With her hands on her hips, her hair blowing around her head in a blaze of sunlight, big blue eyes staring up at him from out of that elfin face, it was so reminiscent of one of those days that a fierce wave of longing hit him square in the chest. He wanted to go back. He wanted to catch her against him and never let her go.
How could he have thought he could forget her? She was a part of him. It was his own bloody tragedy.
“Magnus?” Her brows furrowed.
He shook off the memories and gave her a sheepish smile. “Aye, you did, but I didn’t mind. I liked listening to you. So why now have you run out of things to say?”
She shrugged. “You were always different. You never made me feel like I was saying the wrong thing. I was always comfortable around you. Well, not always, but that was later.”
He wasn’t following her, but he knew there was something important in what she was saying.
She saw his confused expression and tried to explain. “I haven’t run out of things to say, I just say the wrong thing.” When he looked at her disbelievingly, she gave him a wry smile. “Earlier today I was in the solar with the other women and they were discussing the pig they were roasting for the feast, and before I knew it I was going on about the first time I’d seen a piglet born and how incredible it was—needless to say, not something they wanted to think about before our meal.” She pointed down to a large rock on the edge of the water. “I’m like that baby gannet down there—see the black one in the midst of all the yellow-headed ones?—a little odd.”
He frowned. “Nonsense.”
But as he thought back on it, he realized he had noticed that she’d rarely interacted with the other young girls when they were at the Games. “What about Muriel?”
“Muriel’s different. We have things in common.”
“Don’t you have things in common with the others?”
“Some things.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I want things that they don’t.”
“Like what?”
She thought about it a minute and said simply, “More.”
Helen could see from his expression that he didn’t understand, which wasn’t surprising, as she didn’t know how to put words to the “wayward” part of her that wanted to follow her heart, and to the vague sense of guilt and unease that came over her when she listened to the other ladies who were content to do what was expected of them.
“It’s nothing,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m just being silly.”
He took her arm and turned her to face him. “Nay. Tell me. I want to understand.”
That’s what had always made him so different: the willingness to try. “I want to live a life beyond a castle gate. I want to have what you have.”
“What’s that?”
“Freedom. Choice. The ability to travel beyond a gate without someone sending out a search party.”
He gave her a sharp look, but then smiled ruefully, seeming to understand what she meant. “We are all bound by convention, Helen. I have my duty to the king—and to my clan.”
“But you like what you do and must take satisfaction out of being good at it. You wouldn’t wish to be a scholar or a prelate rather than a warrior?”
“Good God, no!”
His expression made her laugh. “What if there was but one path before you? One road that you had to take? Sometimes when I listen to the other women talk, I start to feel this weight coming down on me, and I get so antsy I have to move, I have todosomething.”
He studied her, perhaps seeing her more clearly than she did herself. “I should think being healer to a king is doing something.”
She smiled. “Making sure he eats his vegetables hardly qualifies. You and I both know I’m here as more of a precaution. I don’t know what I want, but it’s more than living behind a ten-foot-thick wall like this one.” One corner of her mouth lifted wryly. “And definitely more than a woman in my position should want.” She felt a prickle of shame for her selfishness. “I’ve a good lot in life; I should be content with it.”
“Is that why you refused me?” he asked quietly.
She startled, surprised not only that he’d raised the subject, but also that he’d made a connection she never had before. “Perhaps that was part of it,” she admitted. “Your mother…I worried that I could never be like that and didn’t want to disappoint you. I-I wasn’t sure I was ready.”
She felt his eyes on her. “Perhaps you will feel differently when you do marry and have children.”
It was what she was supposed to want. And she did. But…
