32
NOW: SEDUCTIONS
We had been on the road for two moons, and summer faded into fall. Evangeline’s presence was a priceless reassurance as every penitent was under the army’s constant surveillance. Our wagon full of only women drew every soldier’s eye. Her daily visits were a blessing. One day, the one-eyed man took her place.
It was a hot day, autumn rarely a cool season for the low country. Ilsit and Jade were napping in the shade of the wagon, more so out of being overheated than actual exhaustion. Tessa was driving with Fox and Daisy perched beside her on the bench. Tessa had insisted that Fox, also looking wilted from the heat, sit beside her until the latter part of the day was upon us, bringing some relief with a setting sun. It was not a practice we liked to keep, having more than three of us in the wagon, not wanting to continually strain our horses.
Zara—tied to the back of the wagon—and I walked in silence, horse and woman. I was dead on my feet. I had not had a turn to nap or to drive yet, and I wanted to ask Tessa to trade, but I felt guilty when my place was the worst of the deal.
“Here, madam midwife,” came the salt man’s voice, startling me out of my waking slumber.
He was sliding off his roan as he spoke. He pulled the horse alongside Zara and held out the reins to me.
I stared at him as we walked together. “No thank you,” I said and then looked away from him to face the back of the wagon, peering inside to see Jade and Ilsit dozing on quilts.
He remained walking beside me, but I did not acknowledge him.
The wagons around us rumbled along. Sometimes I could hear the muted voices from those inside or also walking at the backs of their wagons. Occasionally, a weak breeze would carry a man’s shout from down the line.
After a quarter of an hour of walking together, he spoke.
“It is just a peace offering, Robbie.”
I said nothing.
He had tied his own horse to the back of our wagon, and with Zara to my right and his horse to his left, we had a sort of privacy from everyone else on the road, even in the bright sunlight.
I guessed he had chosen this side of me because he could see me better, his lone eye being on his right side.
I turned to him to see his own head tilted towards me.
“Can we ever be at peace?” I asked. I heard the ridiculousness of my question as I asked it. Yes, I could not trust him. Yes, I could not begin to know him, but would it not be a better strategy to play nice with him rather than anger the one person, outside of my family, who knew my secret? But then I remembered that he had said I was a poor criminal and I bristled anew.
“You had no right, by the way,” I added.
“No right to what?” he asked, his voice still pitched low.
“You had no bloody business,” I went on. “No business whatsoever, accusing me of—of being what I am when you are too the same way. I will never understand your being so accusatory when?—”
“Maybe I wanted to warn you?—”
“You called me apiss-poor criminal easily caught,” I went on, nowwarming to my own temper. It felt good, after weeks of keeping my mouth shut, an eye cast over my shoulder, sneaking around at night with mother’s moss. “You have some nerve pretending to understand who I am and what I am to my town. I will have you know I am a prolific and successful outlaw. You called me clumsy. And yet, salt man, you do not even know me. You knownothingabout me. You know my name and my magic. That is all.”
I could have sworn something like offense or hurt flashed in his eye, but then it was gone and his regular ease was back, that polite mask of indifference in place again.
“You are correct, madam,” he said. “I do not know you at all. But perhaps you could at least call me by my name. Reed is an easy name to remember.”
“You told me you were content with being my salt man.”
There was a small smile on his lips. “As you like,” he acquiesced. “Perhaps one day I will earn the sound of my own name from your lips.”
The words he spoke were simple, but they had an effect on me. I found myself thrilling at his implication that me saying his name would be something he would have to earn.
“And how do you plan to earn it?” I blurted.
Without breaking his pace, he turned his face fully to me. “What do you suggest?”
I had bedded a few men in my time and flirted with plenty others. And as handsome as I found him, I knew that objectively there had been better-looking men in my past. And it was not his missing eye or the scarring around that area that detracted from his having a perfect face. It was more so that his nose was rather long, and there was a flatness just under his eyes between his cheekbones and nose that made him look rather hawkish, even when his mouth—a sly, mocking thing—was relaxed. He was a good-looking man, but certainly not the best I had ever seen or even coupled with.
