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“I’ve another debt to pay, mistress.”
His gaze dropped to the unguent
still coating her fingertips. A stride of his muscle-corded legs brought him close enough to catch her hand in his.
Her lips parted around a hot rush of breath. Almost thoughtfully, he placed the pad of his thumb on her lower lip, curling it down, his rough, clean skin on the fleshy inner side. Hot coils unwound through her body.
“How shall I repay it? What do ye want, Senna?”
“All I want,” she whispered, “is to go home.”
Home, where there were no wolves baying or soldiers hunting. Where the biggest river to be crossed was the murmuring brook between home and the stables, and the hardest bed she ever had to sleep in was the one she’d made herself by booking passage with the more expensive shipping merchant for last autumn’s Flanders drop.
Home, where the sun slipped away each evening through leaded glass windows, spilling dull green light across the ledgers at her copyist’s desk.
Where months passed with only the servants to talk to, until she had to let them all go too, when the debts grew too large.
Home, where silence reigned and even the ‘lucrative sheep’ were simply bright white specks on the sodden brown landscape of her heart.
His hand was warm curled around hers. “Is that truly all ye want, then? To go home?”
No, her heart cried. No, no, no.
“Aye,” she said dully.
He dropped her hand, and she barely remembered how to lift it again. They shouldered their packs and silently slipped under the cover of trees as twilight spread, leaving neither sound nor trace of their passing.
Chapter 20
“Praise God. A boat.”
Senna had the exact opposite reaction. “Oh, dear Lord. A boat.”
It was the third noontide after their escape from Rardove, and they were crouched above a river. On a small isle in the center of the rushing currents was a small village. Perhaps five little tear-shaped boats bobbed at the edge of their side of the river.
“A boat will make travel much faster. And easier.”
“We’re stealing a boat,” she clarified flatly. As if thievery was the reason for her protest.
“Aye, Senna. We’re stealing a boat.”
He started down the hill, hunched low, until he was near the riverside, then ducked down into the tall reeds and rushes. No one was to be seen on this side of the water, but on the other, villagers went about their business. A few women were washing clothes in the stream. A child in bare feet ran from one hut to another, calling someone.
Senna followed glumly in Finian’s wake. They couched amid the grasses, something I find myself doing with great frequency of late, she thought sourly.
It was still risky to travel during daylight hours, but not nearly as risky as traveling by boat in the dark, and apparently, travel by boat they must.
They watched as the villagers on the small island moved through their daily paces, keeping Senna and Finian trapped in the rushes. She felt like a young child, playing hoop and hide with her brother Will. Just the two of them, running around like wild things, Mama gone, Father may as well have been.
What grand games they had played, not realizing how their voices echoed back to them across the empty meadows. For a while. But soon, Will was taken—sent, she corrected swiftly—to be fostered as a squire, trained as a knight, a privilege and expense she herself ensured once she took over the accounts at age fifteen. Will’s education had lacked for nothing.
The boats bobbed as a gust of wind whipped down the river. She swallowed. Will had probably even been taught to swim, she thought sourly.
She rooted around in her pack and came out with the flask. Uncorking it, she threw back a swallow. It burned the whole way down. Finian flicked a glance over.
“I can’t swim,” she said.
“That should help.” He looked back at the river and the bobbing, sickening boats.
