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She turns to leave, and I shout after her. “If anyone asks, I fell in heroically!”
She laughs again, softer now, setting off at a brisk pace up the path. “I’ll hopefully be back before you can properly regret this.”
The moment she’s gone, I waste no time slogging out of the creek, water streaming from me, my ass fully at the mercy of the breeze. I clutch the oilcloth in front of me like a shield and try not to think about how ridiculous I must look, emerging half-wild from the water.
Once on the bank, I do my best to wrap the oilcloth around my hips. I’m acutely aware it’s stiff and smells of creek muck. I decide not to examine that thought too closely. It’s doing the job. Mostly.
Infuriatingly, even as I shiver in the cold air, I find myself smiling.
Not because any of this is amusing, but because she sees me at it—working, trying, failing in full view—and meets it with laughter instead of pity, with help instead of a scolding.
That spitfire of a woman meets me line for line and punch for punch, and even now, with my pride in tatters, I want her nearer. She keeps pace with me as no one else ever has, and the sound of her laugh warms me more than the sun ever could.
I hear her first—quick footsteps on the path, the faint rush of breath she gets when she’s hurried. My hand tightens on the oilcloth at my hip.
She stops short.
Her attention settles everywhere except for my face. For longer than is polite.
“What took so long?” I ask, snapping her out of a daze.
“Oh—” she says at once, far too quickly. “Well… I—um… I started a fire in the hearth for you.”
I blink. “You… what?”
Her eyes flick over me, slow and unmistakable, tracing down my chest, the lines of my torso, the trail of hair leading down past where she can see.
Then she snaps her attention away again.
“I thought,” she says, adjusting the bundle of clothes with great seriousness, “you might appreciate drying off in front of a fire before heading back to the castle. It seemed prudent.”
“Oh,” I say, after a beat. “How… nice of you.”
She risks a glance up at me then, lips twitching, clearly pleased she’s thrown me off balance. “Ye’re welcome.”
Her eyes drift again.
“Rosie,” I say gently, “you’re staring.”
She snaps her eyes up to my face. “I’m not.”
“You most certainly are.”
“I’m assessin’,” she scoffs—and then, without thinking, says, “Ye’re well defined.”
Her eyes widen. Colour blooms fast and fierce across her cheeks. I can’t recall ever seeing her blush.
“I mean—” she starts, then stops. Clears her throat. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I smile despite myself. “Have you never seen a man’s torso?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again, and finally says, helplessly honest, “Not one as well… shaped as yers.”
She turns redder still, cheeks competing with the red of her hair.
“Saints above, and below,” she mutters, more to herself than me.
She thrusts the clothes at me. “Here. Take them. Quickly. Before I say something worse.”
