his nose and high cheekbones. A lifetime flickered across his features, the corners of his mouth sagging with disappointment, disillusion and doubt.
“I think I’ve only known lust.” He sounded moderately surprised by the revelation, and then looked embarrassed. “Infatuation, a few times…maybe. Probably more than a few, truth be told.”
She ducked her head into the line of his sight. “Never been really, truly in love?”
Nathan lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “Thought I was; certainly felt like it, at the time, at any rate. If anyone had asked, I probably would have said ‘aye.’”
“What happened?”
“It ended,” he said without remorse. “Sometimes, it was them; most of the time, it was me.”
Stretching his legs, he crossed his ankles and waggled one foot. “It didn’t last; few weeks, few months, maybe a year, and then it was over.”
“Leaves a vast hole, doesn’t it?”
The dark crest of his lashes lowered, veiling his thoughts as she had seen him do so many times. He went inward, where she, nor anyone else, would ever be allowed to go. The answer was so long in coming she thought perhaps there wouldn’t be one.
Finally, it came, his graveled voice a rough whisper. “Aye.”
They fell quiet, each immersed in settling the dust of disturbed ashes. Combing her fingers through her hair—now dry enough to begin to bloom about her head—Cate tried to imagine what it would be to bear such losses, supposed loves that either faded or soured. Comparatively speaking, her life had been simple: one love, one loss.
Nathan reached to seize the cheese and bottle. Experimentally sloshing the latter, he uncorked it and offered it to her. She took a drink; the cider was sweet while at the same time carried the tang of having begun to ferment. It made her slightly lightheaded and a lot lazy. He cut a piece of cheese, but she declined, not wanting to spoil the cider’s pleasantness.
Taking a bite, he slowly chewed while examining the remaining bit in his fingers. “Never found anyone what made me want to take that final oath.”
“Final oath? You make it sound like a death sentence.”
“Well, you have to admit, ’tis the end of a lot of things,” he said judiciously.
“And the beginning of so much more.”
Cate bit her lip as she measured her next words. “All those times, before,” she began delicately, “maybe those were just flings, infatuations. You haven’t found the right person, yet, that’s all.”
Mouth working pensively under his mustache, Nathan leaned back on his elbows once more. “What if you find them, but you can’t have them?”
The lilt in his voice brought a stab of sympathy. Rejection: it was a torture no less than flogging, a daily ripping of the flesh. Cate had been learning to live with the agony, dealing with it on a day-to-day basis. There was an instant surge of contempt for the thoughtless monster that had inflicted such agonies on him.
“You mean, if they don’t want you?” she asked, tactfully.
Nathan looked away. “Or, they’re already taken.”
Cate winced. “That could be a problem. I didn’t say it was all roses.”
Shifting restlessly, he muttered something cross under his breath. “Seems to be more thorns than roses.”
“You have to be willing to risk the thorns.”
Nathan sat up abruptly, his bells jangling. “I’ve had enough blood drawn.” Startled by his own outburst, he forced a smile. “Perhaps I’ll fancy the daisies; easier to pick and there’s a lot more of them.”
His metaphors made her smile.
“Daisies can fade quickly,” Cate chuckled, with less humor than intended. “Keep looking, Nathan. Perhaps, one day, you’ll find your rose.”
“Thorns be damned?”
It was his turn to smile, one of those gold and white marvels crafted to charm. It worked. She felt it tug in several places.
“Thorns be damned.”
Nathan gave Cate a piece of cheese. She chewed without tasting as she regarded him anew. His forearm was covered by his sleeve, but the image tattooed there was clear in her mind: a swallow carrying a heart, pierced and bleeding. She wondered what heartbreak had been so devastating as to drive him to mark it into his body, to be worn for an eternity. Had it been self-flagellation, for having been so foolish, or a reminder, never to open himself to such anguish again?
“You have a lot of fine qualities, Nathan,” she heard herself say. “You have a lot to offer a woman.”
A series of expressions crossed Nathan's face: accusation, suspicion, and finally, grudging acceptance. He bent up his knees and hung his head between his arms, the sable