Alethea had never cared about Gawain’s injuries – she had barely noticed them on the Island and she noticed them even less as he bent to help, her gaze flicking over his hands for only a moment. She noticed it not at all when his hand cupped her elbow.
It was the touch she noticed, not the shape of him.
Innocent enough, comparatively speaking; an elbow hardly compared to the zipper of a bathing suit. Her eyes tracked his hand as he withdrew it, following the line of his arm up to his face, her expression less surprised than…relieved. She’d begun to think she was cursed, that everyone that got to know her soon wished they hadn’t. And it was true, for some – Gaiane and Lo, for example. Others.
She smiled tentatively.
“I’m not either.” Her soft voice barely carried. Thea suspected that the reasons she wasn’t good at this – that her “encounter” with Gawain had been her first interaction with a man in…ever – were not the same as his. But there was only one way to find out, wasn’t there?
“I would like that,” she agreed, folding the lists into her skirt pocket.
The silence was not quite companionable as they walked the short distance to Gawain’s office. Alethea couldn’t decide if it was awkward, or merely heavy with questions, unresolved feelings, and things that should have been said long ago. She thanked him for holding the door, and sat a bit rigidly in one of the armchairs by the fire. The crinkle of the papers in her pocket was loud in the quiet.
They were even more alone than she and Tristan had been, but Alethea felt completely different.
“Thank you,” she murmured automatically, accepting the cup of tea he offered her with an incline of her head. “Um. You were saying?”
|
 |