a small stream washing her face. “I gave it to Ellie. She needed it more than me.”
Of course she had. The woman would starve herself before letting her sister do without. The sister who hadn’t said a word since their journey began beyond a gasp when she’d found out his Resistance connections. Not to mention that look of anger and disbelief she’d thrown at Kat for keeping it from her.
He took a deep breath in an attempt to tamp down his irritation. “This is going to be a hard trip, and food supplies are limited. The last thing I need is you fainting in a ditch, so you’ll eat your portion from now on.”
“Are you quite finished lecturing?”
“Only if you’re finished giving away your sustenance.”
“Fine. Now, may we return to the escape plan?”
Screwing the lid back on the canteen, he tucked it into the canvas haversack next to him. “We’re making our way to Salbris, a small town near Bourges where the local faction of fighters will be waiting for us. As long as the messenger didn’t get shot on the way.”
She blanched and looked away. “How will we know where to find them?”
“By the clues they’ve left out.”
“Which are . . . ?”
He shook his head. “The less you know the better in case we’re captured. And Kat, you do have to believe that that is a very real possibility.”
She plucked a blade of dried grass and slid it between her fingers. “I do realize that, but you have to accept that we’re in this together, and refusing to tell me everything is just as harmful as not. If you get taken, Ellie and I are left alone without the slightest clue of finding a safe place.”
“Your father never gave you a backup plan after that Red Cross boat?” His tone was sharper than he’d intended, but a man who threw his child into such danger without so much as a map was worthy of contempt.
Intense eyes with pinpricked pupils bore into him like nails. “My father never had a say in the details of this trip. It was all left to the SIS, and their only instruction was to meet with a man named Crowder a week after I had arrived. I waited nearly four hours at the meeting spot, but he never showed. I was told to assume if that happened he was already dead.” Dropping the blade of grass, she stuck her hand out to him. “Do we have a deal?”
“We seem to make a lot of those.”
“So you’ve pointed out before.” Her fingers wiggled in the space between them. “Honesty or no?”
Honesty. The very word sliced between his ribs and straight into his heart. Honesty required he tell her that she was nothing more than a paycheck, a means to his detested circumstances. At least she’d once been. Now, she’d beguiled her way into something more that he was loath to admit out loud. He wasn’t ready for that amount of honesty, not with himself and not now.
“I’ll do my very best.” He shook her hand and dropped it immediately lest the longing to hold it coaxed forth the words that he was desperate to keep in.
A dry midafternoon breeze ruffled the lazy stream at the bottom of the embankment. The smell of sweet grass and dirt churned in the early September air. Back home, autumn was rolling in to pluck the purple from the swaying heather and spin it into red and gold for the treetops. The lochs would be too chilly for a quick morning dip, and the cold, crisp nights would sparkle with frost. How he would miss it. A tightness squeezed in his chest. How he would miss one other thing in particular.
“I’ve lived my whole life trying to do what was right, what was expected, but I see now it was out of fear of disappointing that I agreed in the first place. I should have said no to a great many people along the way.”
“You should’ve told them to take a flying leap.”
Her lips quirked. “In hindsight many of them probably deserved that. But in all those people you were never one I tried to please out of wanting to curry favor. I can be myself without fear of reprisal. A situation I have rarely been in, and yet here I find it with you.”
“We’d have gone on the run long ago if I’d known these sentiments were waiting for me.”