Читать книгу Stealing Midnight - Tracy MacNish - Страница 11

The sound of the night was broken by the creaking, rattling wagon and the wheezing of a horse that’d been pushed beyond its limits. Olwyn Gawain knew it was time to stop running, if only for a few hours.

She reined Nixie in to a stop in a small thicket, where hopefully, no one would be around to ambush her when she, too, stole a moment’s rest.

Fatigue was a crushing weight on her shoulders, and her back ached from sitting on the bare plank of wood that comprised the wagon’s seat. Her belly grumbled, unsatisfied by the few bits of bread she’d managed to swallow every time she stopped the wagon to climb into the back to coax water and honey down her charge’s throat.

But he looked better, she thought with satisfaction. As she unhitched her horse, tethered her, and strapped on the feed bag, Olwyn allowed herself to be proud of her accomplishment. She’d saved a man’s life, after all, and her own with it.

No more wasting her life away, desperate and alone. She was seizing the possibility of something more.

The wet from the grass seeped into her homemade boots and touched her feet with chilly fingers, making her shiver as she finished the last of her tasks. With Nixie tended to, Olwyn let the mantle of her weariness slide over her, no longer fighting it.

The wagon creaked as it took her weight, and Olwyn slid into the narrow space in the center, wiggling beneath the covers and furs to lie beside the man who slept there. She shifted the blankets so they covered them both, and as she did, she felt his skin.

It occurred to her she was about to bed down for the night with a man who was completely naked.

Olwyn dismissed the indecency of it. Sharing their warmth was only practical, she told herself.

So why then could she do nothing but think about dark gold hair framing a Prince Charming face, a long, smooth, muscled body, and large square hands?

And there in the dark, in the cold, and completely alone, Olwyn blushed hot and red as she envisioned his most private parts.

He moved in his sleep, and her body molded to his as if made to fit against him. The nest she’d made for him was surprisingly warm, and heat seeped into her skin, relaxing her.

It did not escape her awareness that she had not touched another live human being since the day her mother left.

It felt so good to have his skin near hers, to hold him as she liked, and to give the simplest of affection: a hug. So she let her arm drape over his broad chest, and she held him to her.

Olwyn mentally named him her prince. And laughing at the fanciful nature of her imaginings, she let her mind wander down a path that was dangerous for all its allure.

She envisioned him waking, and added that it began with her kiss. Why not? It was her fantasy. She would have it as she liked.

And so she kissed her prince awake, and he fell in love with her from the start. He whisked her off to his castle, wooed her gently, and welcomed her into his life, his embrace. And of course, she added, they lived happily ever after.

It was a dream as nebulous as a bubble, easily popped with reality’s prick.

She well recalled the fear in his eyes when he’d looked at her.

Her prince stirred in his sleep, and a low sound of contented comfort came from his throat. It stirred her in a curious way.

“Do you like my body against yours, as much as I like yours against mine?” she asked him, emboldened by the knowledge that he could not hear her.

Testing the waters, she ran her hand over his chest, touched the small nub of his nipple, feeling the springy hairs there.

He sighed and shifted toward her.

She propped herself on her elbow so she could look down on his face, his handsome sleeping face. “If I kissed you, would you wake?” she whispered.

Smiling at her own fancy, she leaned down and kissed his lips. She’d meant it to be a quick peck, but his breath exhaled against her mouth, and so she lingered, inhaling his essence. His lips tasted of the honeyed water she’d given him, and they felt soft and alive.

She pulled back and touched his face with her fingertips, skimming over his features with a butterfly caress.

He made a sound in his throat, distinctly of pleasure. And so she kept stroking him, over his ears and down his neck. “You are alive,” she told him. “And soon, when you’re healed enough, you’ll wake.”

Olwyn stroked down his chest and over the narrow plane of his belly, felt the firm tautness of it, and growing bolder, ran her hand down his flank. She couldn’t help but admire him; he was beautifully made, like a sculpture, an Adonis of a man.

Her prince turned his head toward her, still sleeping, his breath warm on her face. And he sighed with another sound of pleasure.

“Come alive,” she urged him, and beneath her hand she felt the warm curve of his large thigh muscle as it ran down into his knee. “Wake and find your life again.”

He moved once more, curling against her warmth.

“Who are you?” she asked him in another whisper. “Are you my prince? Will you save me the day you come alive?”

She leaned down and kissed him again, a slow, gentle pass of her lips over his. All the while she stroked him like a cat, long, slow petting over his smooth, soft skin, admiring the taut, tensile strength beneath it, and the masculine shape of him.

And knowing it was so very, very wrong, Olwyn let her hand drift to where it ought not be unless she were his wife. It was the briefest touch, but she felt his warmth there before pulling her hand away, her face flaming.

He moved again, closer still.

“I am sorry,” she told him, her voice hushed with shame and hesitant with curiosity. “I should not have done that.”

She lay back down beside him, wrapped her arm across his chest and cradled him to her in an embrace that was less than chaste, but the best she could manage.

Hours passed before she found sleep.

Olwyn spent the next day like the first, following the map the trader had given her.

And by the time night fell, she began to feel safer.

