, glancing toward him very briefly before turning her back and continuing to ignore him. If she didn’t stop being so cold to him, he was going to lose his mind. She literally talked more to the damn pig than she did to him. “I’ll show you how to make a fire, eh?”
He tried to send her a helpful smile, but that was only ignored. Since he had woken up the morning after fishing her from the river, she had never seemed to settle in his arms like she had after they’d made love. Every attempt he’d made to be loving toward her led to her immediately drawing away, and even when he hugged her to his body at night, her body went frigid.
Rennio hadn’t joined them yet, but he could almost hear him make a joke about married life beginning already. The night they’d made love, they had fit together like two puzzle pieces. Now they’d obviously spun out of alignment. All he had to do was get her back to looking at him in the right light.
Susanna turned away from where she was washing up in the cold river water, which she had stepped into so that it came up to her bare ankles.
Just as he opened his mouth to try to get her attention again—despite the fact that he was certain that she had heard him quite well the first time—she bent down and patted her pig, who rooted around on the riverbank. “It sounds like the commander wants to start forcing me to do more things today, Grunter. Doesn’t that sound charming?” she asked the pig conversationally, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
He ground his teeth together for a moment as he tried to gather his patience. It was true that he didn’t like anyone opposing him, but she seemedto take a delight in not doing anything she was told. If he asked her to come, she’d stay. If he told her to eat, she’d refuse. If he told her to wash, she’d go to sleep. If he told her to go to sleep, she’d stay up all night, trouncing around outside the wagon with the pig.
She might have called that pig ‘Grunter’ but he had been calling it ‘Bacon’ since the first morning, still upset that she hadn’t let go of it in the river. It had frightened him to death, because he’d had to hold her to him and pull them both out onto shore with only one arm. She’d had both of her arms on the pig.
“Susanna, come here and start speaking to me, or else I swear I will start to lose my temper,” he warned.
Finally, she stomped toward him. “Why would I care a pittance over your temper?” she demanded, which was the first thing she’d said to him in easily forty-eight hours.
At least the silent treatment had ended. “Because you do not want to feel my hand on your saucy little bottom,” he threatened firmly. “That’s why. You’re acting like a child about all this.”
“About all what?” she retorted, putting her hands on her hips, “You wanting me to thank you for freeing me when I’m still your prisoner?”
He rolled his eyes and stuffed pine needles underneath the firewood, then pulled his flint out of his pocket. “If I didn’t go out of my way to mistreat you, they might have expected something. It’s folly to think that I’ll never see anyone in my army again, and when they see you—and they will—I don’t want them to even consider that you and the princess are one and the same. Now they’ll never suspect I married you after how I let everyone treat you. They would look at you and never suspect that you and the princess are one in the same. They’ll just assume you look similar, by some odd chance. That goes with Rennio as well—he had to facilitate your escape, so he made sure that he treated you the worst.”
She shook her head firmly, stubbornly remaining angry. “I think he was just looking for an opportunity to treat me like filth,” she pouted, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And I’m not just angry because of how you treated me—although it was horrible and you have to be the worst suitor that’s ever been born—I’m angry because you can’t just decide my future for me! I don’t even know where you live.”
He had been clacking his flint against the stone, trying to create a spark that would light the pine needles, but now he stopped. Though he stayed crouched, he straightened slightly. “I’m not exactly a peasant, princess. I may not be a duke or a prince, but I am a man of good means. I’ve had women chase me down, begging me to take them to wife.”
She raised her chin saucily. “Then why didn’t you take one of them?”
“I’m not having this argument,” he sighed, and then continued sparking the flint, eventually earning himself a small flame that quickly spread to hisfirewood. “Your opinion on this matter is inconsequential! It’s done. You’re with me, you’re under my protection, and I won’t argue about it any further. For God’s sake, you might be carrying my child as we speak!” he reminded firmly.
He looked up and saw her face suddenly turn red. He actually thought it was very cute, because it made her freckles far more pronounced than they usually were, but he could never tell if she was angry or embarrassed. Her silence after his statement was disconcerting.
“Did you sleep with me to bind me to you?” she demanded, wincing at him with what looked like pain.
“Susanna,” he sighed. “No, I did not. Come and sit—”
She spun her heel and quickly began to tromp away, stomping dramatically back toward the water and then down the bank.
For a long moment, he had decided that he wasn’t going to follow her. She would eventually come back, hopefully done with her tantrum.
After five minutes passed and she didn’t return, he began to mutter to himself that he was going to have to give her another—and this time, much sterner—talking to about just walking off in the middle of the woods. It unsettled him to see her go out of sight. Although they hadn’t had an easy couple of days, after all, she was still precious to him. Her presence made him feel at peace, and when she was away from him, he felt so full of unease he couldn’t stand it.
Time ticked by, and he chalked it up to his own paranoia and perhaps the fact that he was, on the whole, too controlling. She might have been his woman, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have the freedom to walk a few feet out away from him.
After nearly an hour without her return, however, he had worried himself into knots. Something had to have gone wrong. The fish he had caught in the river for their breakfast was already cooked, and he had been certain that she would have been back by now. It was cold, and the bank was icy and covered with snow. What if she slipped and hurt herself?
He picked up his sword, just in case, and buckled the leather sheath around his hips before he took off, following her footprints left behind in the snow, jogging to catch up with her.
When he heard the howl of a wolf, the hairs on his neck stood on end and he put the wind under his feet, nearly slipping across the ice and snow in several points as he jumped over logs and bushes to follow the sound and the remaining footprints.
Another low, resounding howl rung out in the cold air, and he heard a loud squeal.
He drew his sword and launched himself into the clearing ahead of him, shouting, “Susanna!” He saw the princess wielding a stout branch in her defense, with the frightened pig running about around her skirts, trying tohide itself away from the four wolves closing in on them.
