HerOutlandishStranger (9 page)

At last she reluctantly pulled away from his grip. She stood
and started her more careful climb down the hill again.

“No.” He grabbed her upper arm. “Stay behind me. From now on
when we head downhill, I’m in front.”

She giggled. “Perhaps I shall collapse on you. We’ll be Jack
and Jill and roll down the hill together.”

He didn’t seem particularly amused. “Could be. At least I’ll
cushion your fall.” After a moment he added, “Jack and Jill? Why does that
sound familiar?”

She tried not to, but ended up laughing heartily at his
ignorance as she recited the nursery rhyme to him. “How can you know English
and not know these?”

“I think I heard a few, long ago. Tell me more of them.” For
much of the rest of the day, she recited rhymes to him. Occasionally he’d chime
in. He had learned some of them before. As they tramped up another hill, they
chanted the
Grand Old Duke of York
, a ditty from only a few years
earlier.

Because of her fall, Eliza’s boot cracked open at a side
seam. She soon grew impatient with the flapping leather and Jas cut off a piece
of a flannel shirt to wrap the boot closed around her foot.

He knelt by her and she put a hand on his broad back to
balance herself. She lightly trailed the fingers of her other hand across the
shifting muscles of his shoulder as he bound her boot closed.

Neither of them spoke and she wondered if he had even felt
her touch. But she knew he had, for after he let go of her foot, he tilted his
head back and stared up at her, his pale eyes heavy and filled with heat.

She stared back and knew the picture of his craving would be
engraved in her memory. A heartbeat later he clambered to his feet and slapped
the dust from his knees.

“Come on.” He was gruff again. Ah, but she at last
understood the reason for his brusqueness and as he stalked away, she gave his
back a knowing smile. No, a smirk, really.

With their dirt and clothes reduced to rags, they looked
inconspicuous, despite their fair complexions, and made no more effort to avoid
the other blank-faced people they passed on their weary tramp. But they did not
dare stop to make camp near any farms or the small, huddled villages. Looters
were too common and any locals who had not been uprooted distrusted strangers.

They found an abandoned farm house and wonderful riches
inside. Jas gathered up some sausages, a cook pot and more clothes. Eliza
gratefully put the cleaner clothes on under her own garments, which were stiff
with filth.

“We should spend the night here,” she said.

Jas shook his head.

“Why ever not?”

“You go ahead. Stay here. I’m not gonna,” he said firmly.
Muttering about stubborn men, Eliza eventually left the cozy house to join him
in the fast-cooling evening.

Chapter Seven

Jazz strode away from the farmhouse toward a copse of pine
trees where he threw down his pack. A house was out of the question for a
simple reason. Sleeping inside a building with Eliza again might prove too much
for him. He needed to be able to escape quickly.

After he set up camp, she drifted over to him with the
blanket on her arm. She tossed the blanket on the ground, pulled his cloak from
him and arranged the two cloaks on it.

“What are you doing?” he croaked.

She gave him an innocent smile. “It is so cold at night
still. I thought we agreed we ought to share heat?”

Heat. That was the word, all right. He opened his mouth to
tell her she was a lunatic, but instead to his horror and delight, found
himself on the blanket next to her. A pair of lunatics, he thought.

Liza pressed to his back for warmth and, he knew, more. She
wanted him too. Despite the sometimes excruciating discomfort, close to the
edge of agony, of his own response, he reveled in the weight of her arm draped
across his chest and the feel of her body against his back. He felt every one
of her sighs, the shifting of a leg. Distracting didn’t begin to describe the
sensation. Did she have to squirm against him like that?

He had another reason he could barely sleep. He was worried
she might accidentally slam an arm into him, provoking him to attack. At home
he never slept in the same room as another person, much less wrapped up in a
tangle with someone.

The fear he might hurt her made him wish that for once in
his life he had Dreemeze, a drug he hated. He was an approved candidate for
Dreemeze, a carefully controlled substance, but he didn’t use it to squash the
nightmares. When he went too long without dreams at home, his waking life grew
muted, as if he were a spectator watching himself move through his days. His
mother, Mag, had theorized that the bad dreams were some kind of outlet for
him. So instead of drugs, he’d long ago taught himself to wake up during the
frequent nightmares. With Eliza next to him, he could only be grateful he slept
so lightly.

He soon discovered that not just nightmares tormented him
now. He had to learn how to wake himself from good dreams too. More than once
he dreamed Liza was in his arms, and when he awoke he was horrified to find he
was holding her, moving, no
grinding
against her, touching her in his
sleep, embarrassingly close to coming.

Talk about wild-state. How in the world did he get through
the many layers of clothing to find her silken skin in his sleep? Luckily she
was a sounder sleeper than he, though she wasn’t exactly a log on those
occasions. Unfortunately.

