Adrian by Heather Grothaus

“Loyal lot.”
    â€œThey hate her. They have reason to, I suppose.” Maisie shrugged again and continued to stare at him. She appeared different this night than the way she’d behaved since they’d met. Sadder. Resigned. Adrian found himself with the odd urge to comfort her.
    â€œThen she must doubly appreciate your devotion.”
    â€œI hate her, too.”
    That gave him cause to smile and he cocked his head. “At least you stayed.”
    â€œDid I?”
    His smile broadened into a grin. It was true. Maisie Lindsey had likely traveled farther from Wyldonna than any of the others who had merely abandoned their posts at the castle.
    She didn’t return his smile but cocked her head, mirroring his pose. “What are the markings on your arm?”
    Adrian felt his grin fade and he dropped his eyes back to the drawings on the tabletop, sitting up in the hard wooden chair once more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œI saw them, Adrian,” she chided. “When you were having your—” her palms came away from the armrests and turned toward each other, as if she could somehow manifest the correct word—“nightmare.” The palms fell back down.
    Adrian sniffed, shuffled through the leaves of parchment before him, cleared his throat. “I have . . . scars.”
    â€œFrom what?”
    He kept his eyes trained on the drawings, although he wasn’t actually looking at them. “I was taken prisoner in the Holy Land more than two years ago and obliged to remain a guest of Saladin for some time. The hospitality of his generals was quite lacking.”
    â€œScars are nae black.”
    Adrian sighed and at last raised his eyes to meet Maisie’s once more. “No. They aren’t.”
    Her gaze was like flashing emeralds in the lanternlight. “Both arms?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œMay I see them?”
    â€œNo.”
    They continued to stare at each other until Maisie suddenly folded and rose from the chair. She approached him slowly, carefully, but deliberately, as if he was a wild animal she didn’t wish to spook.
    Perhaps he was.
    She came to a stop at the edge of the table, so near Adrian’s chair that the skirts of her gown spilled over his boots. Adrian continued to stare at the drawings before him, but his vision was of no use as his other senses could only detect the woman’s presence so near to him, like a promise of heather-scented danger, but one that would thrill rather than frighten.
    She trailed a pale hand along the splintered end of the table, her little oval fingertips barely grazing the wood until they met Adrian’s right elbow. She grasped a fold of his sleeve and rubbed it between her thumb and finger.
    â€œHow did you get them?”
    â€œA Chinese,” Adrian said brusquely, feeling the heat of her skin through the linen. “He had the misfortune to happen upon me the day I saw the extent of the effect my injuries had left on my body. He offered to help . . . assuage some of my distress at my appearance. It is a talent of his culture, though forbidden in the West. Especially in a cloister of monks.”
    â€œMore than your arms.”
    It wasn’t a question, but Adrian answered her anyway. “Yes.”
    Her fingertips trailed up his right arm then, her touch so light and yet so full of energy that the hair on the back of his neck raised.
    â€œMay I see them?” she asked again.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy?” The question was not asked in a demanding manner. Her fingertips skimmed across his shoulders and she moved around his chair in order to complete the path her hand wanted to follow down his left arm. “Does it shame you?”
    Adrian felt heat come from his neck. “It’s not a fit sight for a woman.”
    â€œI’m nae easily frightened.”
    He looked up at her then, and saw that her gaze was already on his face. “But