Page 76 of Feathers in the Wind
She let out a soft sigh of relief and bent and kissed his bare shoulder, his skin salty beneath her lips.
She pulled a bed cover over him left him to slumber while she took a simple meal in the parlour. She had considered asking the landlord for a separate room but it became obvious that the inn was fully occupied and it would have been strange for a wife to not wish to be with her husband, so she returned to Adam’s chamber.
He had not moved.
She set the candle down on the table, picked up the battle stained clothing, folding each item neatly on a chest. Looking around the room she saw nowhere else she could make up a bed, and having no desire to sleep on the floor, she bit her lip and considered the bed. It seemed perfectly adequate for two people to sleep in without unduly disturbing each other.
Stripping down to her chemise, she blew out the candle and slipped into bed beside him. She turned on her side and looked at his face on the bolster beside her, illuminated by the moonlight. She breathed in the mingled scents of sweat, horse and gunpowder and reaching out a tentative hand, she stroked the dark hair away from his forehead.
He moaned in his sleep and rolled over with his back to her. She longed to take him in her arms but with a deep shuddering breath, she turned over, curling herself up on the farthest side of the bed.
* * *
It was longpast daylight before Adam awoke. He lay on his side with one arm flung across the hip of a young woman who slept with her back to him, curled into him as if she belonged there. A cascade of nut-brown hair streamed across the bolster, tickling his nose.
He frowned and tentatively ran his hand the length of her slender body. He had a vague memory of stumbling back to his room, so bone weary he could scarcely put one foot in front of the other. Where had this nymph in his bed come from?
He propped himself up on one elbow and smiled as he pushed back a tendril of dark hair from her forehead and looked down into Perdita’s sleeping face.
A wave of relief washed over him. She was safe. There was a rightness to her being not only safe but in his bed. He bent and kissed her forehead.
He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scent of her. He could no longer go on pretending the attraction between them did not exist. He wanted her here, beside him. He wanted desperately to fall into her arms at the end of the day. He wanted to love — and be loved by this woman.
She stirred and opened her eyes, rolling on to her back to look up at him. She smiled sleepily and a part of his anatomy responded to that thought and he realised that beneath the bed covers he was naked. This was surely a situation that would not end well.
‘You’re a heavy sleeper,’ he said, drawing away from her.
Realisation flashed into her eyes and she scrambled upright, clutching the bedclothes to her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…’ The colour rose to her cheeks. ‘I thought I would sleep on the far side of the bed and you wouldn’t even know I was there… I must have rolled.’
Adam smiled as the colour rose in her cheeks. ‘I must have been dead to the world. God knows, I’ve had precious little sleep in the last weeks.’
Even the twelve hours he had just enjoyed was a poor compensation for the days with no more than a couple of hours sleep snatched in the corners of fields, even on horseback.
He put a hand to her face, cupping her cheek, noting the dirt of the battlefield still grimed under his nails. She leaned into his hand, her gaze holding his.
‘Perdita,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘We can’t go on like this. The pretence has to end.’
Her breast rose and fell as she expelled a heavy sigh. ‘The pretence we are married, or…’
He traced the line of her neck with his thumb, her skin soft against his calluses.
‘Or the pretence that we are indifferent to each other, because I can’t lie any more, not to myself and not to you,’ he said.
Perdita raised her hand, laying it over his, her throat working as she said, ‘Adam, is there hope for us?’
He frowned. ‘Hope?’
‘I sometimes think we are like feathers in the wind, tossed this way and that without any sense that we can control our destinies.’
‘Is that why you agreed to marry Simon?’
She looked away, her hand dropping from his. ‘He was something solid I could cling to, but his death has set me adrift again.’ Her lips parted as she looked up at him. ‘The wind blew me north to be with you. There must be a reason.’
He smiled. ‘Am I solid enough for you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. You are a soldier fighting a brutal war. I have seen too much death in the past days to have any hope of finding sanctuary in your arms, but,’ she paused, her chest rose but did not fall, as she breathed out the words, ‘but I am willing to take what shelter you can offer me. I… I love you, Adam Coulter.’
He closed his eyes. He had no words. Let his actions be his answer.
