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He repeated it to himself as he caught his breath.

Finally he looked up to find Nan was now standing by the falcon’s cage, calmly watching him amid a mild chaos.

Gradually he became aware that bystanders were arguing amongst themselves, over whether the constable should be called.

The man who had been reaching for Nan was on the ground, clutching a foot that dripped blood.

More often she maims , the knight of Morency had said, a hand or a foot.

“Go on then, get ye gone from here. It’s a respectable man you’ve attacked.” A townswoman with a basket full of onions jabbed a finger at Nan, scowling. “We’ll not abide it. Be gone or you’ll see a punishment.”

Color flamed in Nan’s face, but she did not move from the spot nor take her eyes from Gryff.

With a tilt of her head she indicated the man he had beaten, and looked at Gryff with brows raised as though to ask if he was finished.

He nodded, and she picked up the cage, snapped her fingers at the dog, and led the way out of town.

T hey walked without speaking for hours.

She followed a path that veered off the main road, as she had done before, and he wondered how she knew these byways.

But he didn’t ask. From the moment they had walked away from the market, he had been filled with a strange elation, a kind of relief that he did not question.

His bonds had been cut nearly a fortnight ago, but only now did he truly feel his freedom.

It was likely a kind of terrible sin, to find some measure of joy only because he had beaten a man – even if the man was a thief who would steal Tiffin. But he was beyond caring about sin. It was not as real as this feeling, or the truth of this new life.

“I’m down in the muck with you, Bran,” he grinned at the dog, who seemed every bit as cheerful.

Nan did not correct him to say the dog was named Fuss, which told him she was not so lighthearted.

She had fixed the braces of blades to her forearms again as they left town, but he thought it was not her watchfulness that caused her mood.

He too had injured a man – done more damage than she had, undoubtedly – yet only she had suffered censure for it.

He remembered well how her cheeks had burned when the townswoman told her to be gone.

After many miles a soft rain began to fall, and they ducked under the canopy of trees to take cover.

They found a clearing, with a broad outcropping of rock and a small pool of water fed by a stream.

The leaves on the branches above were so thick that the droplets barely disturbed the pool, and Nan knelt to gather water into a leather flask.

He unbuckled Tiffin’s cage from his back and sat on a convenient stump to pull out the tiny loaf of dark bread that Mary had given him this morning as he said his farewell.

It’s queer how quiet she’s grown to be, she had said to him with a nod toward Nan. She were the most chattering girl .

It was hard to imagine a chattering Nan, and even harder to realize that he would part ways with her soon.

Their journey would end tomorrow. He should ask her everything he wanted to know now, before it was too late.

He was debating whether to ask how she had learned to speak Welsh, or where she had learned her deadly skill, when she spoke.

“Why is it always me?” She was frowning down at her reflection in the pool, but glanced up at him briefly to see his confusion at her question. “There were other girls there, young and pretty. And smiling. Some small as me, too. But it’s me he come at. They always do.”

It was an earnest question. He considered telling her that he had noticed no other fair maids at all.

Few men would, with Nan there. That was no kind of answer, though.

He took a bite of bread and studied her troubled face in profile.

He could say it was the graceful line of her brow, or the perfect proportions of every feature in itself and all of them taken together, or how her skin seemed to glow with a delicate golden light.

Or her eyes, so blue and so expressive that they would inspire every bard and troubadour who ever caught sight of her to sing of her beauty.

But in the end he swallowed and gave her the crude truth she asked for.

“Your mouth.”

She turned a puzzled look to him, and he shrugged. He kept his eyes on the bread he held and spoke casually – or as casually as he could manage, when he thought of her mouth.

“God gave you the face of an angel, that stirs a man’s breast and will cause his heart to ache with the beauty of it. But your mouth is the kind that moves a man to think of naught but hot sin. That mouth in that face...” He shrugged again and looked at her. “Is an uncommon allure.”

Her eyes fell briefly to his hand holding the bread before she turned back to the pool.

A crease appeared in her brow as she considered her reflection for a long moment.

She let out a faint snort, either mockery or exasperation, before dragging her hand across the surface in a quick swipe and turning away.

Her practical air returned. From her bag she pulled a square of linen and a small jar and held it out to him.

At his questioning look, she pointed down at his hand, where the knuckles were scraped and swollen from fighting.

He recognized the jar from the priory; it held the salve she had used on the wounded knight.

When he reached to take it from her, she pulled it back suddenly and said, “Is better you wash the wounds first.”

