Her eyes came open. Wide, breath uneven, cheeks flushed from the cold or from something else.
She looked at him without the armor for the first time since he'd known her. Just her face, entirely present.
"So," she said quietly. "This is what lips feel like."
He went still.
She wasn't being arch. She wasn't making a point.
The words came out soft, slightly stunned, the voice of someone who had arrived somewhere unexpected and was simply noting what it was like.
She had never been kissed before.
He stood at the well and let that register while she looked at him with her braid coming down and water drying on her face. Her expression was the expression of someone who had just discovered something and was turning it over with both hands.
She stepped toward him.
Her hands came up toward his chest. Not grasping, not urgent, the slow deliberate reach of a woman who wanted to understand something better.
He caught both her wrists. Gentle. Firm.
She stopped. Looked at him.
"This was a mistake," he said. His voice came out rough. He didn't fix it. "I apologize."
She blinked. Something shifted in her face, the wonder still there, now with something else moving into it, something sharper.
He released her wrists and stepped back.
Cold air between them. The gap was two feet and exact and he held it.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she picked up her basket from the edge of the well, turned, and walked back toward the keep at the same pace she walked everywhere.
Fox appeared at the corner and fell in beside her. She didn't look back.
He stood at the well and watched her until she went through the door.
He went to find Fergus.
Not because he had anything to say to him. Because the alternative was following her through that door, and he had taken exactly one step in that direction before he'd caught himself and turned toward the stables instead.
He told himself it was the sensible choice. He told himself this with some conviction, and almost believed it by the time he reached the stable door.
Fergus was there, checking the shoe on the bay gelding. He looked up when Anthony walked in, read whatever he saw, and looked back at the hoof.
"North boundary's clear," he said. "Donal rode the eastern ridge this morning. Nothin' to report."
"Good."
The horse shifted its weight. Fergus moved to the next leg.
"Callum finished his patrol," Fergus added. "Both ways. He was in a fine mood about it."
"He'll live."
"Aye." A pause. "She's inside. In case ye were wonderin'."
