Page 18 of The Iron Dagger
“Is there anything you’d like me to do? Something to help you?”
“You made a fine tea,” said Hara, lifting her mug to him, and Gideon felt an absurd flicker of pride. “All I need is rest. Could you help me with my stays? I’d rather sleep without them.”
Hara sat up and moved her hair to rest over her shoulder, gently undoing the braid she wore. Gideon stared awkwardly at the tight laces. Before he could stop himself, he reached for the knot at the bottom of the stays and tugged. The strings opened, and Gideon moved his fingers up the loops, loosening each rung.
He remembered not so long ago averting his gaze from her as she undressed each night, annoyed that she felt no shame in wearing her undergarments around him. Now his gaze was fixed as he watched his fingers unbind her. She wore only her shift beneath, and he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric. The gentle, sweet scent of her skin caressed his senses, and he took slow, measured breaths.
All the times she wiped his brow, helped him dress, and witnessed every bodily function in his sickbed, he had felt only helpless embarrassment. When he carried her through the woods, her whole weight borne in his arms, he had no thought other than to get back to the warmth of the cottage. They’d shared a thousand chaste touches over the past few weeks.
But now, with this barest of contact, he felt his pulse beat in his fingertips at the intimacy. The roles were reversed, and he was caring for her. How had that happened?
As he tugged the final rungs loose, she gave a soft sigh of relief, and his breath caught. Appallingly, that familiar heat sank below his hips, and the front of his trousers felt uncomfortably tight.
Damn it all.
He was hard, and there was no stopping it or denying it. This witch had managed to arouse him, dowdy homespun andfrizzy curls notwithstanding. His nostrils flared as she lifted the stays over her head and he caught the maddening scent of her hair.
Turn to me, ask me to take you to bed, and I’ll do it. The thought entered his mind wildly, uninvited.
Hara looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened. Her lips parted in surprise, rosy and wet from the tea.
Their gazes held one another, still and tense in an infinite moment, neither wanting to move and shatter whatever was happening between them. Gideon felt his body straining to be nearer, and he tensed his muscles to stop himself from reaching for her.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth and flicked back to his eyes.
He felt an overwhelming urge to bury his fingers in her hair, pressing her down onto the bed and running his tongue up her neck. Her breasts would be warm and heavy if he caressed them over her shift, her softness filling his hands deliciously. He wanted to part her thighs to see if her heat matched his.
He held perfectly still, not trusting himself to do more than breathe, and Hara gave him a small, knowing smile. He watched dumbly as she shimmied out of her overskirt and burrowed under the quilts, turning to face the wall with a sleepy sigh.
In moments she was asleep, and Gideon wondered what in the hell had come over him.
FOUR
Angharad
No matter which way she squirmed and fidgeted, there was not enough room to take a full breath in the close space. She pushed up onto the floorboards overhead, but they were stuck fast. She pounded on them, slamming her palms and fists against the dusty wood. Her fingers scrabbled against the unyielding barrier, and she winced each time a splinter slid beneath a nail. Through the sliver in the boards she watched as shadows lengthened and sunbeams lit the floor, over and over. Hara’s heart thudded as though she were sprinting, her breaths coming in short frantic gasps.
Her eyes flicked open.
Vines stretched above her, and morning light fell in dappled pools over her blankets. She was able to take a long, filling breath, but her heart still galloped, convinced that she was trapped beneath the floor of the abandoned cottage.
Hara rubbed her eyes and rested a hand over her brow, simultaneously weary and wakeful. Pulling her past to the surface in vivid, unfiltered detail had torn down all her mental defenses. It would take time to lock away the memories of her mother’s capture again, blurring them around the edges and letting them sink like a corpse into murky depths.
At least the soreness from the memory share had gone, and Hara stretched her muscles. Then she started. She was in her bed.
She sat up and turned, and there was Gideon, sleeping in her makeshift bed before the hearth. Seraphine was curled in aball in the crook of his arm, and when she saw Hara was awake, she stretched lazily and sauntered to the bed.
“You little minx,” murmured Hara, scritching the cat’s ears.
Hara watched Gideon sleep with a troubled expression. Had he been right to suggest she did not want to leave the comfort of her home in pursuit of her mother? Was she content to let her mother’s fate remain a mystery, so long as Hara felt safe here? Guilt churned in her belly, and she worried her lip.
Hara had tried not to raise her hopes when Gideon made his offer. When she first came to Merowyn’s house as a child, she spent hours sifting through her mother’s memories, trying to understand what happened after the hunters had taken her. Her visions were confusing—tall, endless balconies, long hallways that lead back to where they began. They were more dreamlike than anything she had seen in the real world, and no matter how many times she looked, there were never new memories to sift through.
She had lost the connection to her mother’s influence long ago. Over the years, the pull grew fainter and fainter, as had the memory of her face and the sound of her voice. There was no way of knowing if she was alive or dead, but she still held onto hope, even after all this time. Hara’s Sight never extended into the future, as her mother’s could, but her intuition had always been preternaturally strong. Some instinct told her that she would see her mother again. This lord of Montag might not have been brought to her doorstep by mere chance.
If she was honest with herself, she felt reluctant about the prospect of uprooting her routines and leaving the village behind. It was safe here, as it had been for most of her life. People knew her, and she was liked and trusted. Going back to her homeland would mean danger and, possibly, heartbreak when she learned the truth at last, her hopes laid to rest for good.Perhaps itwasmore comfortable to put aside the pain of her mother’s memory and stay here, content with the unknown.
Her stomach dropped with shame.
