I looked down and saw the stub of a candle and a horse blanket on the floor by my door.
“You slept here?” I asked.
“There are no locks on your door.” He shrugged. “Be quick. I’m going to ready the horse.”
When I got to the small stable, Otto was finishing with the saddle. “Good lot he does,” he said, cocking his head toward the sleeping stable hand. I watched Otto, familiar already with the sight of the back of his head. He was capable and calm with the horse, taking care with its comfort. He moved easily, though he was likely stiff from sleeping on the floor outside my room. He checked the cinch and turned back to me, speaking over his shoulder. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have told you to say you’re my wife.” He turned to face me. “Or—”
I didn’t think about it. It wasn’t a decision. I leaned forward and putmy lips on his. His head was angled, and it was not a perfect match. I found my mouth half pressed against his cheek. Rough warmth. My breath caught in my throat when I realized what I had done. I took a step back, glancing, worriedly, at the sleeping stable boy in the corner.
Otto looked at me, quizzically—the faintest breath of a smile—and then turned back to the horse, running a hand along its neck.
“Better get on with it,” he said.
The embarrassment coated me—a roiling in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I had always made such a fuss about appearances and honor. And here I was, with the royal advisor, who was helping me on a rescue mission, kissing him. I was supposed to be a distraught mother. I was supposed to be crying fat tears and beating my breasts. Overturning every stone. Working tirelessly. Sacrificing endlessly. Thinking only of my children. All I did was supposed to be for them.Live, live, live, the very same as my heartbeat. And yet, I was no different than the woman the alewife had supposed me to be.
We were moving quickly on the horse and did not speak. I couldn’t help but feel, sitting behind Otto, avoiding looking at the whorl of hair on the back of his neck, jostled against his back again and again by the pounding feet of his stallion, a shift in his posture. He was stiffer, more formal, reverting to some version of the Otto I’d met before. The stranger in the woods. The shared saddle suddenly too intimate.
After two hours of hard riding, when the sun was fully low in the sky, Otto pulled the animal off the road and directed it toward a small stream. Wordlessly, we climbed down. I went first, stood by a small tree, listening to the dribble of the brook. The horse took long drinks of water. The sun lit up the little copse around us, beginning to warm the dew-covered leaves and the cold earth. I shivered.
Otto took his time managing the horse, checking its hooves and then the fit of the saddle. He withdrew two apples from the saddlebag and handed one to me. We still didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say.Unable to meet his eyes, I polished the fruit on my skirt. Polished and rubbed its skin, though I had no appetite. I heard him crunch on his apple.
A sound of a boot in the brush. I looked up and he was right in front of me. My breath hitched. He reached a hand out, tentatively, and put it on my waist. Then, he pulled me to him. Closer, closer until our bodies were nearly touching. With the palm of his hand on the small of my back, he pressed me to him and kissed me. Slowly. Steadily. His mouth, his hands, warm in the cold morning. He tasted of apple.
After a long moment, he stepped back. A little twinkle in his eye. He took another bite of his apple.
“Well,” I said, flustered. I smoothed my skirt down with one hand. Held my apple helplessly in the other. My heart beating madly. I was warm. It had been a long time since I had kissed anyone like that.
He still had not said anything. He raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “Yes.”
He nodded.
I wasn’t sure what he had asked me. But, in that moment, I felt certain of my answer.
It might have just been: Maybe apples aren’t so bad after all?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
After our pause—dew-covered grass, babble of the brook, apple-flavored kiss—we had another short ride. Back on the horse, I was glad Otto couldn’t see my face. Was it a failing that, as I rode forward to find my stepdaughter, my thoughts were on myself? I had some ease, and some embarrassment still, around what had happened. There were whole swaths of my life I had written off, unknowingly sentencing them to the past. Now I thought of my own future. And marveled how one kiss—one inane, stupid grappling—could cause a woman to open up her entire self, her entire hereafter, for examination.
Which is not to say I had no nerves about what lay ahead. I oscillated between rejoicing in an imagined success––coming home, with Elin, triumphant––and the simultaneous certainty that we were pursuing a dead end.
But, of all these ruminations, of all my wild thoughts, danger did not cross my mind. Blood was not something I considered.
Elin and Simeon’s inn was bigger and noisier than the one we’d come from. Sitting at the edge of a small village, the building had acentral courtyard, which was filled with coaches and clamor. When we entered, an ostler came over to take our bags. Seeing we had none, he directed us toward the innkeeper, who sat behind his desk in a cave-like entry hall.
Otto described what we were after, and though I thought I saw some flicker of recognition on the man’s dour face, he shook his head. “Don’t know ’em,” he told us. “Now, either let a room or make way for folks who will.” He added apleasethe way one slaps on a bonnet when headed outdoors.
Otto reached into his shirt and withdrew the coin pouch. He held it out. “Don’t know them?” he repeated.
“Don’t know ’em,” the innkeeper affirmed but extended an upturned hand.
Otto put one coin in his fingers.
“Still don’t know ’em,” the innkeeper said.
“Good god.” I stepped forward and grabbed the ledger on the desk.
