Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,11
save me but was burned as well. My father saved us. After that, my mother was killed while traveling. Her body was burned to ashes.”
“Who? Who would burn a house down with a child inside?” he asked angrily. “Or kill a helpless woman?”
She shrugged. She didn’t want to tell him that her father had enemies. He might consider the earl one of the bad men and want to kill him. “Robbers and thieves?”
He gave her a doubtful look. “And ye are eager to go back to yer father’s safe, lonely life?”
“I would rather stay with you. For a little while longer at least.”
“Me?” he shook his head. “I sleep under trees, lass. I eat when I can. I—”
“I’m not asking you to be my husband, sir!” No, that title was reserved for old, slobbering men! Why was she so happy to be alive anyway? To be a prisoner, or the wife of an old man?
She pulled his plaid around her and took a deep breath in and out. She turned her back to him. She didn’t want to talk anymore.
“’Tis Tristan,” he said in a low voice behind her.
“What is Tristan?”
“’Tis what I am called.”
She turned around on his lap and smiled. “Tristan.”
It was a good start.
Chapter Four
They continued south that day and stopped in another town for more food and a horse for Rose. Tristan didn’t mind buying the horse. He had enough pounds to pay for five more horses. He had to get her off his lap and out of his arms. She was too easy to like. Even when she was asking her endless questions, he didn’t find her all that annoying.
He was used to being alone. He didn’t mind it. He’d been on his own for years. Having her around wasn’t worse…or better. It was different. Of course, soon enough, he’d drop her off at her home and be on his way to the next man on his list. He’d never see her again and it was just as well.
What kind of life could he give a lass, if he wanted the burden of a wife in his life, that is?
“Do you want to have supper at an inn tonight?” she asked him from her saddle a few feet away.
Not particularly. No. He didn’t want to sit in a tavern with people. He couldn’t be who he was, and be that hired killer effectively if he made friends everywhere he went. Staying cold, unknown, and detached was the secret to success.
“What is wrong with the food I bought?” he asked her with a scowl.
She ignored it and continued on, and looking damned fine doing it. “Nothing at all. But I want to sit at a table and feel human. They likely have water so you could wash your hands a dozen more times,” she said, trying to sweeten the deal. “Why do you wash them so often?”
“I was told it keeps plagues away.” Hell, he didn’t like staying at inns. Why pay for a bed when he could fall asleep to the music of the breeze through the leaves and the twinkling stars above?
He tried one more tactic than outright refuse her the way his head told him to do. “It might not be safe. There are more people in the next town.”
“Tristan.”
Why had he given her his name? Every time she spoke it set his blood to burning and turned his bones to butter. The delicate sound of her seeped deep inside him. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. He was already thinking of missing it.
“Now you sound like my father,” she sulked.
He stared at her as they kept their horses to a slow trot beneath the trees. Though he understood now why her father had secluded her, he still couldn’t accept the idea of it. She was a treasure, indeed, though at times annoying to distraction. The more hours he spent with her, the more he felt overcome by her dark beauty and rare innocence. But she was free, not to be kept in a cage, lest she cease.
“Ye master me yet again, Woman,” he surrendered to her and cursed Uncle Torin and his blasted tales of poetic savages.
“We can eat at an inn?” Excitement lit her dark sable eyes and her wide smile made him glad he gave in.
“Aye, if that is what ye want.”
She put her hand to her mouth and nodded happily. “You see now? If you had not supplied me with my own horse, I would be hugging