“Usually, I ride ahead to patrol in the mornings. I can see where we should make camp. Then I come back and patrol the caravan. Then I sleep in the afternoon in one of the army wagons. By nightfall, I am ready for night patrol. This tent I am using is an army one Iborrowed. And I’ll be borrowing it for the rest of this godsforsaken undertaking.”
“Why is?—”
“Because you’re spending the night with me every night until I say otherwise.”
“You can’t just take over?—”
“I can. I will. I already have.” His interruption was smooth, dismissive, even slightly apologetic. “I’ll be riding and scouting all day and sleeping with you at night. I have one of my brothers to check on you during the day. I am less worried about the sunlit hours. But the dark is up to me. I’m not letting you get more than an arm’s length from me when the sun is set. You understand, of course.” It was not a question.
“What of my family’s welfare at night? Did you consider them?”
“My brothers have that thoroughly sorted. They will be perfectly safe.”
I was at a loss as to what to say. I had seen differing sizes of army tents for lower-ranking officers who did not sleep in or under the wagons at night like their superiors. They were either for two men or one.
We rounded several of the army wagons with soldiers standing or sitting around them, card games in play, canteens and flasks out, hushed muttering and the occasional guffaw.
“It’s against caravan rules for me to have a woman in my tent, so try and keep your head down,” he said.
“What if Gerard is back here?” I whispered.
Reed stepped to place himself between me and the gathering of men, guiding me with a hand at my back towards rows of tents. “He’s not,” he said and offered nothing else. He pushed me slightly towards one of the tents. It was a single-use size and would barely fit two bodies lying side by side.
I squatted and clumsily crawled inside with the use of only one arm, the other clutching my quilt to my side. Once in, my initial assessment of the tent’s size was affirmed. There was justenough room for two people to lie side by side, but only if they were right up against each other.
“Do you want to sleep in your clothes?” I heard him ask through the tent.
“What?”
“I’m giving you the chance to disrobe. Do you want to sleep in your—underdress thing? We may near winter, but we are still in the low country and it can get hot in a tent.”
“You mean my shift?”
Reed did not answer me.
I was rather miffed at my being nervous to be in bed with a man when I was more than halfway through life. Folk always joked that seventy was a lucky age, and that was what most poorer people hoped for. I had never been truly poor, always having been fed and healthy, and I had always reasoned I might see an age closer to eighty. So at forty, I had lived little more than half a whole lifetime. For me to be so nervous to sleep next to this man, no matter how powerfully desirable I found him, was irritating. Squatting still, I undid the front ties on my dress and drew it over my head. Then I undid the laces of my little boots, short and tied off at the ankle. I folded my dress over my shoes and set these on the quilt I rolled out across the long square of the tent.
The opening flapped up and then Reed, less awkwardly than I, crawled inside. He sat back on his heels and eyed me in my shift.
The nearby campfires cast enough muted light for us to see by.
“I didn’t get a chance to fold my quilt in half to make my bedroll.”
“We’ll make a single one with your blanket and mine.” Without asking me, he reached beneath his short-sleeved tunic and the hooded leather jerkin and pulled them off. Then he brought his feet up and started to undo the laces on his boots. “Probably unwise to take these off in case we are attacked, but I am tired and I want to sleep in the most comfort I can.”
I sat staring at him. Any ire-induced confidencedissipated instantly. The god snakes—their heads sitting on the sides of his own, their tongues flicked out curiously, tasting the hollows beneath his cheekbones—were coiled artfully along his neck, shoulders, and upper arms, their tails looped over the skin just above the crook of his elbow. Over his heart, a simple triangle was inked, the point of it directed upward, a line through it. I realized that was an old symbol for Brother Air. His body was lean, the musculature stretched and taut everywhere. Had his shoulders and waist been a bit thicker, he may have been built more like his brother or even Dermid. But instead, his frame had aVshape to it, the shoulders still broad if not bulky, a tapered waist and slim hips giving way to long legs.
I was dying to touch him.
Reed undid the belts he wore with their short swords that lay along his thighs. He undid the one around his left thigh where a shorter, broader blade like a hunting knife rested. He stacked them with his shirts and boots near the end of the tent where I sat. Then he unfolded a blanket I had noticed and tossed it to me. “Spread it over us whenever you’re ready to lie down.” He leaned forward on his hands, hovering his face just over where I sat confused and unsure. “I’m not going to try anything. This is not a ploy to get you in my bed. I am serious in my protection. I’ll pleasure you over and over, again and again, some other time.” Then he flattened and rolled his body so that he was lain down, face staring up at me, arms crossed.
I couldn’t help but stare down at him, noting the lines and angles of him, the tension in his forearms resting on his frame though his expression was one of disregard. I found myself wondering if he would take his eye patch off.
Numbly, I scooted my rear farther down and then stretched my legs out before me. Still sitting up, I spread the blanket out over both of us and then leaned backwards with it brought to my chin.
We lay there, arms and hips touching due to the fact that my own hips were wide. Then I asked, “When?”
“When what?”
