“How does who fit together? You and me?” asked a man from the darkness.
The balls fell from Linsha’s hands as she spun around to face the ladder, her dagger already in her grip.
“It’s all right, Lynn,” said Ian Durne. “It’s just me. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
By all the absent gods of Krynn, she thought, slowly dropping her blade. How long had he been out there? She slid her dagger back in place and, still keeping an eye on him, knelt to retrieve the balls.
The commander walked between the stacks of hay to stand at the edge of the moonlight. “I didn’t know you could juggle. Where did you learn to do that?”
“I taught myself. It helps me think,” she replied in soft tones. She noticed he carried a bottle of wine and two stemmed cups.
He held up the wine like a peace offering. His eyes were like glass in the moonlight, his face stern and sad. His usually immaculate uniform was dusty and rather disheveled, and his weapons were nowhere in sight. Linsha thought she had never seen him look so weary and forlorn.
That warm flutter started again in the pit of her stomach. She tried to ignore it, to remember Varia’s advice. He was a stranger. What did she really know about him? “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you cross the courtyard, and I thought I’d join you.”
She stood up, uncertain how she felt about that. “Can’t sleep?”
“No.” He looked up at the roof wrapped in darkness, at the timbers and the piles of hay. “So, why are you up here?”
“It’s peaceful. I like the animals.”
“It helps you think,” he finished for her. “Ah, may I sit down?”
She nodded and smoothed out a corner of her blanket with a bare foot.
He lowered himself to the blanket in stiff, slow movements, then he uncorked the wine and poured a generous measure in both glasses. Sampling it, he sighed with pleasure. “A nice red. One of the new local vintages. It’s pleasantly soft, with a fine, lingering finish.” He glanced up at Linsha, still standing by the edge of the blanket. “Oh, please, sit down. I hurt my neck tonight and I don’t want to look up.”
Linsha hesitated, torn between being discourteous and on guard, or polite and vulnerable. Did she really want to put herself in this position? She could just take her leather balls and go. Varia would find her. She wouldn’t have to stay here, alone with this man who awakened such an attraction in her. She could say “thank you” and “no” and leave him to the blanket and the wine and the darkness.
“It is said, ‘In delay there lies no plenty,’ ” he murmured.
“It is also said, ‘If you leap too soon, you can lose all,’ ” she quickly retorted.
He grinned. “Ever the cautious alley cat. Always sniffing around corners before you enter the street.”
“Of course. A cat can never be too cautious when there are big toms around.”
As if on cue, a large orange tomcat strolled out of the darkness, his tail held high. “Where did you come from?” Linsha asked. The cat twined around her legs and purred, but when Ian reached for him, his ears flattened on his skull and he hissed at him.
The commander grumbled, “That’s why I don’t like cats.”
A laugh welled up in Linsha’s heart. She scooped up the cat and sat cross-legged on the blanket across from Ian, the cat curled up in her lap.
“You are so beautiful when you smile,” Ian said, his voice a haunting whisper. He poured a glass of wine, black-red in the moonlight, and handed it to her.
She saw him wince from the movement. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
He passed a hand over his eyes and stayed silent for a long while before he spoke. “It was a fiasco. We were ambushed by the Dark Knights on a farm in the northern vale.”
Linsha sucked in a breath. “How?”
He gulped his wine and poured another measure. “Lord Bight’s informer betrayed us. Instead of catching the Knights off guard, we were attacked by a full company of their horsemen lying in wait for us. We lost five men, and ten more were wounded before we could fight our way out.”
“Ye gods,” Linsha breathed. “No wonder Lord Bight was so upset.” The orange cat bumped his head against her hand to be petted, and she automatically began to stroke his soft fur and rub his ears. “Then to lose Captain Dewald to murder…” Her voice faded.
“It hasn’t been a good night,” he groaned in understatement. He finished his second helping of wine, poured a third, then pointed to her cup, still untouched in her hand. “You haven’t tried the wine.”
She sampled the wine, letting it trickle down the back of her throat. He was right; it was very good. “What happened to the informer?” she asked.
“We haven’t found him yet. If I have my way, he’ll be drawn and quartered.”
“How did you get hurt?”
His smile flashed again in the pale light. “Some big Knight sideswiped me with a short lance and knocked me out of the saddle. I nearly snapped my neck.” Switching his cup to his right hand, he gingerly reached out and touched Linsha’s shoulder.
To her astonishment, the orange cat snarled at him and lashed at his hand with a clawed paw.
Ian jerked back. “All right, all right, you stupid cat. Lynn, tell your guardian there to relax. I just wanted to know if your injury was doing well.”
She stroked the cat until he subsided, but she made no effort to move him. She glanced up at Ian from under her dark brows. “It aches and burns at times. Other than that, it’s fine.”
Ian’s third cup of wine disappeared and was replaced.
Linsha watched him worriedly while she sipped her own wine. She had never seen his control slip like this before.
“I’m sorry you were the one to find Captain Dewald in the woods,” the commander said apologetically. His words were coming out slower than normal and a little rough around the edges.
“Do you have any idea who would want him dead?”
Ian swept his free hand through the air. “Any number of people. Solamnic Knights. Dark Knights. A jealous competitor. A jealous husband. The captain was my right hand. Maybe he was killed to strike a blow at me.”
“I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”
“He was a good man.” Suddenly he started chortling. “You know, he used to tell this awful joke about an elf, a kender, and a draconian.” He fell back in the hay, laughing so hard he spilled wine over his tunic. He tried to tell the joke to Linsha and lost the punch line somewhere in his hilarity. His laughter gradually subsided, but his verbosity did not. He talked to Linsha about Dewald and his exploits, about the men in his command who died that night. He told her funny stories about Sanction and told more jokes than Linsha could ever remember while she listened and laughed and tried not to yawn too much. Through it all, he drank steadily, first from the wine bottle then from a flask he brought out of his tunic.
After nearly an hour, to judge from the lengthening angle of moonlight, Ian sagged back into the hay. He fell quiet so quickly that Linsha stared at him, wondering if he was ill. She lifted the protesting cat from her lap and crawled across the blanket to his side. He was lying on his back with his eyes wide open and staring at the roof. Slowly they slid from the roof and fastened on her.
She gazed down at him from his broad forehead down along the line of his cheek and jaw to his full lips and the small cleft on his chin. Her appraisal offered an invitation, and he took it.
His fingers touched her nose, her eyelids, and caressed the side of her face. They slid through her curls, curved around the back of her neck, and pulled her head down to him. Softly, gently his lips curved over hers, and he kissed her long and deep and passionately.
Linsha’s will to resist lasted perhaps two heartbeats before her resolution melted like an old candle. It had been too long since she felt this way. He woke in her a need she thought long dormant, one she could not honestly call love. Perhaps what she felt for him was just lust or infatuation. She didn’t know—not yet. But at that moment, she didn’t care. All that mattered was his closeness and their need for each other.