He had to cautiously unwrap her arms, even her legs from his
body, and pull himself away as she made small sounds of protest in her sleep.
He’d throw his cloak over her, then he’d take a brisk walk through the cold
night air, never far from her, but not so close he could see her. Just seeing
her vulnerable as she lay on the ground was enough to set off the throbbing
ache again. It was too easy and painfully tempting to crawl back and make love
with her.

At least outside he could easily get away. He became an
expert stargazer during those long nights. He lay on his back staring up at the
sky, using the CR to pick out constellations, all the while pretending a warm
and lovely woman did not lie on the ground a few yards away.

One night he woke to see her heavy eyes staring back at him.
He promptly shut his eyes again and used all of his skill to make his breath
heavy and slow, hoping she didn’t feel his frantic heartbeat.

“Jas,” she whispered quietly. She leaned forward and gently
kissed his cheek, her lips almost hot on his chilled skin. He bent his knees so
she couldn’t press against him and feel the obvious evidence that he wasn’t
relaxed. She pressed faint kisses on his mouth and face and with light
fingertips of one hand stroked his hair, face, neck. He wondered if anyone
could be convinced he’d sleep through such torture, but he did his best to
pretend. A groan escaped him, but he managed to turn it into a sleepy sound.

At last she whispered, “Good night” and pushed herself into
his arms. She fell back to sleep at once. After what seemed like hours, he
managed to peel himself away, rock hard and trembling with need.

He nearly gave into the raging hunger for her. He was so
swamped with desire even his blasted toes ached and it didn’t make his life any
easier to know the raging lust could be sated if he simply turned over. Huh.
She wasn’t unwilling and then her pregnancy would not be such a shock. But so
far he’d managed to keep from turning around—while he was awake, anyway.

The truth was miserably clear to him. It was one thing to
fulfill some bizarre DHUy commission that was basically rape, quite another to
make the woman a part of a seduction. The records showed that the man who impregnated
her was a stranger, so if he still cared about keeping archives straight, he
knew he had to keep his hands off.

But the records didn’t matter to him nearly as much as the
woman he’d gotten to know. When he pondered the question in the middle of the
night—ha, in the middle of the day too—he knew which situation was worse for
Liza. At least with the one she couldn’t despise herself for the pregnancy.

The DHU experts hadn’t exaggerated for once. In her peculiar
society, she would feel shame, perhaps even loathe herself, should she become
pregnant by acting on her own desire.

He had another, more selfish reason to keep off her. Though
their time together would be a short episode in her life, he didn’t want her to
think of his memory with disgust. She would hate him if they made love and then
he simply vanished, leaving her pregnant.

Of course that’s what had happened—what will happen—but she
didn’t know the whole truth. If he was any kind of agent, she never would.

* * * * *

In the morning, he packed up while she slept. He froze when
he heard a quiet whimper and realized it was the sound of Liza sobbing.

He knew she cried for her father. He wanted to go to her and
gather her in his arms. Instead, he went back to packing the satchels and
didn’t soothe her. The way she choked back the sound made him suspect she
didn’t want him to hear, so he pretended he didn’t notice.

No, that wasn’t the only reason he kept his distance instead
of holding and soothing her.

The truth was more selfish: He knew he’d gone too far for
his own comfort. He cared too much and had to learn to let go. Their lives were
only temporarily entwined. If he wanted to be fair to her and to himself, he’d
repeat the word “temporary” a few hundred times a day—huh, make it his mantra.
And stop himself falling any deeper in love, if such a thing were possible.

* * * * *

The days grew warmer as spring progressed and they moved
away from the cold central region. As they walked, Eliza no longer attempted to
protest when Jas insisted on carrying all of her possessions, or when he
clasped her hand to drag her up the steep hills. Her muscles felt so drenched
with weakness, she wondered if only momentum carried her forward as they
trudged toward Lisbon.

A sudden thought occurred to her, as she collapsed onto a
rocky hillside, so tired she didn’t care about the sharp stones digging into
her side. Her monthly courses were quite late. Since she was as regular as
clockwork, she knew something had to be wrong. Perhaps the unusual exercise was
responsible, she reasoned. The problem was not serious. In fact, she was
grateful not to have to deal with the nuisance of blood.

Several mornings later, she woke, sat up and vomited on Jas’
cloak, blanket and, she discovered to her dismay, his thick leather gloves.

“Oh no! Oh, I apologize, Jas,” she gasped.

Jas sat cross-legged nearby holding his ubiquitous block of
wood. He stood and handed her a water skin. She rinsed her mouth and sipped a
bit of water. The sickness and dizziness abated almost at once.

“Thank you. I am better now and I shall be fine in a trice,
I am sure.” When she looked up at him Eliza saw an extraordinarily bleak frown
flash across his face.

“Now why apologize?” he asked lightly, and Eliza wondered if
she had only imagined the fleeting grim expression. “I assume you didn’t get
sick on purpose, did you?”

Without another word, he helped her stand. He gingerly took
off the cloak and rolled it into a ball with the blanket. He unfastened the
cloak he usually wore, her own, and laid it over her shoulders.