Her voice held the slightest tremor, so unexpected and so revealing that he felt it shiver through him. He savored the sweet echo of it as he went to the water and did as she instructed.

This morning seemed a lifetime ago, but her touch had not been a dream, nor a hopeful imagining. There was a curiosity in her, a thread of desire. He had seen it. It was in her even now.

He turned back to her and walked carefully forward, ever wary. He knew he must not move too sudden, lest she feel trapped with the wall of stone at her back. Nor could he be too timid. He had spent years in being too timid, and he was free of that, too.

When he held his dripping hand out to her, she did not give him the jar as he expected, but patted the linen over his fingers to dry them. She attended his cuts as she attended to every task – brisk and sensible, efficient in her every move.

But after she finished and tied a strip of linen around his hand, she did not turn away.

When he dared to brush his fingers across her cheek, she did not object.

She did not move at all, except to swallow and wet her parted lips in a more provocative display than he’d seen in five long and lonely years.

It took every ounce of discipline he’d ever learned not to pull her to him and crush her against his heat.

Instead he bent his neck to bring himself closer to her.

He tipped her face up to look down at her mouth, the way her lashes lowered and her cheeks flushed pink, and her breath – oh God, how her breath caught, the unsteady rise and fall of her breast.

He waited an eternity, hot and hard and desperate, until she leaned forward into the slight space that separated them and brushed her lips softly across his.

Then he gathered her face in his hands and kissed her, careful and coaxing, finding that thread of her desire and tugging at it, pulling her to him as her mouth opened and the sweetest sound came from her.

Silent Nan, making sounds of pleasure. Distant Nan, pressing close to him. She was the most intoxicating mixture of shy and eager, her hand pressing at the back of his neck to hold him to her, but her pliant mouth making no demands of him.

He wanted her to demand. He trailed his mouth down her throat, teeth scraping softly at her hot skin, pushing her a step backward until she leaned against the stone.

Now her hand at his nape clutched harder, fingers twisting in his hair.

Now her body arched gently up against his, her breath harsh at his ear. Now she demanded.

He came back to her mouth and waited there, holding himself back from the lips that were a breath away from his.

His reward was her sigh, the hunger with which she kissed him, the boldness of her tongue exploring his mouth.

His hands moved over her slight body beneath the coarse gown, over the braid that hung down her back.

He pulled it apart, running his hands through her unbound hair at last, cool silk slipping between his fingers as she kissed him breathless.

It inflamed him, a blaze of lust that overwhelmed his senses.

His knee pushed between her legs and he felt her body stiffen, her lips still.

But she did not take her mouth away, so he took control of the kiss.

An old lesson, easily remembered – how to seduce a willing a woman, how to coax without words.

The stiffness in her eased by degrees; it was a matter of moments until she was sighing again.

He set a suggestive rhythm with his mouth, with his body.

The thrust of his tongue against hers beat in time with the press of his hips.

She seemed to melt under his hands, his mouth, so soft and yielding that he was mad with wanting her.

He did not know when it changed, or what exactly caused it.

He only felt her mouth pull away with an effort – and it was the effort that mattered to him in the moment, so he moved his mouth to her throat, down to her collarbone.

Her dress was modest, no way to reach the skin beneath it except to raise her skirt.

When he had brought the hem as high as her knee, it dawned on him that her hands were not on him.

He forced himself to pause, still tasting her throat, still pressed hard against her as he pulled back to look at her.

She had gone utterly still, her breath coming fast in shallow little huffs. She seemed impossibly fragile, as though she had grown smaller – because she had. She shrank from him.

She looked vulnerable. So small and vulnerable, like prey flushed from its hiding place and bared to the hunter. It called up the memory of her voice saying, I was no more than a timid mouse. A mouse he wanted .

He dropped his hands from her as though burned and stepped back.

She looked at him, but for once there was no clear message in her face.

She trembled all over, but he thought it was not fear.

No more was it lust. Then his eyes found her hand, the knife clutched in fingers that shook, the first time he had ever seen her grip unsteady.

A protest hovered on his lips, a defense against the accusation she did not make. She had wanted it. She had kissed him.

And he had taken what she gave and more, not content with only a taste freely given. Her look damned him, made him one of those men in the king’s hall who had made sport of her, who stole a touch and demanded her body, because they could.

He turned away, unable to bear the mixture of confusion and fear and courage swimming in her eyes.

There was nowhere to go, but he strode away through the trees.

He must go anywhere at all so that she did not look like this.

Anywhere that he might forget the sight of her unsure hand trembling around her only defense.