Blue moonlight flooded the tent as the flap was drawn back . . . but she did not see it, she was beyond seeing, only the moonlight somehow reached her fighting body, tossing head. …
She was held gently in gentle arms; a voice was calling her name softly. Gentle hands were touching her.
“Romilly, Romy . . . Romy, come back, come back . . . here, let me hold you like this, poor little one . . .come back to me, come back here . . .” and she saw Ranald’s face, heard his voice softly calling her; she felt as if she was drowning in the flood of what she was not, came back gratefully to awareness of her own body, held close in Ranald’s arms. His lips covered hers and she put up her arms and drew him down wildly to her, anything now, anything to keep her here safely within her own body, shut out the unendurable overload of emotion and physical sensation; Ranald’s arms held her, Ranald caressed her, she was herself, she was Romilly again, and she hardly knew whether it was fear, or gratitude, or real desire, that locked her lips to his, flung her into his arms, thrusting away all the unwanted contact with the stallion, reminding her that she was human, human, she was real, and this, this was what she wanted. . . . She could read in his mind that he was startled and delighted, even if a little overcome, by her violent acceptance, and more startled yet to find her virgin, but it did not, in that shared violence of that moment, matter to either of them at all.
“I knew,” he whispered afterward, “I knew it would be too much for you. I do not think it was to me you were calling, but I was here, and I knew….”
She kissed him thankfully, astonished and delighted. It had happened so naturally, it now seemed so sweet and right to her. A random thought, as she floated off into sleep, touched her mind at the edge of laughter.
It would never have been like this with Dom Garris! I was perfectly right not to marry him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carolin’s army remained encamped in the watercourse for three days. On the third day, Romilly went out to fly the sentry-birds again, Ranald at her side. She was quite aware that she must somehow shield her thoughts from Ruyven; he would not understand at all what had happened. He would see only that his young and innocent sister had shared her bed with a Ridenow lord, and to do her justice, Romilly was more worried that this might spoil the ability of the three of them to work together, than she was troubled by any sense of shame or regret for what she had done. Ruyven would be certain to think that Ranald had played the seducer, and it was not like that at all; he had simply pulled her free from something she had found herself quite unable to tolerate. Even now, Romilly did not know why she had found it unendurable.
“Remind me not to look at you and smile like that,” Ranald said, picking up her concern lest Ruyven should know, and she smiled back. She felt soothed and happy, able to look into the pasture by the watercourse where Sunstar and the horses were grazing and pick up her old, close communion with the stallion, with no sense of distaste or unease, no break in her warm sense of unity with Sunstar.
Ranald made it so easy for me.
Maura told me, about something else; horses have neither memory nor imagination. That is why I can pick up where I left off.
Twice during these days she went and joined the Swordswomen’s mess, sharing her meal with the women of the Sisterhood. Clea jeered a little at her.
“So you are still one of us, in spite of hob-nobbing with the nobility and all?”
“Be fair,” said Jandria, “she has her work to do just as we do, and Lady Maura is as good a chaperon as a whole hostel full of our sisters. One of the handlers is her own brother, too. And if rumor tells true-” but she looked inquisitively at Romilly, “that same Lady Maura will one day be our queen – what do you know of that, Romy?”