Clandestine circle

Ian swept his free hand through the air. “Any number of people. Solamnic Knights. Dark Knights. A jealous competitor. A jealous husband. The captain was my right hand. Maybe he was killed to strike a blow at me.”

“I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”

“He was a good man.” Suddenly he started chortling. “You know, he used to tell this awful joke about an elf, a kender, and a draconian.” He fell back in the hay, laughing so hard he spilled wine over his tunic. He tried to tell the joke to Linsha and lost the punch line somewhere in his hilarity. His laughter gradually subsided, but his verbosity did not. He talked to Linsha about Dewald and his exploits, about the men in his command who died that night. He told her funny stories about Sanction and told more jokes than Linsha could ever remember while she listened and laughed and tried not to yawn too much. Through it all, he drank steadily, first from the wine bottle then from a flask he brought out of his tunic.

After nearly an hour, to judge from the lengthening angle of moonlight, Ian sagged back into the hay. He fell quiet so quickly that Linsha stared at him, wondering if he was ill. She lifted the protesting cat from her lap and crawled across the blanket to his side. He was lying on his back with his eyes wide open and staring at the roof. Slowly they slid from the roof and fastened on her.

She gazed down at him from his broad forehead down along the line of his cheek and jaw to his full lips and the small cleft on his chin. Her appraisal offered an invitation, and he took it.

His fingers touched her nose, her eyelids, and caressed the side of her face. They slid through her curls, curved around the back of her neck, and pulled her head down to him. Softly, gently his lips curved over hers, and he kissed her long and deep and passionately.

Linsha’s will to resist lasted perhaps two heartbeats before her resolution melted like an old candle. It had been too long since she felt this way. He woke in her a need she thought long dormant, one she could not honestly call love. Perhaps what she felt for him was just lust or infatuation. She didn’t know-not yet But at that moment, she didn’t care. All that mattered was his closeness and their need for each other.

Smiling, she traced his hairline with a finger that curled sensuously along his ear and across his strong neck. She delighted in the warm, masculine feel of his skin, in the musky wine-splashed scent of his body. She kissed him again.

He buried his face in her neck; his arms wrapped around her. As soft as an owl wing, she heard him mumble, “I love you.” Then his body went slack and his breathing slowed. His arm dropped away. He slipped beyond consciousness into a sleep induced by too much wine and too much weariness.

Linsha leaned away, her heart sore and her body disappointed. Only her common-sense mind seemed to heave a sigh of relief. It was then she became aware of the orange cat crouched on the blanket, uttering a most obnoxious noise somewhere between a growl and a yowl. The moment she moved away from Durne, he stopped, making his point obvious even to Linsha’s tired mind. For some cat reason, this torn did not approve of the commander. Linsha pushed herself up to a sitting position and sighed a long, heartfelt breath.

“Who are you, cat, to question my judgment? What are you doing up here, anyway?”

The cat merely blinked his yellow eyes in the darkness and watched her every move.

Linsha sat back on her heels and found she was swaying with exhaustion. The events of the long day had caught up with her at last and wore away every trace of strength she had left. Yawning hugely, she straightened Ian’s limbs to a more comfortable position. He looked boyish in his sleep and so helpless lying there. His vulnerability touched her.

But it did not erase her professional sense of an opportunity to be had. While the cat watched, she laid her fingers on Durne’s temples and summoned her power from the core of her soul. With a deft touch, she extended it around the man and the telltale colors of his aura. As she hoped, his outward nature was a decent blue, tinged only with small red taints of evil. It was when she probed deeper into his mind that she touched a barrier that resisted her even through a wine-induced sleep.

“Varia was right,” she muttered to the cat, who studied her intently. “He is strongly shielded. Why does he feel the need to do so?”

Her power faded and the ensorcellment was broken. Ian stirred in his sleep until Linsha brushed a kiss over his mouth.

“I am such a fool,” she muttered to herself. “I am living a lie that I hate. I have fallen for a man I do not trust, and I am deceiving another man I count as a friend. Every day that he calls me Lynn, I pray that one day he will call me Linsha and not hate me.”

The cat meowed softly.

“I live for honor and yet I have none. What am I going to do?”