79. Now Warm
NOW: WARM
Our fingers were still laced together as we walked. With my other hand, I carried my quilt, holding it to my side with my elbow.
“Shouldn’t you have waited until later?” I asked. “It’s not yet night, and someone might see me on my way to share your tent.”
“We’re less than two days from Skow. And I’ve had it with this journey. If any man tries to interrupt my pleasure or report me to an army officer, I’ll become violent.”
“You once claimed you were ‘handy’ with your fists but ‘even better at avoiding a skirmish with words.’ Where is that man now?”
Reed smiled, and I saw it out of the corner of my eye. “He’s been worn down by a long road and the tireless seductions of a beautiful midwife.”
It was not quite dark out. Though it was shot through with the fading rays of a sun that had only come out from the clouds in time for it to recede, the sky was a pale, shimmering gray, like the inside of a mussel shell.
It made me think of the sea, something I had never seen, only read about in my books.
“What’s the ocean like?” I asked.
“You would love the sea,” was his answer. “It’s a wild, frothing thing made of salt and fury, and I miss it, if I am honest. I miss it terribly.”
“Will you return once this is all over? Once the war is done?”
“That depends on many things.”
When we reached the rows of army tents, he steered us away from them towards the wagons lined up on one side of the road. Some were like ours with tarpaulins stretched over bows, but most were transport wagons with tall slats and only some had coverings.
With his usual grace, he climbed into one of the covered wagons and then turned to me. He gestured for me to hand him my quilt. Then he reached down, helping me step up to the driver’s seat.
There was nothing inside but his folded army blanket. I stood in the center of the wagon while he tied the flaps closed on the tarpaulin in both the front and the back.
“What is this?” I asked him.
“Our tent tonight,” Reed answered, herding me to one end and then spreading his blanket and my quilt down on the bed of the wagon.
“You should undress for sleep,” he said, kneeling down to lift the quilt from the blanket.
He removed his hooded jerkin and tunic, his belts and their swords, and then his boots.
Finally, only in his breeches, he slowly removed the leather strap from his head and then climbed beneath the quilt.
The skin where his eye should have been did not distract me.
I accepted it as part of his face. But Reed’s bare chest, inked shoulders, and slim hips had me transfixed, and I was embarrassed to realize I was standing and watching him, utterly motionless, seeing the way the faint light of a washed-out sunset that filtered in through the smallest gap in one of the tarp’s closed flaps played with the angles of his face.
Trying not to see if he was watching, I removed my dress, shift, socks, and shoes.
I climbed beneath the quilt next to him and stretched my body out.
I wondered how quickly he would take notice of my nudity.
Then, choosing not to turn my head towards him, looking up at the stretch of material above us, I said, “So luxurious. Almost like being inside a house.”
“I wish I could show you my house.”
“Your house?”
“In Vyggia. It’s on a cliff. Well, not much of a cliff as there is a footpath to the shore, but it overlooks the sea, the stones on the shoreline, and the salt shallows on that island.”
“That island?”
Vyggia is a scattering of land on the sea. The main island has our only real city, and that is where our leaders marshal. Everything else is the salt shallows and the houses of the salt folk that work them.”
“Who lives in your house now?”
“No one. I pay a neighbor to keep it for me.”
I wanted to ask more, but I sensed he may not want to speak of the house or why he was not residing in it.
There was a soft silence between us after that.
I was not uncomfortable, and I did not believe he was either.
The wagon had more room than the tent did, so our bodies were not pressed alongside each other.
I began to wonder if my plan of seduction was foolish, seeing as he had yet to put one of his artful hands on my belly or breasts.
As the night descended, I stared up at the wagon’s covering, tarpaulin stretched over the wooden bows.
It was an older piece of material, worn and thin.
Nearby campfires of soldiers cast dim ripples of light over us, making it seem like we rested in the heart of a small, golden star.
“You removed your shift tonight,” Reed said.
My eyes still trained on the flickers above and around us, I answered, “Perhaps I am warm.”
“We may be on the southern borders of Perpatane, but it is nearing the dead of winter. You’ll forgive me when I say I doubt that.”
“Is it winter already?” I asked, trying to keep laughter from my voice.
My mind was split in two. We were on the edge of something.
Adelaide might be freed from Skow and her husband, or we might all be caught and charged with some crime.
I might never see Reed again after the days ahead, whatever took place.
But that night, my skin alive, nearly skittish beneath the quilt, I only wanted him.
I only wanted coupling, sex, satisfaction.
I wanted to be what he had impugned all along.
I wanted to be that woman he had painted me as.
Seductress.