He inhaled and smelled damp earth and sweat. He reminded himself where he was and what she was, and tensed in anticipation of what words she might utter. He was sure she would challenge him for the sword he had taken from the one outlaw he’d managed to kill. Or she would accuse him of having fought dishonorably, leaving men dead when they might as easily been injured, bound, and brought to justice. She seemed the sort of sanctimonious fool to lecture about knightly manners and the virtues of a fair fight. Just the thought was enough to make his stomach turn.

“My lord,” she repeated, not looking at his face. “I give you thanks for my life and my honor.” She blinked, the long lashes fluttering prettily in a contradiction to her stark and uneven face, her harsh voice.

He didn’t respond, except to curl his hand around the grip of the newly acquired sword. There was a strange feeling in his breast, one he did not know how to name. She was a woman, and he could not be blind to these glimpses of her softness – the pretty lashes, the memory of her soothing hands, the taste of her mouth. But it had not felt like saving a woman, when he leapt in and stopped the blade that would have killed her. Instead, it felt like something new, and different. It felt like a friend. Like he had lent aid to a friend, an equal who would have done the same for him.

But they were not friends. He had little enough experience of such, but he imagined a certain amount of esteem and admiration was required. And she did not like him, or trust him, or admire him. She would deliver him to Edward, where he wanted least to go. Even now she stood before him, at the end of the chase, covered in sweat and fixing her eyes stoically on his chest. It was clear the thanks choked her.

He shrugged. “‘Is of no moment.”

“You fought well, my lord, when they came at me,” she continued doggedly. “Nor will I have my thanks turned aside, when you could so easily have fled and left me to my fate. Had they not killed me, I well know what would have become of me, did they succeed in my capture. Is the curse of a woman, that her body is made plunder by thieves.”

He heard himself let out a snort of laughter, feeling her thanks as some new kind of insult. His tongue raced ahead of his thought, eager to cut her in any way he could. “Starved indeed is the man would consider you for rape.”