feet, the curve of the canvas was not designed for her height, and the long reach of Quintus’s arm caught her wrist in an iron grip, pulling her off balance. Furiously, she tried to throw him off, her eyes blazing with green fire. ‘No man may touch me!’ she yelled, competing with the roar outside.
‘Then that’s another thing you’d better get used to, Princess High and Mighty. And if this show of temper is meant to convince me that you can behave in a civilised manner, then you’ve fallen at the first jump, haven’t you? And mind that lamp, for Jove’s sake!’ His swinging her round sent her sprawling against the chest. ‘Any more nonsense, woman, and you’ll find yourself shackled to a slave-merchant’s line-up at Lindum. If you doubt me, just try it. I have no taste for ill-tempered barbarian women.’
She knew it was a mistake. Righting herself, she pulled her legs under her, covering them with the linen tunic that was not quite long enough, bowing her head submissively. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered. ‘I feel my losses deeply. If I lost my freedom once more, permanently, I would take my own life and forfeit the protection of the goddess Brigantia, after whom I am named. She is angered that I no longer wear her gifts, nor have I offered at her shrine since my capture. I am not the bad-tempered barbarian you think me. I grieve for my maid, her lost child and for my family, but I have no way to relieve it, Roman.’ With downcast eyes, she could only feel the pad of his bare feet as he took a stride across the mattress to lower himself between her and the side of the wagon, only a hand’s reach away. Thunder still crashed overhead. ‘She’s angry,’ she whispered. ‘Very angry.’
‘I thought goddesses were more understanding than that. Your Brigantia must be a very vengeful dame. They mean so much to you, do they? Your ornaments?’
‘She gave them to me when I was born. I began to wear them when I became a woman,’ she said, plying and unplying the fringe of the blanket. ‘They are a part of me. If I lose them, I lose who I am. That’s the reason, I suppose.’
‘The reason?’
‘The reason why I’m losing myself. I shall be someone else’s property, not my own woman. I do not know if my spirit can rise above it. I have yet to find out.’
‘So what if you were to wear them again?’
Her head lifted at that. ‘You would allow it?’
Quintus blinked at the gaze she fixed on him, moved by the strange unearthly power of blue-green waters that shimmered off the coastline of his beloved home, Hispania. He saw the sun and sea, vineyards and villas, warmth and good friends who asked for nothing but friendship. He saw it all in her eyes, felt her grief, as if her losses were his losses also. ‘Tomorrow morning you shall have them. Meanwhile, they’re in there and you’re sleeping next to them. Your goddess surely won’t mind that so much.’
‘Thank you, Roman. Oh … thank you!’ Her fists clenched over the fringe. ‘I must not weep,’ she whispered. ‘I must not weep. I am strong.’
‘And perhaps we’ll find a way of making a portable shrine to Brigantia. Wait till we reach Lindum. There’s sure to be something on the market. ‘Tis a terrible thing to lose touch with your own deity.’
‘Then you’ll allow me to stay with you? Not sell me?’
‘For the moment.’ He yawned again, covering his white teeth with the back of his hand. ‘But let’s get one thing straight, shall we? Whether you wear Brigantia’s gifts or not, whether you think of yourself as your own woman or not, that fact is that you remain my property. I have orders to get rid of you, and that’s what I shall do. It’s all a matter of how and when. I doubt whether your goddess will approve, but that’s how things are. Understand that from the beginning and your chances of staying alive will improve. You’ll have to learn to adapt, Princess. You’re not very good at that, are you?’
‘I will try,’ she said. ‘I can learn. Truly, I will learn, Roman.’
‘So learn to address me with respect, if you will. To you, I am Tribune.’
‘Yes. And I am known as Brighid, sir.’ She pronounced it ‘Bridget’.
Quintus, however, did not. ‘To me, you’ll be known as Princess. It suits my purposes,’ he said, curtly.
Ah, she thought. More saleable. As with the gold ornaments. These Romans so love display, don’t they? Especially on a woman.
Bending across to where the lantern stood in one corner, he opened the shutter and nipped the wick, plunging the wagon into complete darkness that seemed to intensify the rattling of the rain on all sides. The blanket was pulled out of her hands as he held it to open the bed, and his sharp command, ‘Lie down!’ took her completely by surprise as his legs burrowed downwards and a cushion was pulled from behind her.
‘What!’ she yelped. ‘No … no, sir! You cannot stay here!’
His arm came heavily across her, but the chest was at her side and there was no way out of the predicament. ‘Listen, woman,’ he said. ‘Either I sleep in here, or I get those two guards to take my place. They’ll be warm and dry at the moment, and I doubt they’ll be too honoured to spend the night cramped up in here. You choose.’
‘You don’t understand, sir,’ she said, trying to prise his arm away. ‘I have never slept with a man.’
‘Then don’t sleep. Stay awake, if you prefer. This will be another new experience for you to learn. Come on. Wriggle down. You’ll be quite safe.’
The notion of keeping her distance had to be abandoned as she slid down beside the warm bulk that took up more than half the mattress, the only room for protest being to turn her back on him. But he wrapped the blanket over her, pulling her into the bend of his body and resting his arm on the gentle swell of her hip, and though it was not an uncomfortable ordeal for her, her whole being was alive to his intimate closeness, his warmth along her back from neck to ankle, the disturbing male scent of him, his strange contours. She had seen the village men naked, half-naked and all stages in between for there was no privacy to speak of at home in the communal huts. But she had seen no man’s body as beautifully crafted as this one’s, honed to perfection, pampered by his personal masseur, probably adored and satisfied by countless women. He was unwilling to have a woman of her kind in tow, even for the novelty value of owning a Brigantian slave, yet she had neither seen nor heard any other woman in the cavalcade.
‘Don’t you have a woman to go to?’ she muttered, resent fully.
‘Yes,’ said the voice, rumbling into the cushion. ‘I’m with her. Go to sleep. We have to be away by dawn if we’re to reach Lindum tomorrow.’
The beating of the rain lulled her to sleep long before she heard the thunder pass on to disturb other miscreants. Once she woke to hear the gentle hiss of rain, when she reached out a hand to touch the chest where her treasures lay, and fell back into sleep. The next time, there was silence except for the soft breathing of the man behind her. She wanted to turn, but her tunic was caught under him and she could not free it without waking him.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘You’re lying on my tunic. And my hair.’
There was a huff of amusement as his hand delved and freed her hair, then, before she knew what he meant to do, he hauled on the other side of her tunic, rolling her over to face him, to be enclosed in his arms, her mouth against his firm jaw, her legs pressed against him. Her breasts lay upon the great mound of his chest, taking the heat of him through the linen, and when he laid her thick plait across his own neck like a winter muffler, she knew he intended her to stay and to sleep again, safe in his arms.
But sleep was hard to recapture when her head was being held in the crook of his neck, his mouth only inches away from hers, his arm cradling the soft red mass of her hair. Carefully, to ease it, she laid her leg over his, thus unwittingly inviting his free hand to slide gently over the roundness of her buttock and along her thigh, eventually sliding under the linen to find her silken skin.
She