“No, I won’t. I don’t want children. I never want to be a mother.”
The slight smile he usually wore when he was around her faded. “You sound certain.”
“I am. I will not be a good mother, and I won’t take the chance of screwing someone up.”
“Very well,” he said, “first of all explain what you main byscrewing someone upand then tell me how you know what kind of mother you will be?”
“Because I…why all the questions?” she argued, stiffening in his arms. “Why don’t you question Fin like this?”
“Because I was not thinking about having children with Fin.”
“What?” She was already staring at him, so when he spoke, she was watching him. He was serious. He was also insane. Stark raving mad if he thought—he could force himself on her and get her pregnant. Oh, no! What if he tried? What if that was his intention all along? She should have kept on running. So what if she was in a bog? It had to end somewhere.
“Wolf, I would prefer not to ever be a mother, and I certainly don’t want to be forced. I don’t love you. This is not my home. I will not settle here.”
He folded his arms across his chest like a shield against her and scowled. “Do you know how to get back to your home, Camelee?”
For some crazy reason, she didn’t want him to put a shield between them. She wanted to run her fingers over the steel muscles shaping him, kiss along his granite jaw until it softened toward her.
“Help me find a way,” she said in a low voice facing his chest.
“Is that what I am here for?” he asked, looking down at her.
She wanted to close her eyes against him. The truth was she’d been afraid out there alone in the bog. She was relieved he had come for her. She was afraid here, wherever here was. She was thankful for his consideration and kindness toward her.
They rode until they reached the camp. Fin was there to greet them. He smiled, like some dashing rogue. But he didn’t win her over. She didn’t care if they’d found Hild’s mother mauled by a bear. If Fin had something to do with it, she didn’t want him to get away with it.
She dismounted and hurried to the little girl, mostly to be away from Fin’s watchful eyes. When she reached her, she saw another woman with her.
“Where’s Genevra?” she asked Wolf when he dismounted and reached her.
“Genevra has a master,” he told her. “Lord Alfred of Bristolton. He asked for her attention.”
“Of course.” Camelee grumbled under her breath. “Hewanted her attention, instead of her giving it to an orphaned child.”
“Would you prefer I killed him?” he asked, unruffled, as if he could go do it and come right back to finish their conversation.
“Of course not!” she breathed, horrified at the suggestion. “We don’t go around killing people because we disagree with their stance on certain issues.”
He knit his brow while he studied her, and then he smiled. “I had my tent set up for the girl. I think she will be more comfortable.”
Camelee looked around at the large tent, made of sewn animal hides. She swallowed. It was about the size of a city bus. A tent like this would take a long time to make, many animals…
“Are you unwell?” he asked, laying his hand on her shoulder. “Come, inside where it is warm.”
“This isyourtent? You sleep here alone?”
“I rarely stay in it,” he told her. “We do not usually put it up. I made an exception for the girl.”
She marveled at it. “It’s—”
“And for you,” he added quietly.
Her belly flipped as she stepped inside. For a mad moment, she celebrated his fondness for her, but reality settled quickly over her—along with blessed heat from many candles lit on stands and hanging from rafters, precariously close to the top.
She was no longer afraid of having been kidnapped by a cult of maniacs in the twenty-first century. No. She was convinced more fully that she had somehow, magically been sucked through time and entered the horrific eleventh century—when a Dane was seated on the English throne.
As impossible as it all seemed, they had traveled long hours and not once had she seen anything in the sky except for birds. They’d traveled far and she’d only seen one or two houses. No buildings in the distance. New York City wasn’t this big. The English countryside in the eleventh century was. There were hills everywhere, most were blanketed by a thin sheet of snow.
