Page 44 of Blood of the Thistle

She shook her head once, pressing her lips tightly together.

His brow wrinkled in response, and while he lifted her hand and dumped the berries into her palm, he prodded, “Tell me.”

“I thought you left... after all,” she admitted, still not meeting his gaze.

She busied herself with the wee feast, turning away from the weight of his regard.

Her confession landed with a heavy thud, and the nascent sympathy he’d felt for her sharpened into something raw and urgent. The sensation was foreign—a stinging ache of pity, of protectiveness—that derailed him as surely as a washed-out bridge halted an army. For a long moment, he simply let it wash over him, watching the fine tremor of her chin and fighting the startling urge to put his body between her and whatever terror she pictured in his absence.

He’d spent his life in the company of men who wore grief and pain like a second skin, who gutted their wounds and showed nothing, least of all this kind of naked fear. Anastasia was not like those men, of course, nor was she like the women he’d known—the tough, earthbound, uncomplaining folk of the highlands, his own mother included, who had mourned their dead and then plowed under the sorrow with a kind of willful brutality. This woman was possibly from a time beyond his comprehension, yet her fear—raw, undressed, trembling—was the most ancient thing in the world. He felt a tightening in his chest, a desire to reach out, to offer something more than silence, and it embarrassed him to realize he did not know how. He’d not ever been taught to comfort someone. But he remembered, unexpectedly, his father, the old Mormaer, placing a hand on the brow of a dying horse, speaking in a voice so gentle he’d seemed a different man entirely.

Bram found that voice now, or something like it, and said gently, “I dinna leave, lass. I said I would nae.”

She nodded. A moment passed, and then she made a small sound—something between a laugh and a scoff—and pressed the back of her wrist briefly to her mouth, looking away. “Sorry—I just... I was scared.” She swallowed and added, “Which of course is ridiculous since just yesterday I thought I should return to York by myself.”

“Fear has a way of improving a body’s judgment,” he said quietly.

She sent him a fleeting glance, showing a small but tight smile, as if to acknowledge his attempt to console her.

While Anastasia disappeared into the trees briefly, Bram searched around the immediate yard for a denser rock, upon which he might break the hinge of the shackle. He walked around the far side and searched under hazel brush crowding the stone and timber of the hut, but without luck.

When he came around the front again, he saw that Anastasia had positioned herself on a fallen log just outside the hut. Her heel was tucked up onto her knee while she attempted to address the damage from the thorn. She prodded gently, winced, then angled her face closer for a better look. The thorn was still somewhere inside, he presumed, and likely a shifting needle of pain that was undoubtedly more than a trivial nuisance.

He asked, in the same careful tone he used moments ago, “Will I have a look, lass?”

She gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I didn’t want to bother you with it. But I can’t see so easily.”

Bram lowered himself to one knee before her. The damp earth soaked through his trousers, cold seeping into his skin, but he ignored it. Anastasia’s foot hovered between them, as filthy as was his own.

She stiffened almost imperceptibly when he took her foot in his hand, but she didn’t pull away.

He cupped her heel in his palm, his calloused fingers rough against her smooth skin. The weight of her foot in his palm was lighter than he expected. He turned it slowly, angling the arch toward the pale morning light. The thorn’s entry point was a dark slit, the edges swollen and angry, the surrounding skin flushed with heat. A thin line of dried blood traced the curve of her instep, cracked now like old paint. He could feel the thorn beneath the surface, a hard, shifting knot under her flesh, just deep enough to resist the pinch of fingers.

Pressing gently with his thumb just behind the wound, he felt the tiny sliver shift beneath the skin. He applied both thumbs then, urging it to move yet more. He pressed a little more firmly.

Anastasia’s foot jerked so suddenly that it nearly escaped his grasp altogether. A startled laugh burst from her, bright and wholly unexpected in the quiet morning, bringing his sharp gaze to her.

“Sorry!” she said at once, still smiling. “I’m sorry—I’m terribly ticklish.”

She quieted almost instantly, in the face of his scowl.

“Just... okay, try again. I’ll behave this time.” She rolled her lips inward, likely to conceal what remained of her grin.

He regarded her with open suspicion, as though she’d deliberately invented this affliction to annoy him, before returning his attention to the thorn, carefully pressing the skin with both thumbs. No sooner had he begun than another involuntary laugh escaped her, and her toes curled tightly as she struggled to hold still.

“God’s wounds, lass,” he muttered, unable to keep a certain lightness from his scolding.

Her laugh was captivating, the charm of it not lost on him. The sound rippled through the morning’s hush, incongruous with their exile and the hardship that had marked every hour since the escape. The brightness of it caught him so unaware that for the briefest instant Bram fancifully imagined that she was indeed from another time, and had called up a memory from then—a better one, where joy was not something rationed or suspect.

He watched her and realized he was smiling as well. It was not a thing he did often, or ever, outside of taunt or threat; the muscles of his face felt foreign in the new arrangement. He thought he should dislike how easily she had done it—undone something in him he had not known was wound so tight. In truth, he couldn’t recall when last he’d heard laughter that was not tinged with malice or madness. He had forgotten that such a thing was possible.

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded solemnly, insisting, “Okay, I’ll stop. Please continue.”

He paused, his gaze fixed not on her foot but on her. She gripped the log, tilted her face to the sky with her eyes squeezed shut, concentrating. The pulse at her throat fluttered, and though she tried to be solemn, a smile betrayed her. The barest hint of a dimple appeared in her left cheek. The way the pale light traced the line of her throat caught his attention, and he found himself simply watching her breathe, steady and measured.

He had thought himself immune to such distractions. Months of deprivation, pain, and discipline had left his senses blunted, the appetites of the flesh dulled to near extinction. Now, he wondered if he’d only forgotten.

The memory of another time, another life, swelled in him now—a memory of hands meant not only for killing, mouths meant not only for the bellow of command or the snarl of pain. He realized with a jolt of embarrassment that he was staring, that he hadn’t moved in some time, and that she must be aware of it.