Surely she was now beyond Rhys’s grasp; she’d taken their only horse. On foot, he had no chance of catching up to her.

Olwyn lit a lantern and pulled back the blankets to look at him. Still unconscious, the man’s color had faded once again.

The night was still and quiet around her, the sky thankfully clear, but lacking in much light as there was only the thinnest sliver of a moon.

She needed to get her charge by a fire.

Olwyn consulted her map again. According to the trader, there should be a small stone hut up ahead.

As she drove by, she passed tall standing stones. They were her markers, proof that she was on the correct path. Shivers traveled over her skin, prickling awareness of the ancients who’d erected the stones. They loomed like sentinels guarding the secrets of the past, of the Druids who’d peeled bark from trees, worshipped the sun for the life it gave, and left the timeless stones behind when their mortal bodies returned to dust.

Up ahead a dark shadow on the horizon suggested she neared a pile of stones, perhaps a cairn, or perhaps the shelter she sought.

Nearing it, her heart began to thud in nervous expectation, for she could see it was in fact a small, round dwelling, built into the side of a hill in the manner of medieval construction. There were literally hundreds of such stone huts dotting the English, Scottish, and Welsh countryside, a few occupied by humans, most inhabited by small animals.

She approached the structure in relative quiet. No lights came from within it, and as she drew even closer, intense relief slid over her like a warm blanket.

It was still abandoned.

She reined Nixie to a stop and, taking her lantern, hopped down to investigate.

Its hewn door listed to the side, and two tiny windows were on either side of it, as darkly blank as vacant eyes. The oiled skins that had once covered them hung in tatters, their torn, wispy remains moving gently in the night breeze. The part of the dwelling that protruded from the hillside was thatched, its floor merely dirt, but Olwyn would not find fault. It would provide them shelter.

She silently thanked the kind trader. He had not failed her.

Olwyn set the lantern inside the structure, and quickly got to work. Delighted to see that it had a fire pit hollowed into the hillside, she rushed to pull kindling and squares of peat from the wagon and immediately began building a fire.

Years of living without servants had taught Olwyn well; in a few minutes she had a fire burning in the pit, and was busy laying a pallet in front of it. When a makeshift bed had been laid, she grabbed two blankets, doubled them, and tacked them into place, using the iron pins that had once held the oiled skins taut. Hopefully that would hold in some heat and keep out the winds.

And then, taking a deep sigh of resignation, she turned her attention to the task of moving the man by herself.

She backed the wagon up to the door, and pulling, tugging, swearing, and hauling at the wraps around him, she managed to slide him from the wagon bed down to the ground. Rolling him, she heaved and pushed until he was finally settled on the pallet in front of the fire.

Completely exhausted, Olwyn leaned against his bulk, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. Her belly clenched with hunger, and she needed to get up, get to the wagon, unhitch, feed, and water Nixie, bring food, water, and more firewood into the shelter. But her body would not obey her, and despite her best efforts to stay awake, warmed by the fire and her relief, she fell fast asleep.

Aidan Mullen became aware of pain before anything else. His body felt as if it had been badly beaten. Every single inch of him ached and burned.

Too weak to even open his eyes, smells wove their way into his senses: fire smoke and earth, tanned furs and boiled wool, musky incense and sage.

The last thing Aidan recalled was dying. It came back to him in sickening detailed snippets of memory. The heaving, rocking ship. The throat that felt as if it were full of hot, broken glass. The burning fever. The spasms of wrenching, wracking convulsions. And the gradually encroaching black shroud of death, numbing him until there was nothing left.

His body remembered the pain, and he shuddered as the memories rolled through him.

Aidan slowly began to come more awake. He realized he was completely naked, his skin prickling with awareness against scratchy wool and silky furs.

His fingers twitched. His foot moved.

And beside him, a person shifted and sat up.

Aidan’s heart, already weak, nearly stopped. Where was he, and who lay beside him?

Aidan held perfectly still, eyes kept closed, feigning deep sleep. Fingers gently touched his neck, feeling for his pulse. Hair fell over his face like silk rain, scented with exotic incense. A cheek pressed against his, soft and most definitely female.

She whispered in his ear, a quiet, fluid stream of language he did not know, a lilting melody that sounded like a song. Her voice was sweet and slightly husky, and when she finished speaking, she sat beside him silently, stroking his cheek.

Aidan stayed motionless, but inside, his mind spun.

Who was this woman? What had happened after he’d slipped away on the ship? He searched his memory, but there was nothing there but a huge gaping black hole.

It seemed as if he’d died and awoken in another life.

There he lay, nude and covered in furs, before a fire and atop what felt like cold, hard earth. The woman beside him spoke a strange tongue, and touched him all too familiarly.

Before he could muse upon it further, she rose, patting the covers snugly around him before tending to the fire. Aidan slit his eyes, trying to see her through the fringe of his lashes, not wanting her to know he had awakened.

He could only make out her silhouette, limned by firelight. The light stung his sensitive eyes and he quickly shut them, but not before he had noticed her slim form, clothed in garments more suited to the Middle Ages than 1806.

He fought to stay awake, but his fatigue swept over him and he faded again, dreaming of standing stones, ancient fables, and tales told over bonfires of travelers that came from different times.