Chapter Ten #3
Signs of use lay scattered about in quiet disorder: old straw pressed flat where someone had slept, a broken crook abandoned in a corner, a shallow wooden bowl turned on its side near the hearth, its rim chewed by time.
Nothing recent, nothing living—but not abandoned to ruin either.
The place felt paused rather than forgotten.
Elena sagged the moment they crossed the threshold, the tension bleeding out of her so quickly she had to brace a hand against the wall to stay upright.
Jacob reached inside his soaked tunic, fingers working at the cord tied tight against his ribs.
From a small leather pouch worn close to his skin he drew out a firesteel, one of the few things a man did not trust to saddlebags alone.
From a niche beside the hearth, he gathered what remained of old kindling—dry splinters, a scrap of bark left by someone that had known the same need.
The spark came quickly.
The fire he coaxed to life was small and carefully kept, little more than a steady glow, but the change it brought was unmistakable.
Light crept across the walls, lifting the shieling out of shadow, giving shape back to stone and timber and the simple certainty of enclosure.
The darkness retreated to the corners, and with it some of the fear that had clung to Elena since the river.
Jacob shut the door then, closing out the last of twilight and barred it with a stout length of wood that had been left leaning near the wall, testing it with a hearty tug before turning his attention inward.
“We need to get dry,” he said from behind her.
Elena glanced down at herself, at the darkened fabric clinging to her legs, the weight of it dragging insistently with every shift.
She knew he was right—knew it in the same practical way she had come to understand many things over the past days—yet something fluttered nervously beneath her ribs at the implication of what must follow.
Here, in the enclosed space of the cave, with the firelight casting long shadows along the walls, the idea was daunting.
Jacob seemed to read the pause for what it was. He turned away at once, presenting her with his back as he shrugged out of his own sodden tunic and wrung it out with a sharp twist of his hands.
“Wet clothes will steal heat faster than the night ever could,” he said.
Still, when she gathered her courage, and stood, turning her back to Jacob, and slipped the plaid from her shoulders, she found herself unsure where to put it.
The shieling was small, the fire lower than she expected, and for a moment she simply stood there, the weight of the wool bunched in her hands.
When she turned, Jacob had turned as well.
He stood bare to the waist, firelight catching on water-slick skin and the familiar, disconcerting beauty of him—broad shoulders, hard lines, and sinewy strength.
A darkening flush spread along one side of his ribs, the skin there mottled red where mayhap the river had pounded him against rock, same as it had her.
She noted it without remark; she had learned by now that any concern voiced would be brushed aside as unnecessary, and she had bruises of her own blooming beneath cloth and skin that hardly merited attention in comparison to what they had survived.
Her gaze caught briefly on the bandage still bound around his upper arm, darkened at the edges but holding fast. For a heartbeat she forgot the cold altogether.
Without remark, he crossed the space between them and took the plaid from her hands, hanging it carefully over an exposed root near the hearth where the heat might reach it.
He glanced at her then, giving a small, almost apologetic shrug—as if to say there was no helping it—and bent to unlace his boots.
He stripped with unembarrassed efficiency, tugging free of wet leather and breeches alike, leaving only his braies and hose.
The firelight did her no favors in that state, and Elena had to look away quickly, heart skidding in her chest at the unmistakable outline the thin cloth left to the imagination.
With stiff fingers, she eased out of her gown, then her kirtle, laying each aside with care that bordered on reverence, but was actually just her stalling.
And when at last she stood in her chemise alone, the air struck her skin sharply, raising gooseflesh along her arms, Jacob collected her discarded garments and found places to hang them, as he’d done with his own tunic and breeches, so that the earthen wall around the small blaze resembled a cloth merchant’s booth at market.
Jacob did not look at her again, but turned back to the fire, crouched low as he adjusted the kindling, giving her that small courtesy without making a matter of it.
The normalcy of it—his refusal to make the moment more than it was—helped steady her.
She gathered her courage and moved closer to the fire and to him, sitting and crossing her legs beneath her, extending her hands toward the heat.
After a moment, Jacob lowered himself beside her, heaving a small sigh. He bent his legs and rested his forearms on his knees. He sat that way for a time, watching the fire burn.
“We should sleep now, rather than later,” he said at length. “And ye’re nae going to like this, but it makes guid sense that we should share heat.”
She stilled, her attention sharpening. “What do ye mean? Share heat?”
“We share heat,” he repeated. “Wrapped together,” he said, practical even now. “Bodies keep warmth better than stone or cold ground. We do it often when marching.”
Elena’s heart gave a small, traitorous thud. The idea unsettled her, yes... but it stirred something else too, something she didn’t know how to name, something to do with the idea of his strong arms around her, not in panic or for necessity’s sake, but in stillness.
She did not hate the thought. She rather thought she should, but she did not.
“That sounds practical,” she said, keeping her tone deliberately even.
“Aye,” Jacob agreed at once. “So it is. Yer shift is still wet and you’ll be shivering in nae time.” He moved then, swinging his legs around behind her. He stretched out along the straw and nodded toward the fire. “Lie here,” he instructed. “Closer to the heat. I’ll take the cold side.”
Elena hesitated only a moment before nodding.
She drew a steadying breath and did as he said, lowering herself onto the straw with her back to him, the fire’s faint glow warming her face while the chill still pressed at her spine.
The straw crunched a bit beneath her as she settled, stiff at first, uncertain how much space to leave.
Jacob moved in behind her, close enough that she felt him everywhere at once—the solid line of his chest along her back, the length of his legs settling behind hers, the steady press of him against her bottom.
His arm came around her middle, firm and sure, drawing her back until there was no space left between them, only shared warmth and the quiet strength of his hold.
She went still for a heartbeat, aware of the full weight of him, of how completely she was enclosed, and then she let herself ease into it, her body yielding where her thoughts hesitated. She told herself—again—that this was sense, not sentiment.
The warmth of him was almost immediate.
His breathing was steady, his body solid and reassuring in a way that went far beyond the simple exchange of heat. She could feel the strength there, contained and constant, the same strength that had carried her through water and stone and fear.
After a moment, Jacob shifted slightly behind her. “Lift your head,” he murmured.
She did, uncertain, and felt him slide his arm beneath her, settling it where her neck and shoulder could rest against him.
His skin was startlingly warm in contrast to her own, the heat of him seeping into places the fire had not yet reached.
Her hair, still damp from their plunge into the river, lay over his arm but the chill must not have bothered him.
The fire dwindled to embers, the light sinking low, and exhaustion overtook her.
Her thoughts blurred, her body growing heavy in his hold.
She shifted slightly, seeking comfort without quite realizing it, and Jacob adjusted instinctively, his grip tightening, and she fell asleep aware only of him, and nothing else.