“Mayhap not at first, but you did not give me the chance.”
The words struck harder because he had said them before. Weeks ago, when he’d asked where I came from and I had refused, he’d told me I had not given him the chance to believe me, and standing there now I understood that his hurt had never truly been about secrets.
It was about trust. About whether I believed him strong enough to hold the truth.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Beyond the trees, someone began singing near one of the fires, a low tune I didn’t know, and a child laughed before Gilda’s unmistakable voice told somebody to stop being a fool.
Ordinary sounds. Living sounds. The sounds of people who had survived one more day.
Wulfric listened to them for a moment before looking back at me.
“I believe you.”
I blinked at him through the mist.
“That was fast.”
“Nay.” His eyes held mine. “It has taken weeks. I have sought another answer since the day I found you,” he continued. “For your speech. Your garments. Your odd ways. None fit.”
I wanted to laugh with relief, to step into him and feel his arms close around me. Instead I remained where I was, because the truth had not erased the distance between us. It had revealed it.
Wulfric’s gaze lowered to my empty hand.
For one foolish second, I wished I could show him the brooch, give him proof of something I could hold and understand.
The cold had worked its way through my cloak and into my bones, yet that wasn’t what made me shiver, because for all I knew, the brooch was gone forever. Or maybe it would appear at some random time and drag me back to my own time. And for the first time since I’d arrived, I didn’t want to go back,
Fifteen
DARCY
By morning,everyone in camp knew something had changed between Wulfric and me, which was irritating, since neither of us had actually done anything except tell the truth beside a stream and then spend the rest of the night avoiding each other.
Gilda noticed first. She sat near the largest fire with her injured arm tucked beneath a thick wool cloak, the color finally returning to her face after several frightening days, and watched me ladle pottage into a wooden bowl as though I were a particularly disappointing entertainment.
“You’ve put barley in that twice.”
I looked down to see that she was right. The pottage, which had begun the morning as a reasonable mixture of oats, barley, leeks, onions, and something Anya insisted was turnip, now contained enough grain to repair a section of Roman road.
“I’m improving it.”
“By making mortar?”
“People need strength.”
I handed the bowl to Wystan, who eyed it suspiciously.
“Can I have one without the improvement?”
“No.”
He sighed with the deep suffering of a boy who had recently survived Norman soldiers, fire, hunger, displacement, and now, worst of all, breakfast.
Beyond the cooking fires, the camp stirred beneath a pale autumn sky, the ground silvered with frost where the trees allowed the cold to settle. Smoke rose through bare branches, straight at first and then bending toward the east as the wind strengthened, carrying with it the smells of wet wool, wood ash, horses, and bread baking beneath an overturned iron pot.
Wulfric stood with Godwin near the edge of the clearing, listening to one of the scouts. He wore a dark green tunic beneath his cloak, the wool fitted close across shoulders that had been occupying far too much of my attention recently, and his hair, damp from washing, curled slightly at the ends where it brushed his shoulders. There was nothing unusual about the sight of him standing among his people with a sword at his hip and worry carved between his brows.
