A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,172

how I planned it. I haven’t even got a ring!’

She stared at him in cold astonishment. ‘What?’

He took her limp hand in both of his. They felt hot and faintly clammy. ‘It’s mad, I know it’s mad, but … I love you. It took this to make me realise, but … hear me out.’

Honestly, she had no words to interrupt him with.

‘I’m shit without you! Utter shit, everyone knows it. But with you … I have the chance of being a worthwhile person. I didn’t come here to save you. The idea’s fucking ridiculous. I came so that you can save me. I’m the last man you’d pick as a king, I know, but you … bloody hell, Savine, you were made to be a queen! There’s no one I admire more. You have all the brains and the guts and the ambition I don’t! Imagine what we could build together. Well, imagine what I could watch you build. Queen Savine.’ He gave that boyish, wheedling smirk of his. ‘It even rhymes.’

‘Queen …’ It came out a strangled squawk. The sort of noise a goose might make when its neck was wrung. ‘Savine …’

He could have had anyone. But he wanted her. And not her money, not her connections, not her wigs and her dresses and her jewels. Not the idea of her. But her. At her worst. Even now. Even like this. Not just as his lover. As his wife. As his queen.

‘I …’ she breathed, but her voice failed her utterly and it came out no more than an acrid burp.

‘Shit.’ He winced as he sharply stood. ‘You don’t have to answer. You don’t even have to think about it.’ He pulled one hand away, but clung on with the fingertips of the other as if he could not quite bring himself to let go. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. I’m such an arsehole. Take all the time … you need …’

He had ridden to her rescue. With five thousand armed men. Men she had paid for, but even so. She had never thought she might need rescuing. She had never dreamed he might be the man to do it. It was as if she had never really seen him before. She had known she could laugh with him. But she had never imagined she might be able to trust him. To rely on him. She had been braced for rejection and disappointment. Sympathy and support she had no idea what to do with.

‘Shit,’ he said, finally letting go of her fingers, leaving them strangely tingling. ‘I’m terrible at this. Is there something you need? Is there anything I can … Do you want to be alone? Do you want me to go?’ He turned towards the tent flap.

She caught his wrist. It was trembling. His wrist and her hand both.

Then she was kissing him.

It was not elegant. He stumbled back in surprise, blundered into a pole in the middle of the tent and for a moment, she thought he might bring the whole thing flapping down around them. Their chins knocked painfully. Then their noses. She tried to twist her head to one side and he went the same way, then they both went the other.

She caught his head, gripped it with both hands, teeth scraping, ugly grunting, undignified slurping. Awkward and fierce and urgent, as if they were running out of time. Nothing like the neat routines they used to go through in Sworbreck’s office, with all the polite back and forth of a formal dance, a dignified game in which they both kept their cards close. Now everything was on the table and it felt deadly serious, her heart thudding in her ears just as it had the day of the uprising.

She saw his bed behind a curtain, brass gleaming in the shadows, and she pushed him towards it. He blundered into a stove, still trying to kiss her, nearly fell right over it, then got tangled with the curtain until she tore it out of the way. How many people knew she was in here? How many might guess what was happening? She didn’t care.

All the elaborate precautions she used to follow. The carefully laid alibis, the changes of carriage, the blinds lowered in Sworbreck’s bloody office. Against her father finding out. Against his parents finding out. Against her ending up carrying a bastard. She had been so formidably organised. So overpoweringly sensible. Romance totted up and tallied in Zuri’s book like a manufactory’s accounts.

Now