She had always been upfront about her appreciation of his looks. He had never grown used to it and still blushed when she complimented him. She still called him the beautiful moon, and even now reached out, as if enchanted, to touch him.
“There are eyes upon us, Disa,” he warned.
A quick glance at the window, and she lowered her arm with a sigh. “Who can blame her?” she said and gave him an unrepentant grin. “I’d do the same.”
While he wasn’t as forthright as her with his regard, he too watched Disaris as she peeled off her dirty gown and left on the thin shift with its missing patch of fabric at the hem. She’d garnered as many welts and bruises as him over the last week, and she was still painfully thin, but he was certain he’d never beheld a lovelier woman. The places where water had splashed the shift and turned it transparent revealed a hint of a thigh, the slight curve of her waist and the shadow of her nipples. Bron’s mouth went dry.
The memory of her in his arms in his tent at the encampment washed away every other thought, and he turned away from the cottage to hide the very obvious proof of his desire for Disaris from the widow Zaras. While the change in position concealed him from their hostess, Disaris had an unimpeded view.
She paused in dipping her washcloth in the trough and wiping down her arms. Her gaze traveled from his face, over his chest and midriff and stopped on his erection for a long moment. No maidenly blush painted her cheeks, but her brown eyes had darkened until they were nearly black, and the points her nipples made in the shift became even more obvious. The smile she wore was both teasing and seductive. “If that’s for the kind woman housing us, you’re a dead man,” she said.
His hoot of amusement echoed through the courtyard and did nothing to lessen the lust that slowly boiled the blood in his veins. Disaris joined in his laughter and threw her washclothat him. He caught it, his chuckle fading as a light breeze suddenly swirled around them, heralding twilight’s arrival and an expectant solemnity settled between them. “Will you turn me away if I come to you, Disa?”
Tears sheened her eyes for a moment but didn’t fall. “I turned you away once and regret it to this day. Never again, Bron. I will never turn you away. I swear it.”
They hurriedly finished their rough baths. When Disaris argued they didn’t need to take turns in the bedroom to complete their ablutions, Bron had snorted his disbelief. “Do you really think nothing will happen between us if you strip naked to wash? I’ll have you bent over the bed railing before you have your shift off.”
While the sight of his erection hadn’t made her blush, his uncharacteristic bluntness did. She clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shhh! She might hear you.”
He drew her hand down, so tempted to guide it to his swollen cock, but they stood in the hallway outside the bedroom with the chance of Zaras walking in on their argument at any time. “She’ll hear a lot of things if you don’t hurry, get washed and get dressed. When you’re done, I’ll do the same and meet you in the kitchen.”
Washed and outfitted in borrowed garb that was too short in the trousers and too large in the shirt, Bron joined both women at the table set for three. Zaras had presented him with a satchel containing their dirty clothes. “I won’t have time to launder these since you want to leave tomorrow morning, but this will make it easier to carry.” She stared at him, dressed in her husband’s clothes, with a wistful smile. “Keep them,” she said. “My Jopas would like the idea of someone else getting use out of them.”
Bron made a note to himself to leave a generous portion of the coin he still had on him with Zaras before they left the next day.
If the widow was aware of the tension simmering between her guests at supper, she didn’t comment on it. Bron knew, by the smell of the pottage in his bowl, that Zaras was a good cook, but if she had asked him how it tasted, he couldn’t have told her. It might as well have been horse feed for all that he paid attention.
Next to him, Disaris happily chatted with the other woman, finished off her bowl of pottage as well as his and downed her portion of small ale with gusto. “I think that was the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” she announced. Zaras preened at her compliment and brought out a small cake to share for dessert. Over pastry and wine fermented from the previous year’s summer fruit, they chatted and Bron distracted himself from the anticipation of the night ahead with questions for Zara about Gatiset.
“Legis said it’s too dangerous to go into Gatiset, but we need supplies for our journey home. A horse too if there’s one to be had for a good price. Is there another town or village nearby?”
He needed to know what else surrounded Gatiset in case he and Disa—and hopefully Luda—had to flee from Daggermen pursuers, either on foot or on horseback. If the gods were kind, they could use the Merisack stone in the same way they’d used the Hayman one. Cimejen might be waiting on the other side, but at least he’d shown a hesitation in killing him that Bron was sure the Daggermen wouldn’t.
Zaras rose from the table. “Ill be right back.” She returned with two leaves of parchment, inkpot and quill. “I can draw you a map so you’ll have something with you. I don’t know much about the land beyond a few townships. Jopas and I were never ones to travel far, but it could help you with certain landmarks.”
Her map was basic but gave Bron exactly what he needed, a view of the topography around Gatiset and a layout of the town itself.
“Gatiset still has the fastest horses for the best price,” she said. “It’s how the Daggermen make their money.” She worried a graying curl that had escaped her kerchief. “Though I’d tell you to go elsewhere, even if you have to pay more. When the Daggermen took over the chancellor’s estate, they killed him and his entire family. As Legis said, they’re dangerous to deal with.”
Bron looked over the map she’d made, noting where she’d drawn the chancellor’s estate adjacent to the river that curved around the town. He now had the location of the Daggerman’s den and would visit it in the small hours, when the town slept and sentinels were hopefully few. He glanced at Disaris who gave a quick nod and carefully gathered up the two pages.
“Thank you, Zaras,” she said. “This will be of great help to us.”
They helped her clean up after supper and closed the house for the evening. Bron walked the property, checking that everything was in order and nothing looked odd. He didn’t think anyone had yet reported his and Disaris’s arrival to the Daggermen yet. Tomorrow might be a different story.
When he returned to the bedroom he’d share with Disaris, she had lit the candles in the two sconces attached to the wall. Light bathed her in a golden corona, and he leaned against the door to admire the shadowy shape of her body beneath her simple shift. Her hair was loose, freed of its customary braid she wore coiled and held in place by the bodkin he’d given her years ago. “Where’s your bodkin,” he asked softly.
She smiled, gesturing to the table behind her. “There, safe and sound.” She lifted a lock of her hair. “I can wrap my hair and put it back in if you want.”
He left his place at the door to stand in front of her. She smelled of the soap Zaras had given them to wash with earlier and a scent unique to her that he’d never forgotten, even when he’d been sure they’d never meet again. His hands flexed with the need to touch her, but he held back, savoring the in-between moments where anticipation and reward met and danced around each other. “Leave it,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you with your hair this way.”
Unlike him, she suffered no reticence in touching. She reached up, her hands leaving heated patches on his neck and throat, his jaw, and the deep scar lancing his cheek as she caressed him. “I liked that Legis called me your woman. He’s right.”
Her words wrenched his insides as he recalled why Legis was actually wrong. He grasped her wrist, bringing her palm to his mouth to plant a kiss there. “For tonight, I will believe Ceybold is dead, and that I will make love to his widow, not his wife.”
She stilled, her face a little paler than before. Her fingers closed around his. “I am not and never have been Ceybold jin Pasith’s true wife,” she said, the finality of her tone sure and unwavering.
Bron was certain in that moment his heart ceased to beat. His fingers tightened around hers, then instantly let go when she winced. The question that had ridden his back for the last five years—why had she married Ceybold—no longer had bearing if what she said was true. The desire that sang in his blood for the past three hours cooled before the tide of shock rolling through him. “What are you saying, Disa?”
