Page 88 of Blood of the Thistle

“We would have gotten there eventually,” Etta said tightly from somewhere behind him.

“Aye, but I’m pleased to arrive there before she was harmed.”

“And, um, that might be enough for one day,” Anastaisa announced.

Bram looked up at her again. She was already gathering the reins, her attention fixed rather too carefully upon her hands, and he understood at once that she imagined he meant to continue the lesson now that she’d managed to mount, to teach her how to guide the mare and properly keep her seat. Yet whatever enthusiasm she’d shown only moments before had vanished with remarkable speed. Apparently, learning to ride had lost some of its appeal the instant it threatened to require more of his hands upon her.

He’d accepted her polite distance at Craig na Coille, assuming it was the natural aftermath of his rejection. She was courteous because it was her nature, and she avoided his gaze because he’d given her every reason to. He disliked it, but he understood it.

This, however—this sudden tension at his touch—he understood rather less.

Indifference should not have made her go so still beneath his hand. It shouldn’t have widened her eyes when he looked up at her or sent that faint wash of color across her cheeks, and it certainly shouldn’t have made her abandon a lesson only seconds after successfully mounting the mare. Neither could he forget the bright, unguarded smile she’d given him with her delighted I did it, before recollection had shuttered it away.

Mayhap he’d been mistaken about what Anastasia had accomplished these past several days. Mayhap she hadn’t ceased feeling anything at all, but only had become better at hiding it.

I’m keeping my distance—isn’t that what you wanted? she’d said not four hours ago.

After an initial self-criticizing thought of I’ve created a monster, Bram began to suspect that her indifference might be every bit as manufactured as his own.

What had seemed so certain beneath that violent storm no longer felt simple at all. He had meant to push her away, believing it was the only honorable choice. He couldn’t protect her on the road, not truly, and when the heavens themselves had offered her a way home, his own selfishness could not be the thing that kept her in his dangerous world.

But the danger here was different. There were no English soldiers hunting them, no need to sleep with one hand on his sword. At Craig na Coille, hundreds of people stood ready at the sound of a horn. His fighting men guarded the walls, and his own kin had taken her under their collective wing.

She was safer here than she had been at any moment since appearing before him in that rain-soaked English wood, which left Bram with considerably less reason to maintain the distance he had so deliberately put between them. If he no longer needed to push Anastasia away for her own safety, he could not rightfully explain why he should continue pretending he wanted nothing from her, denying himself even the companionship he had come to value so greatly upon the road.

Unless it was no longer Anastasia he sought to protect.

Another storm might come, another strange disturbance in the air that opened whatever impossible path had brought her here in the first place, and the next time it might not simply fade away and leave her standing still at his side.

He’d already tried to make her hate him—a cruel mercy meant to make her leaving easier. He’d told himself it was for her safety. But as he watched her, the sharp edge of that lie returned. It wasn’t her safety he feared for, but his own sanity when she was gone.

He scowled at nothing in particular and looked up at Anastasia, who shifted uncertainly in the saddle, glancing down at the considerable distance between herself and the ground, possibly hoping some obvious method of getting herself safely down might present itself.

Without a word, he caught her firmly about the waist and lifted her from the saddle, setting her squarely upon her feet. Anastasia made a small sound of surprise and caught briefly at his shoulders for balance, and for a moment his hands were still at her waist and her breath was warm against his jaw.

He released her almost at once.

“Aye. Ye’ve learned enough for today.”

Anastasia stared at him, plainly bewildered by the sudden change in his mood. “Okay. Thank you.”

That maddening politeness again.

Bram thrust the mare’s reins toward Etta, turned on his heel and strode back toward his horse.

Behind him, Harsain made some low remark that earned a burst of laughter from the others, but Bram neither heard nor cared to know what had been said. He swung into his saddle, wheeled the horse toward the keep and left them to follow at their leisure, irritated with himself, and most especially irritated by the dawning suspicion that the distance between them, which had seemed so necessary only days ago, might now be the very last thing he wanted.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Can I just tie it up like this?” Anna asked Etta, referring to the skirts of her borrowed clothing. She gathered a handful on either side and knotted the wool loosely, lifting the hem several inches. “Or is that frowned upon? Showing so much skin?”

She didn’t want to get the hem wet, but she dearly wanted to wade into the sea. Her hands were filthy after spending the last several hours weeding long tracts of cultivated ground with Etta and half a dozen women and their children. Her back ached from bending, there was dirt beneath every one of her fingernails, and she’d cut one knuckle hours ago, though the little scrape hadn’t bled too much and bothered her only when she flexed her hand. She’d braided her hair that morning, which had mostly survived intact despite the wind’s best efforts to pull it apart, and somehow she’d managed to keep the léine and kirtle reasonably clean, and did not want it now soaked with sea water and slapping cold against her legs.

“Mam would have fits, I’m sure,” Etta replied, glancing up from the narrow beach, beyond the rocky rise toward the distant walls of the keep. “But then, her vision is nae what it once was, so...”

She shrugged impishly and followed Anna’s example, knotting her own skirts at either side until her legs were exposed nearly to the knee. They had already stripped off their shoes and hose and abandoned them together upon a flat rock well beyond the farthest reach of the surf.

“If she could see all the way down here,” Etta continued, straightening and arranging her face into an exaggerated imitation of her mother’s habitual severity, “I can just imagine her chastisement. Ye’ll nae ever snare a husband with such unseemly behavior.”