The movement stirred her and she slowly emerged from her dreams. Awareness came to her slowly, and she frowned a little before she remembered where she was. She favored him with a sleepy smile he would never forget. Then full alertness hit her. She absorbed the new light of day streaking through the darkened lodge, and her face fell.

They lay in their embrace, closer in some ways than they had been in their passion. Marcus could almost hear the silent debate taking place inside her head.

“When I left Anglesmore, it was assumed I would be gone many days,” he said.

She exhaled a deep breath that said more than any words. It was the sigh of a woman who understands the world too well. “Day always comes, Marcus. An hour in a moonlit garden or a night in a firelit lodge does not change what the sun illuminates.”

“Very little sun enters these walls.”

“Enough to show us both who we are.”

He sought to win the argument the only way he could. He kissed her. She accepted it, and held his head to her as she made it long and sweet. When he moved to caress her, however, she turned her head away. “Do not. It will be too sad.”

He could not disagree. Already a wistful melancholy drenched the air. Still, he resented the cool determination with which she announced the end. Sad or not, doomed or not, he would have gladly continued this passion a fortnight and allowed duty to wait for a while.

She cast aside the blanket and knelt, unmindful of how cold it was outside their makeshift bed. He filled his mind with her as she dressed, and regretted every part of her body as it disappeared beneath the torn shift and wrinkled gown.

She reached for the remains of the food. “Just as well that we are not staying. We did not pack this food last night. The bread is hard and the cheese is wet.”

“I can hunt. The fear that has you ending this is not one of hunger.”

She ignored that, and rummaged through his garments until she found the little sack of dried venison. “Fortunately, you never eat the meal that you wear.”

She threw his clothes to him, and he dressed while she pried at the drawstring. His head emerged through the neck of his tunic to find her immobile, staring into the sack.

“It is not for eating, is it? Not really.” The gaze she turned to him had all of the softness he had seen while they made love. It was as if she looked right into his soul and understood all that she surveyed. Memories from the night filled his head, clearer now than in the actual living of them, and longing filled his chest. He suddenly understood why he did not want to leave this lodge, and the loss that waited when he did.