I shook my head. “I am wary of pretty faces.”
She laughed. “I like you, Robbie. I was going to say”—and she lowered her voice—“Keir pines after Jade. He keeps asking me to ask you if she has a man or if one of you is her lover.”
I tensed. Any notice of Jade always caused my hackles to rise. “She is unwed. And none of us are each other’s lovers. But I will add that Tessa and my sister were as good as married. And none of the five of us subscribe to the church’s teachings on that.”
Our conversation grew hushed again. She asked me about the church, about Rodwin, and I explained my role in Sheridan, how in some way or another, all of us had been a kind of outcast, Jade and Ilsit both being the severest kind.
“It seems a dreadful faith,” the lady warrior mused. “I am sorry you have lived that way for so long.”
“Well, we have had each other. May I ask you a question?”
“Please. I enjoy speaking with you.”
Her guileless attitude was disarming. As I drew in breath to speak, I realized that I had treated Reed with distrust and even unkindness. Yet I had, to a woman who called him brother, confessed a great deal about myself and my family. I wanted to ask what a Helmsman, a Tintarian, a Vyggian, and a man who seemed to be half of the latter two were doing on a penitents’ pilgrimage from the low country to Perpatane. But I was conflicted with my catharsis. I should be more careful. I had been so open with her in the past weeks.
I said, “Why does Reed think I am a piss-poor criminal?”
She squinted, not understanding. Then she replied, “Oh yes, hedid call you that. I don’t know what bee has stung him of late. He is out of sorts. He is usually not so rude. I’m sure you’re a wonderful criminal.”
Laughing, I said, “I really am, but I won’t tell you why or how and lose your generous supposition that I am wonderful.”
“It probably is that he finds you attractive, but I am unsure.” Her words were spoken more to herself than to me, but she looked me up and down from her seat on her big horse, a mount even taller than Zara. “I mean you’re a comely woman if I may say so. That could be it.”
I lifted a hand from my reins to say that, yes, she could say so, praying the casual gesture covered the heat on my neck and the eagerness I felt. Before she could continue, I offered, “I think we just irk each other. He must be several winters younger than me. I doubt that he?—”
“He is nearly thirty-four. Only a few winters older than me. What is your age?”
Seven winters younger,I thought, but I was unsure how I felt about it. “Older than that,” I said.
Evangeline went on, looking at the everlasting line of wagons ahead, “He must want to bed you.”
My chest was splotched with pink. I pursed my lips to keep from smiling like a lunatic. I was behaving like I was Fox’s age.
“What are you talking about?” came that voice I had come to think of as smoke. If smoke could make sound, it would be his voice.
34
NOW: VICTORY
Iflinched, parsing over our recent exchange as Reed drew his roan up next to Evangeline’s, him seeming to have come up from the end of the wagon line.
“We’re talking about a man who wants to bed Robbie,” Evangeline answered, smiling at him before she turned to me and winked.
“Lot of those on this caravan,” he drawled, his eye flitting over to me and then away. “But the midwife doesn’t want to own up to that.”
I turned to speak to him but was distracted by the absence of the wagon that had been on Evangeline’s side, where Reed now rode. It must have pulled ahead or fallen behind.
“She surely has more on her mind than admirers,” scoffed Evangeline, but the corners of her mouth were tipping upward. “So those admirers should not expect very much from Madam Robbie.” She gave me another wink.
“I have said the same,” he agreed. “I have even advised her of having a care for her wiles, but she throws them around with little regard for these men.”
“So a woman should take responsibility for a man’s attraction?” Iasked, clipped and perturbed, leaning slightly to see him around Evangeline.
Reed continued to look at the road ahead. “In no way did I say that.”
“Whatdidyou mean?” asked Evangeline.
I was pleased at the annoyance in her voice, though it was laced with affection. She cocked her head towards him, waiting.
