The night passed slowly. For the most part, time seemed to stand still for Annista since she’d taken up her post in Tempest’s stall. With the deepening of the dark silence, it seemed to creep like a creature with broken limbs.
Alan did not attempt to make conversation, for which she was immensely grateful, being in no fit mood for idle talk. He merely sat with his back against the wall and his long legs drawn up out of the way.
A curious man, her husband.
Her husband.
Once he fell asleep, his dark head nodding forward onto his chest, she had ample opportunity to look at him. To study him, gaze her fill, even as she listened to the horse’s labored breaths.
Indeed, she looked her fill.
He slept quietly without snoring. His hands—fine, long-fingered hands—rested in his lap. His black hair fell over his forehead, and in the golden lantern light his eyelashes looked absurdly long.
Sometime past midnight, when Annista had fought back some of her hunger and tried to stretch her cramped limbs, she still had not wearied of studying her husband.
Had she been at leave to create the perfect male—scoop one up and form him out of clay perhaps, even as the Lord Almighty had done—could she have made anyone more attractive than Alan MacKallan? She thought not. A pleasure he was, from head to foot, so broad in the shoulders and slim at the hips, so long of limb with the canny bones of his face that formed a visage perfect of proportion. Nothing soft in it, yet somehow—
Beautiful.
Those dark, level brows, the strong nose and proud jaw. The eyes themselves of smoke gray, now safely closed.
She stroked the horse’s neck and counted his breaths while watching the man.
How had she never guessed a mere male could be so appealing? There was the blacksmith back home, aye, but half his appeal lay in his muscle.
Alan did not lack that, either.
The thought—or rather the fact that she had noticed—shocked her. Exhaustion must be getting the better of her. And yet—
She would not complain about seeing her husband without his shirt. It occurred to her—as his wife—she had that right.
She should put her head down on Tempest’s shoulder and sleep. But nay, one of them must remain awake in case the monster came.
She had Mother’s knife safely in her pocket, if he did.
She fully intended to keep the promise she’d made Mother—now more than ever.
If only she could stay awake.
She must have dozed, for she came awake abruptly to find nothing had changed. The lantern still burned, shedding soft light. Alan MacKallan still slept. Silence blanketed the stable.
Silence.
Tempest’s labored breaths had stopped. That was what had wakened her.
Nay, och, nay.
The horse’s shoulder was still warm beneath her fingers and his eye open when she reached for him.
“Nay,” she cried again. “Do no’ dare give up.”
Alan jerked awake when she spoke and was on his feet before she was, staring over the door of the box into the stable.
“What?”
“Get him up. We maun get him up.”
Alan blinked at her in consternation and then looked at Tempest, tumbling to it. She already had the horse by the mane, pulling even as the stallion took a single, deep, wavering breath.
