Page 22 of The Merciless Laird
She looked at the candles.
"Most people dinnae dae that," she said.
"Dae what?"
"Leave it alone." She paused. "They think if they ask enough questions, they can fix it. Or they think knowin' the shape of it makes them better at handlin' me." She said the last two words the way they tasted, which was not good. "Ye just left it."
"Aye." The line of his mouth moved. It was not a smile, but near enough that her stomach registered it before she could stop it.
"I'm nae tryin' tae handle ye, Matilda MacInnes. I dinnae think it'd go well fer either of us."
She looked at him. And there it was again, completely unwanted and entirely inconvenient, the almost-smile she was already finding it difficult not to answer.
"Nay," she said. "It wouldnae."
"Try tae sleep," he said. "We move at first light."
"I dinnae sleep well at night."
"I can see." He said it simply. "Try anyway."
He pulled back from the opening and she heard him settle again outside. The soft shift of him repositioning, and when she looked at his shadow through the canvas he was between her and the tree line, upright and still, facing outward into the dark.
She lay on her side facing the candle.
It burned small and steady, the ventilation slit doing its work, the firelight from outside coming through the open inch of the flap and projecting a thin stripe of gold across the canvas floor.
A sound from the trees. Small and gone before she'd finished identifying it.
She looked at his shadow.
Still there. Still… still.
She made herself breathe slowly.
The candle burned. The camp slept. The fire crackled its way toward embers, and the forest settled into the deep quiet that came in the hours before dawn.
She realized, at some point, that his shadow hadn't moved. Not once. He hadn't slept.
She didn't know how she knew, she just did. The particular quality of someone who was awake or sleeping. He was awake.
He was still sitting between her and the tree line. Still watching the dark.
She thought about saying something, but she didn't.
She watched the candle burn down another inch and let the night do what it was going to do and told herself she would think about all of it later.
Later.
The way he'd saidthewhy is yersand meant it.
Nae now.
Now she just watched the small steady flame and let him watch the dark. She tried not to think about the fact that for the first time in longer than she could clearly remember, the night did not feel like survival.
And somewhere in the hour before dawn, without meaning to, she slept.
CHAPTER SIX
