He straightened the stirrup hanging beside the scabbarded shaft of his lance (Rusher whickered way back in his throat, as if to say About time we got going), then turned to her again. She felt actually faint as his gaze fell upon her, and now the idea of ka was almost too strong to deny. She tried to tell herself it was just the dim—that feeling of having lived a thing before—but it wasn’t the dim; it was a sense of finding a road one had been searching for all along.

“There’s something else I want to say. I don’t like returning to where we started, but I must.”

“No,” she said faintly. “That’s closed, surely.”

“I told you that I loved you, and that I was jealous,” he said, and for the first time his voice had come unanchored a little, wavering in his throat. She was alarmed to see that there were tears standing in his eyes. “There was more. Something more.”

“Will, I don’t want to—” She turned blindly for her horse. He took her shoulder and turned her back. It wasn’t a harsh touch, but there was an inexorability to it that was dreadful. She looked helplessly up into his face, saw that he was young and far from home, and suddenly understood she could not stand against him for long. She wanted him so badly that she ached with it. She would have given a year of her life just to be able to put her palms on his cheeks and feel his skin.

“You miss your father, Susan?”

“Aye,” she whispered. “With all my heart I do.”

“I miss my mother the same way.” He held her by both shoulders now. One eye overbrimmed; one tear drew a silver line down his cheek.

“Is she dead?”

“No, but something happened. About her. To her. Shit! How can I talk about it when I don’t even know how to think about it? In a way, she did die. For me.”

“Will, that’s terrible.”

He nodded. “The last time I saw her, she looked at me in a way that will haunt me to my grave. Shame and love and hope, all of them bound up together. Shame at what I’d seen and knew about her, hope, maybe, that I’d understand and forgive...” He took a deep breath. “The night of the party, toward the end of the meal, Rimer said something funny. You all laughed—”

“If I did, it was only because it would have looked strange if I was the only one who didn’t,” Susan said. “I don’t like him. I think he’s a schemer and a conniver.”