She always did that, refused praise as stubbornly as she refused rest, taking whatever burden was placed before her and carrying it as though the weight belonged to everyone except herself.
I thought of her in the smoke, her face blackened with soot while arrows struck the clearing, shouting at men twice her size to leave sacks of grain and keep moving. I thought of her standing over Gilda with blood to her elbows, of frightened children reaching for her hand, of the strange fierce woman who had arrived from nowhere and somehow become part of every future I imagined before I had realized I was imagining one.
There had been a time when I believed wanting nothing was the same as being safe.
Aelfwyn’s death had taught me how quickly love could become an empty place inside a man, and for two years I had guarded that emptiness as though grief itself were a vow. I had thought that to want again would be to betray her.
Yet Darcy was not standing where Aelfwyn had stood. She had made another place entirely, and God help me, I wanted her there.
The knowledge should have sent me to my feet, instead, I turned toward her.
Firelight moved across her face, catching in the dark strands that had escaped her braid and warming the soot along one cheek. She looked exhausted, and so unbearably alive that something in my chest tightened.
Darcy’s breath caught. Neither of us spoke. There was no wound to tend now, no battle waiting beyond the trees, no excuse for the way I looked at her or the way she looked back.
I lifted my hand slowly, giving her time to turn away. My fingers touched her cheek, and for one heartbeat she went still, then leaned into my palm.
All day I had watched people run toward her for help, reach for her strength, ask her to carry one more fear, one more wound, one more thing.
This was different, she was choosing to come closer.
I bent my head. The first touch of my mouth to hers was almost careful, because some foolish part of me still believed I could stop there, could take only enough to know what I had spent so many days trying not to want. Then her fingers curled into my tunic.
The restraint I had been so proud of vanished as I kissed her again, deeper this time, and she came toward me with a soft sound that went through me like an arrow finding the gap beneath my mail. My arm closed around her waist, drawing her nearer until the cold air no longer fit between us, and for one moment there was no Norman army, no lost hall, no smoke staining the sky.
There was only Darcy. Her mouth warm beneath mine, hand fisted over my heart, the faint taste of ale and the softer warmth beneath it.
I had kissed my wife beneath summer trees and beside winter fires. I knew what it was to love a woman, knew what it was to lose her, and had believed that part of my life buried so deeply no living soul would ever touch it again.
But this was not memory, Darcy was not memory. She was here, stubborn and warm and alive in my arms, and the wanting that moved through me was not grief dressed in another face. It belonged wholly to her. That frightened me enough that I almost pulled away.
Then Darcy rose onto her toes and kissed me back, and I forgot fear. My hand slid into the loose hair at the nape of herneck as I held her there, not because I thought she might leave, but because for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wanted something with no thought of duty attached to it.
I wanted this woman. Not because she had saved my people or because she had stood beside me in battle, and not because I owed her anything at all. Simply because she was Darcy.
When at last we drew apart, I did not go far. Neither did she. Her fingers still gripped my tunic, and her breath warmed my mouth while mine came far less steadily than I would ever have admitted to another man.
For a moment she only looked at me. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, and the astonishment in her face pleased me more than it should have.
“Well,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
Her smile had barely begun when Gilda groaned behind us.
Darcy turned so quickly she nearly knocked the ale over. The older woman was shivering beneath the blankets. She pressed the back of her hand to Gilda’s forehead, then reached for the bandage, and I saw the instant everything changed as she peeled away the linen.
The flesh surrounding the cut had swollen, angry and hot, while a thin red line had begun creeping upward along Gilda’s arm.
“Wulfric.”
For the first time since I had encountered her, I heard fear in her voice.
Twelve
DARCY
By midnight,Gilda’s fever had climbed high enough that I stopped pretending I wasn’t afraid.
