Adrian by Heather Grothaus Page A

you’re frightened of Wyldonna. Of your own home. Of the queen?”
    Her trailing fingers slowed to a halt over the folds of linen at his elbow. “Aye.”
    Adrian frowned. “Would she harm you?”
    â€œIf she has to.” Her fingers picked up their journey once more, dragging her smooth nails down his sleeve to the edge, her eyes never leaving Adrian’s. “Perhaps I need some of your black paint myself. To protect me.” She slid one finger under the seam of linen at his wrist, testing him.
    Adrian reached across with his right hand and grasped her wrist, and it was as if desire for her broke over him like a rogue wave. The hum generated by their skin pressed together was nearly audible to Adrian, the sensation penetrating his very bones.
    â€œNo,” he said quietly, struggling to keep his voice level to disguise the way the feel of her was affecting him.
    She didn’t pull away from him, and Adrian did not release her. Could she, too, feel the strange energy between them? Regardless, she must be taught that she could not press him. His mind and his decisions were his own, and they were resolute.
    And yet she managed to turn her wrist in his grasp so that her fingers were open, her palm lying up, the veins in her delicate wrist exposed to him like an offering.
    â€œYou canna run from your fears forever,” she said quietly.
    â€œNeither can you,” he said, his confusion with the feelings her touch roused in him causing his voice to roughen with anger.
    â€œI’m nae,” she replied and at last pulled her arm away. Adrian let her cool skin slip through his fingers and the hum faded from his bones. “I’m running at mine.”
    She moved away from the table, and Adrian could hear her footsteps behind him, then the ringing of the metal clasps as she pulled open the curtain to her berth.
    â€œGood night.” The rings sang again.
    Adrian stared down at the end of his sleeve where Maisie had touched him and then at his own hand, which had pressed her skin. His flesh was still pricked with tingles.
    And he wondered if ink would be enough to protect either of them from whatever awaited their arrival at Wyldonna.

Chapter 7
    T he Englishman was once more already awake and about the cabin when Maisie exited her berth the next morning, although he barely acknowledged her presence, and she extended him the same courtesy. His only comment was that, in seeking to break his fast, he had been unable to access her provisions trunk, and Maisie was glad she’d had the forethought to seal it the day before. Citing the stickiness of wood at sea, she made a show of struggling with the lid before she opened it and produced suitable rations for both of them.
    He spent the day studying the drawings again, and although Maisie doubted anyone could be so academically single-minded, the task seemed to keep him sufficiently distracted from the fact that he was still confined within the crawler. He paced a bit at times, true, but it appeared to her as if he was working through imagined scenarios in his mind rather than trying to escape invisible demons. His brow furrowed beneath the fall of his dark hair and he seemed oblivious to her presence, even when she gave up trying to occupy herself and surrendered to the urge to observe him openly from her chair while she waited for the unpleasantness she knew was to come.
    Maisie heard the song before Adrian. She had felt Wyldonna in her bones hours before the watery moans penetrated the hull of the ship, and so she expected them, but a shiver raced up her spine all the same. She couldn’t help but think of her fate should the thickness of the crawler’s wood not stand between her and what sang in the icy water beyond.
    Adrian heard the mourning wails then, his face raising from the parchment on the tabletop. He turned toward her, and his ever-present frown deepened, increasing his look of solemn handsomeness.
    â€œDo you