10 #3
She got up and wrung out fabric in a basin.
It was his clothes he realized. She busied herself squeezing them free of water and hanging them up to dry in front of the open window.
As she did this, she spoke, “You must stop this, my lord. These overtures on your part, they are entirely unwelcome, as I think you must be aware. I wonder that this is how you repay my kindness, making me feel uncomfortable in this manner.”
He lifted his head, trying to see her expression, because there was something in her voice that sounded as if she were serious.
Oh, well, of course she was serious. If she had submitted herself to anything else with him, it had been for other purposes.
Entirely unwelcome.
It stabbed him worse than the wound in his shoulder.
Why he should care about her rejection, he did not know.
She had done nothing except reject him since he met her, so he ought to be used to it, in fact.
He had no reason to think she would welcome him, of course, and yet, he felt foolish and embarrassed.
He had been acting as if he could wear her down or something, get her to slowly acquiesce if he tried hard enough.
This was because he had a notion that she actually wanted him, too.
But perhaps he must simply stop. If she really had no interest in him, there was no point in it.
“I’m quite sorry, Gathren,” he said, contrite, using her name. “I promise, I will leave it now.”
She lifted her gaze to his, and now he could see her expression, and it confused him even more, because there was something always wistful in the way she was gazing at him, and her gaze swept his bare skin again in an assessing way.
He drew in a breath to say something to her, he knew not what, but something that would help them both get to the bottom of this.
And then there was a banging on the door.
“Oh, that’ll be the food,” said Gathren, going to open the door.
Sure enough, a servant wheeled in a cart with bread and cheese and smoked fish. There was tea as well. His stomach growled and he suddenly realized how thirsty he was.
They ate from a low table in front of the cold fireplace, neither speaking much, both intent on their food.
They had both been very hungry, he realized.
He drank the whole pot of tea and apologized and she said that after all that loss of blood, he must drink as much as he could, and it was best if it wasn’t anything alcoholic.
She rang for more tea.
He drank cup after cup of it. The sun was sinking lower and lower now.
“Well,” she said, “tomorrow, you’ll make it home, then.”
He grimaced. He did not wish to go there. But he said, “Yes, I suspect so. About halfway there now.”
She found a pack of cards in one of the drawers in the low table.
They played card games, mostly One and Twenty, because it was easy enough with two people and it didn’t require much thought, until it got too dark.
They didn’t talk much about anything else.
Not about whether they were mutually attracted to each other, not about the plight of orcs in the kingdom, not about whose fault it was that the capital had been a bloodbath that morning, not about dead monks in the chapel, not about his wounded shoulder.
Eventually, they were very tired of cards, and—though they could have kept going by lamp light—they put the cards away and began to talk of sleeping.
“You are wounded, so I think you must take the bed,” she said.
“No, no,” he said, “I can’t have you sleeping on the floor. You’re a lady. It’s not proper.”
“Well, I can’t have you sleeping on the floor with a wound like that, after losing so much blood,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “We could share it, I suppose. I promise to keep my hands to myself.”
She surveyed him.
“This is not some sort of ploy,” he said. “I swear to you. I have heard what you said, and I have promised to stop, and I will.”
She sighed heavily. “Well, I do not relish sleeping on the floor, but I will if you do one untoward thing.”
“Understood,” he said.
There was a dressing screen. The chamberpot was back there, and they had both used it.
She went there and unwound her bosom, and she didn’t need any assistance at all.
She came back in her shirt, loose over the swell of her and he forced himself not to stare at her, forced himself to attempt to be gentlemanly.
Of course, he was hard. Maybe it was because of the fantasy, maybe it was because he wasn’t supposed to want her now, or maybe it was because she had quite large breasts, and the sight of them aroused him.
He lay down and put his back to her and she got in on the other side and turned off the lamp.
It was dark and he could hear her breathe and he had a lurching sort of realization that he had killed the High King the night before that the capital had fallen to orcs and that he was going home to his father. He gasped for air.
“Iahir?” she said, worried. “Are you all right?”
“Perfectly well,” he said in a tight voice. “Good night, warrioress.”