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“How long have you been in here, making this decision for me?” Balancing on one leg, she dragged one stocking up her leg, tying the garter off, then shoved her foot into her boot, tightening it as fast as the frantic fire in her fingers would let her.
“Several hours.”
She froze, looking up from the laces on her boot to him, her jaw agape. “You have been in here for hours? In my room? What have you been doing?”
“Watching you sleep.”
Her jaw dropped farther. She didn’t even know how to react to that. “Why?”
“It filled the time.”
Who sat around and watched another person sleep?
It wasn’t right and it felt weirdly intimate. Her lying in bed, vulnerable. Probably snoring. And she didn’t care for the absurd tingle that spun downward around her spine at the thought of her asleep and him watching her.
Fear. That was what him creepily watching her as she slept should instill in her. Not the other thing she was refusing to admit to the possibility of.
Her head dipped back down toward her legs as she switched to balance on her right foot, dragging her stocking up her left leg. “You arse. We could be miles closer to Seahorn by now.”
“Think of it this way.” His voice was laced with bored disdain. “If I hadn’t opened the curtains, you would still be sleeping. Left to your own devices, it appears as though I’m not the one failing you at the moment. You are.”
Jerk.
Not that he was wrong. But pointing out she was the one holding them back wasn’t exactly magnanimous of him.
She yanked her other boot onto her foot.
“You also need to know”—his fingers tapped the table next to the plate of food—“the horse you came in on is not fit to travel today. It came up lame last night.”
“Ballocks.” Her fingers slipped off the knot she was trying to tie at her shin and she spun to put the toe of her boot on the edge of the bed, then yanked at the leather laces, wrenching the leather tight to her leg. “And there are no other horses available?”
“Not healthy enough for the long day ahead.”
Boot tied, she looked over at him. “So that means…”
“You’ll be riding with me again.”
“Dammit.”
His mouth quirked tightly to the side, a flash of anger spiking under his cool façade. “Yes, well, you know what the other option is.”
Her mouth clamped shut. This again.
Leave her to make her own damn way to Seahorn.
She’d heard the threat from his lips one too many times. For what he did to her last night, the heat she’d seen in his eyes when his hands were on her, he’d gone right back to the rude, brittle ice statue he was.
She snapped her heel onto the floorboard and turned from the edge of the bed.
“There is one more thing before we go.”
Her hands threw up at her sides. “What?”
“You are eating.” He nodded his head toward the plate next to him on the table.
“We don’t have time to eat.”
“We do.” His right finger lifted and he tapped the edge of the plate. “I also plan to deliver you to Seahorn not fainting every five minutes for lack of food.”
