The Burning by Susan Squires

out into the garden. She cared not what she met tonight, monster or mob. She had to get out. The house was a prison with her cousin as chief gaoler. Running into the woods, she leaned against her favorite trees, gasping. The thrill of sunlight, the satisfaction of growing, the wild abandon of tossing leaves in the wind, sank into her through the rough bark under her hands. Such pure feelings trees had; untainted, untrammeled. They soothed the tumult in her breast.
    When she felt calmer, she pushed herself up and wandered farther into the woods, up toward her cave. Stone would be even calmer.
    Erich, as he wanted to be called, wanted her money, but he wanted her person, as well. She dared not even think about what would happen if a man wanted to claim the full rights of marriage with her, let alone the hateful Erich and his abnormal proclivities. All that touching . . . not to mention probably being naked. No. Conjugal relations were denied her. She must never know the act of physical love, even with a man she found congenial, or it would be the end of her. She would never have a child. Lord forbid! Even if shemanaged the dreadful act itself with a partner she did not find repulsive, how could she risk having a girl-child who would share her disability and her curse? No. It died with her. Her own uncle had refused to marry in order to avoid producing someone like her.
    That settled on her shoulders. A mistake, an aberration—that’s what she was. And more than that, a burden. She had ended her parents’ lives. She had twisted her uncle’s life into one of sacrifice for a niece he would never have wanted to beget himself. And now she might end with a man she hated raping her into madness with the full blessing of society. She started to run again. She raced up the path and then off through the trees toward her special cave. A scent hung in the air, spicy, like cinnamon. What was that?
    She almost bumped into him.
    Gasping, she took two hasty steps back. “What . . . what are you doing here?”
    Stephan Sincai simply stood there. His black cloak blended into the darkness. He seemed strangely alive. His form loomed over her, tightly muscled under his clothing. She had never been so aware of a man’s body beneath all the fabric. In the light from the moon peeking through the trees, she saw how strong his face looked, how . . . bleak. He was a man who struggled with himself. There was pain in his past. He might have committed who knows what sins. But his expression said he struggled with it. That was something she understood, and something someone like Erich would never understand.
    “I might ask the same,” he rumbled. The accent was . . . appealing.
    Why she felt the need to answer him she couldn’t say. “I . . . I needed to get away.”
    He simply raised his brows, as though to say his reason was the same.
    Now she remembered why she should not simply turnand run. He had come to her aid. Twice. She cleared her throat. “I’m glad I ran into you. Or almost. Well, I mean, I’m glad I encountered you. I never got a chance to thank you properly for . . . for the other night . . . and in the village . . .” That sounded so incoherent. The sensuous fabric of her dreams about him suffused her with a blush.
    “It was nothing.” His face was quite inscrutable.
    She remembered that he had seen the episode at the tavern when Jemmy touched her. He’d witnessed her using information she couldn’t know in her defense. “I’m not a witch.” Was that true? Why should she feel compelled to tell him that?
    “What are you?”
    Was that a smile lurking around his mouth? How different a smile from her cousin’s! She lifted her chin. “I . . . I have a disability.” That should make him stop his questions.
    He frowned. “What kind of disability?”
    How rude! She bit back her first retort. She was, after all, in his debt. Should she tell him? Could she? No one had ever asked her straight-out like that. “I know things about