Daughters Of The Storm by Kim Wilkins Read Free Book Online Page B

fit, her voice growing more desolate. ‘Papa, Papa!’
    â€˜Let’s make this quick,’ Rose said to Heath.
    Heath responded by urging his horse forwards, Rose moved off after him. Hot imaginings of intimacy were left on the muddy slope as they trotted down to the gatehouse and out into rain-drenched fields, Rowan wailing all the way.

    The rhythm of the horse settled Rowan eventually and the rain eased. But distance and travel made talking difficult, and knowing Rowan was listening constrained Rose to discussing with Heath only outward things. Rowan was famed for repeating what she had heard adults say, with unerring mistiming.
    Rose spent most of the day measuring the breadth of Heath’s shoulders from behind him. She remembered those shoulders, bare and pale. She remembered the smudged black tattoo over his heart: a bird with its feet in its own beak. She remembered pressing her own naked flesh against him, the lightness of his fingertips across her nipples and the sweet heat of his mouth against her stomach. She remembered it, yes, but the years had drawn a curtain between them. As the day wore on, as she stole glances at him while he kept his eyes resolutely in front of him, he grew to seem a character from a dream. This man, the real father of her child: a stranger at the centre of a familiar longing.
    The unpredictable weather drove them early to a tall, crooked alehouse in Doxdal, south of the great lakes of Netelchester and still two long days from Blicstowe. Heath stayed with their horses to cool them down, while Rose took Rowan inside to feed her and dry her clothes by the fire. The child always demanded to be held while she fell asleep; it had been scarce a month since she was weaned from the breast. Rose lay out beside her on the blanket, watching her eyes flicker and sink, flicker and sink, until finally she was still. Rowan’s soft, even breathing measured out the minutes, the first hour. Evening settled in. Perhaps by now Heath had eaten, too, and was sitting downstairs among the noise of men and the spitting fire, thawing his limbs from the long cold ride. He would be thinking of her ...
    Would he not?
    But they had been apart a long time. Perhaps his feelings had changed. The thought staggered her. She had felt the proximity of him all day, her skin aware of his skin. She had assumed such feelings were shared, but perhaps she was being a fool.
    A deep, sad current thrilled through her, making her gasp loudly. Rowan stirred and settled again. And why should Heath be constant for her and love her? She was married to someone else. Not just someone: the king of Netelchester, Heath’s uncle. Her fingers went to Rowan’s soft cheek, grasping for the last thing in the world unsullied by her dissatisfaction. She was trapped, and the truth of this was crushing. Once, she had imagined that when Bluebell was queen, Rose could ask to come home to Blicstowe, not to have to perpetuate this loveless marriage. In her imagination, her sister would raise war against Netelchester to free her. But now Bluebell stood poised to take control of Ælmesse, these imaginings revealed themselves for what they were: childish fantasies. Bluebell would give her life for Ælmesse, Rose had to give nothing but her womb.
    And, it seemed, her happiness.
    A creak on the floorboards outside her room made her sit up. She cracked the door open a fraction, and saw Heath rolling out his bed against the wall. He had placed on the floor a stuttering lantern that made the shadows of the balcony rail leap.
    â€˜Heath?’
    He looked up and saw her. Smiled. Love was still there, she knew it with arrowing intensity. A sob caught in her throat. He came to the door and took her right arm in his hands, his desire compressed into the hot palms that circled her sleeved wrist, sending her heart into a frantic rhythm. But he dared not embrace her. From here, they were visible to whomever cared to look up. And she could