Page 24 of A Rugged Beauty
She shook her head slowly. "Only her face. She was smiling, but her smile was hiding something. Her worry, maybe. Or uncertainty."
He squeezed her hand. "Those worries—food and shelter—are for a parent, not for the child you were."
She managed a small smile, but her brow remained wrinkled. "I think that's what she was trying to tell me."
"A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.”
Her smile turned wry at the verse from Proverbs. "We must've been okay." She rubbed her forehead. "I think so. I wish I could remember."
"Me too." If he knew what direction they should walk tomorrow, he'd feel more confident.
He shifted his legs, realizing that his left foot was falling asleep, too.
She seemed to notice his discomfort for the first time since coming awake. “I don’t think either of us will get much sleep sitting next to the fire like this.”
She glanced over her shoulder to the shelter. “It was too cold to sleep, even with the branches.”
He shook his head to show his confusion. He didn’t know what she was suggesting.
If he wasn’t mistaken, a faint blush tipped her cheeks as she murmured, “We could lie down next to each other in the shelter, beneath the boughs. It would be warmer.”
An instant denial sprang to his lips, but he swallowed it. He could see the lines of exhaustion fanning from her eyes and the droop of her shoulders. It seemed they’d escape the threat of rainstorms—for now—as the thunder and clouds had moved away. But the chill that the far-off storm had brought wouldn’t lift until the sun came up—and he planned to be long gone by then.
She was right. Their only hope of staying warm enough to sleep was to huddle together.
He followed her to the shelter and bumped against the upright branches, nearly dislodging one or two before he laid down at her side.
There wasn’t enough room inside the small shelter for either of them to stretch out. She curled into him, her back to his front. He pulled several of the scratchy cedar boughs over them, turning his face away when one branch poked into his cheek.
It was awkward in the darkness. Without the fire near, he could only see the shadow of her. He couldn’t make out any features, though his face was only inches from her cheek.
When a tiny shiver shook her, he had no choice but to wrap his arm around her middle. Almost instantly, she settled more closely into him. Warmth bloomed where they touched. Her head softened into his sternum and her breaths evened out. She must be exhausted.
He was, too, but he couldn’t settle. There was something inside him that reacted strongly to being the man who’d provided warmth and shelter, the man she could lean on to find comfort and peace enough to sleep. But there was also an unease inside him, an echo of what he’d felt when he’d kissed her. Was it wrong to be close like this?
He didn’t have an answer for that. Both of them were making the best guesses they could as to who they were to each other, how they’d ended up out here, and what they should do next. Holding her felt both right and wrong at the same time. He didn’t understand how that could be.
Her skin was warm and he couldn’t seem to keep himself from pressing his nose into the softness behind her ear. She smelled like the river water he’d seen her splash on her face, and something more. Something uniquely her.
He searched through the darkness of his mind, reaching for the memory he’d seen for only a snatch of time. The pink gown. He didn’t know a thing about women’s dresses, but he could see the quality of the work. The fine stitches, the lace at the cuffs. This was a special dress. He willed the woman in his memory to turn around. He glimpsed the flowers in her hands, but something about her fingers bothered him. As he tried to focus on why, the memory shifted.
A feminine voice, too low to make out. But he recognized the worried tone. Sunshine falling at an angle through a dingy window. A house?
He grabbed for the memory, tried to reorient the view. Who was speaking? Where were they? What was through that window?
But as he grasped for it, the memory faded and disappeared.
He stared into the darkness, holding Sparrow. Why had they left a home like the one that had flashed through his memory? What had they left behind?
He had no answers, only a deep disquiet as he held her in the darkness and wrestled with the shadows in his mind until he finally fell asleep.
Five
Sparrow stood slightly behind H,huddled in his shadow as he peered through the gloom. A warm, dry wind gusted, blowing strands of her hair into her eyes.
The two of them had spent all day walking beside the river—although, was walking the correct word? They'd scrambled over boulders, pushed through reeds in a sandy, marshy area, and the last two hours had picked their way up a gravel incline to traverse this bit of riverbank where the water cut a deep ravine through the land.
“Do you smell smoke?" H asked now, voice barely above a whisper.