All the while he chattered to her. “At least it’s a warmish
day. I even found running water nearby. I’m good at that, have you noticed? I’m
a regular dowser—that’s what I think they’re called. So I’ll get you a drink
and wash this out.”

“Oh no, please do not,” Eliza protested as he leaned over to
pick up the bundled cloak and blanket. She took a wobbly step toward him. “I
know you despise unwholesome scents.” He put a hand on her shoulder and gently
but inexorably pressed her back down to the ground.

“I’m grown up, usually. Anyways, I’ll cope,” he said
dropping into his exotic cant. He tossed her one of the brown squares and
strolled off through the tangle of brush. Eliza looked at the square with
abhorrence. Had she really thought these things tasted better than dirt?

When he came back, holding the dripping and freezing clothes
away from him, he frowned at the square she still held in her hand. “Eat it,”
he demanded. “Won’t be so bad with this.” And he handed her the skin full of
fresh, cold water.

The sight of the food, even the brown squares, which hardly
qualified as food, made her stomach quiver in warning. She wanted to throw both
objects away from her, perhaps toss them in his face.

“Maybe it will help,” he coaxed. “Please try it?”

She sighed and broke off a tiny corner of a square with her
teeth, so small she didn’t have to chew. Her stomach didn’t seem to mind. So
she experimented with another tiny corner. To her astonishment, after she’d
managed to gag the square down, she felt much better.

“Thank you.” In a dull voice she admitted, “I do not
understand what is wrong. I’m better, though I feel so tired. I can’t imagine
what has made me sick. I am not feverish, I am sure of it.”

He didn’t say anything, just tilted his head to the side and
studied her with the expression she privately thought of as his “blank,
blue-eyed retreat”, the look he gave her when she asked a question he didn’t
want to answer. He could shift his gaze from canny to quite absent, she
marveled. His eyes even seemed lighter when he hid behind them—a shallow sky
blue. Usually their color was a more serious blue, perhaps the reflection of
the sky off a deep river.

Or the blue of the sky around the moon, she thought and hid
her smile at her silly thoughts.

After a long moment of staring back, Jas looked away and
pressed his lips tight. He must have caught sight of her cloak, which he’d
draped over a spindly tree.

“I got overenthusiastic while I was washing your wrap,” he
said. “Might as well do some more laundry since I suppose we’re stuck here ’til
it dries a bit and you recover.” He rummaged around in his bag and pulled out
some clothes. As he leaned over, his long hair went into his eyes. He grunted
and shoved at the strands impatiently. After rummaging around in his sack, he
pulled out a scrap of leather and wrapped it around his hair.

Liza thought he looked quite dashing with his pale hair
gathered in a tail at the nape of the neck. A few moments later he ruined the
rakish look by pulling a couple of the cleaner shirts from the sack and putting
them on over the one he wore, which gave the clean lines of his form a
distinctly lumpy appearance.

He looked up and caught her smile. He smiled wryly back.
“I’m cold.”

Then he gathered up the rest of his clothes. “You keep the
cloak, Liza. Lie down and rest.” He walked over to her portmanteau and started
pulling out her garments, inspecting them.

Eliza stood at once, mortified. “Mr. White! Er, Jas. You
once asked me to inform you when your behavior is inappropriate. I can assure
you that it is at this moment. Completely inappropriate. I shall care for my
own clothing, thank you.” She marched over and yanked away the thin muslin
shift he held. “I am feeling much improved.”

He grinned at her. “So I see,” he agreed. “Well then, we can
be a couple of gossipy old washerwomen together. Come on.” He led her through
the mud and underbrush to the river. They gasped at the icy, fast-flowing
frigid water. And as they scrubbed the clothing, they stopped now and then to
show each other their bright-red hands.

Eliza examined the peculiar rectangular scar on his arm.
She’d seen glimpses of it before. She assumed it still caused him discomfort
since he often kept it uncovered.

“How did you come by such an odd scar?”

He blushed deep red, then laughed, staring at the scar. He
answered with one of his strange remarks. “Ha! You have no idea how wonderful
it is to hear you ask that question, Liza. It doesn’t mean a thing, does it?
Just a strange scar, eh? I like that. Absolutely nothing more.”

He gave no other explanation. Eliza was amused by his
puzzling laugh and response— typical of the man. But she politely changed the
subject in case he found the scar somehow embarrassing.

It is odd, thought Eliza as she squeezed the water out of
her wool stockings, after all that has happened, how enjoyable she found the
day. Perhaps it was a case of taking small pleasures from any details that one
could. No, when she examined her responses more honestly, she suspected her
pleasure came from being with Mr. White, not from doing a crude washing job in
a freezing stream in Spain.

They took turns washing bits of themselves in the bitter
water. As he waited for her to return from the river, Jas built a decent fire
for once, to warm them and speed their clothes drying. She watched him attempt
to cut his beard, which was quite golden compared to his flaxen hair. He didn’t
have a mirror and didn’t seem particularly interested in the job.