Nay, he had not. He had stopped short of that. And she could feel him.
“We are stopping.”
To be sure, the wagon drew over to the edge of the track and one of the men—Mordoc, his name was—came to the opening.
“We have found a good stopping place. It is raining too hard to go on. Stay in the wagon. We are under the trees and will make camp.”
“Yes,” Orle said when Darlei did not speak.
The wagon shuddered. Orle came to Darlei’s side.
“We will spend the night here, I do not doubt. Now will you take something to eat? Darlei, I am worried for you.”
The very prospect of food turned Darlei’s stomach. Might that be caused by hunger, under the sickness?
They sat side by side on the cot in the wagon and Darlei sought to choke down a bit of barley cake. They listened to the men trying to care for the ponies and set up camp in the driving rain.
Darlei wondered what had happened to her life. Once, she had been strong. Confident. Sure of her place as a princess. Her choices had been taken from her. Sent to wed with Rohr MacMurtray, she had for the first time been subject to command.
She’d fallen in love.
But nay, that did not describe it. She’drememberedlove. Reached out with both hands and reclaimed it.
To no avail. For now, she was being sent like a prize cow to someone else. An old man.
That did not mean she could allow herself to become weak. Was she not still the girl who had possessed such strength,beneath all the misery? Just as, all along, she had been Deathan’s love.
Some things, she was beginning to learn, did not change, not even as the wheel of fate turned. Beside her, Orle dozed, exhausted by the hard travel. Outside, the rain crashed down. No campfires tonight, and the men would be miserable. They—
What was that?
Voices, barely audible above the rain. Raised voices. A challenge. A query. Then a voice she would know even when she was dead.
She flew to the opening at the end of the wagon.
A curtain of silvery water fell, obscuring everything to mere blurs. To one side beneath the trees, the ponies had been picketed. Someone had bent a number of tree boughs and thrown a skin over for shelter.
The men, including Father, emerged from that cover now.
A man stood facing them, rain sluicing him down. Tall, lean, and facing away from her, he had a pony behind him and a sword in his hand.
Nay. Oh, nay, nay,nay—
Her heart leaped at seeing him—leaped impossibly—and then slammed so hard in her chest that she could feel it in her teeth.
He had come. By all the powers of the earth and sky.
He spoke to Father, who posed facing him. Though she heard the rhythm of his voice, she could not catch the words.
A challenge.
Nay, oh nay.
Everything she had feared on a level so deep she failed to comprehend it arose inside her. She launched herself from the wagon out into the crashing rain.
Deathan’s head jerked around and he looked at her. Soaking wet, his hair darkened by the rain and his clothes dripping,she might not have known him, except she would know him anywhere. In the dark. If she were blind.
He had followed her. Just what she’d begged him not to do.
