Chapter 15: The Night Before the Ship

The ship sailed at dawn from the pier at Brenn, a day's ride south, and they reached the Brenn inn after dark.

Thessaly did not sleep in her own room.

She stood in the corridor outside his door with a candle in her hand.

She stood there until the wax ran onto her fingers.

Then she knocked.

"Come."

He stood at the window in his shirt with the shutters open on the thaw, and the sound of water was everywhere.

He turned, and his face changed.

"Thessaly."

"I am asking," she said.

She set the candle on the table.

Her voice came out steady, which surprised her.

"Clause three."

"No bed unless I ask."

"I'm asking, Eskil," she said.

"I leave in six hours."

"I have wanted you since the inn on the north road, and I am tired of explaining it away as cold."

He did not move.

"You are certain," he said.

"Do you want me to say it again?"

"No." He crossed the room in three strides. "Once is a great deal."

He stopped a hand's breadth away.

She saw his hands open and close at his sides.

She understood he was waiting for her to be the one to close the rest of the distance.

So she did.

She went up on her toes, took his face in her hands and kissed him.

He made a rough sound against her mouth, and then his arms were around her, lifting her against him until her feet left the floor.

It was nothing like the Hall.

There was no audience to perform for, and nothing in the kiss was polite.

He kissed her slowly, deeply, as if he meant to learn her mouth by heart in the time they had.

She felt it in her knees and low in her belly.

"I thought about this," he said against her throat, "in the sleigh."

"You never said."

"I would have signed away the duchy before I said it."

Her laugh turned into a gasp as he set his teeth gently at the place where her neck met her shoulder.

His hands were at her laces.

"Let me," she said, and stepped back.

She undid the gown herself.

She let it fall, and the shift after it, and stood in the candlelight with her hair down over her breasts.

Eskil looked at her, and the ice-blue eyes went almost black.

"You are beautiful," he said, rough and plain. "I knew you would be, and I did not know."

"Come here."

He took off his shirt in one pull.

She had stitched that skin, but she had not been allowed to look.