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“Let’s leave my mother out of it.” He said it through gritted teeth.
“Easy enough for me.” She shrugged. Her gaze wavered, and she looked down the bank, at the river. Her voice dropped, murmured like the slow current. “I wanted the man I loved to put me first. I put him first, before everything.”
He swallowed. The blue thread had wrapped around his fingers, and he shook it off.
“And what did he put first?” He spoke softly too, unsure how she’d led him into this conversation, which, for all the trappings of falsity, contained some raw kernel of truth.
She meant what she said. He’d stake his life on it. God help him that he wanted to know about this other man, this man who’d hurt her so badly.
But she didn’t answer. Instead, she gave herself a shake.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“How unfortunate.” He stared at her lovely profile, the straight line of her nose, the curve of her lips, the defiant tilt of her chin. He was the one hurting her now.
Different. It was different. He was different. Completely.
He shook his empty specimen box, patted his coat pockets, smiling slightly at the exaggerated theater.
She was watching him, mutinous.
“It seems I forgot to pack our lunch. Luckily, nature provides.” He permitted himself a grin.
“In one of your letters . . .” he began, and she drew a sharp breath. Oh, she was close, very close, to breaking.
“You described catching your meals in the Min River.” He peered down at the river, but he could see her startled, displeased movement out of the corner of his eye. “Wait until you gut a Cornish trout and cook it on a stick over an open fire. Nothing like it. You’ll never go back.”
“Go back?” She made a strange sound, not quite a laugh. Some wildness had overthrown her. She reached out blindly to steady herself, pressed her fist into a tree trunk.
“No,” she said. “No, I won’t. You’re right about that, at least.”
Again, this impulse to soothe her, to sweep her into his arms.
You’re right, she’d said. There was no going back.
They’d soon see what else he was right about.
A gull cried, and he started forward, catching her hand and tugging her after him, so that they bounded together, a breathless, exhilarating descent to the river’s edge. She tripped on a root and would have fallen, but he pulled her close to his side, bearing her weight as the bank crumbled into soft clay. He lurched to keep their balance and laughed, her wildness doubling within him.
Maybe he’d leave her here, on this riverbank, hot and hungry, to fend for herself.
As soon as the ground leveled, she jerked away and darted ahead of him, so that, for a time, he followed her as she clambered over stones. She had to bend her slim back as she went, scrambling over logs.
“That’s a promising pool,” he said, and she pivoted with a gasp, startled to find him so close behind her. She’d gone quickly, but nowhere near quickly enough.
If she’d thought to prove a point by outstripping him . . . well. What a disappointment for her.
“And . . . there’s some succulent mud.” He stepped around her and squatted at the base of a willow. They’d taken a fork, and the river had narrowed, trees crowding in, the shadowy banks thick with moss. Reluctantly, she came to him and stood while he turned over the damp soil. When he rose, he took her wrist and placed the writhing knot of worms into her palm.
Elizabeth would have screamed. At which scream he would have winced, remembering his mother’s exasperation at displays of daintiness.
The fair woman before him—blotchy with exertion, sweat darkening the hair at her temples—she didn’t flinch. She kept her arm rigid, lowering her face to inspect the worms, nose wrinkled with distaste.
He produced the line, and the hook, from his pocket, handed them to her.
“Bait the worm on the hook,” he said. “I’ll find a spot for us. The fish will rise from that eddy, and we’ll want to stay behind it.”
He turned, walked a few steps, glanced over his shoulder. She was standing perfectly still, looking down at her outstretched hands, a bleak expression on her face. She felt his gaze and slowly raised her head.
