Nor Iron Bars A Cage Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’d missed that laugh. I moved quickly on down the row. “Here we have the squash. Nothing much yet, but by fall there will be more than I can eat. Luckily it keeps well.”
    He looked around. “This is nice and big. No chickens though? No cow? What do you do for meat and milk?”
    “I’ve a woman in the village who supplies me. Chickens are noisy and a cow needs too much tending. I have some money coming in, and she can use a little coin, with three young ones to clothe and shoe.”
    “You always were good with children.”
    I looked over, startled. “That was you. The little ones followed you all over. I barely put up with them.” I’d been jealous, truth be told, of the easy way he’d smile and kiss small cheeks and hold them on his hip. “I thought you’d have a brood of your own by now.” It was one of the things that had made it easier not to go to him, thinking that he’d have a wife and a family, and not need a strange man— a very strange man— coming near them.
    “I wouldn’t have minded children,” he said. “But no amount of prayers to Bian can make the union of two men fertile. Plus I’ve never found a man I’d actually want to raise a child with.”
    “I hope you do someday,” I said, and meant it, even if it took him one step further from me. He was leaving soon, no matter what, and if ever a man was meant to be a father it was Tobin. “There are plenty of orphan children who need a good home.”
    “Maybe. What about you? You’re settled here with a house and an income. If you never found a girl to please you, why not take in a child?”
    I shuddered. In the orderly routines and quiet I needed to survive, a child would be a disaster. As for the rest… “What makes you think I was looking for a girl?”
    He gave me another sidelong look. “Weren’t you?”
    “I’m as fay as you are,” I said tartly. “Now who’s blind?”
    “I’d guessed it,” he admitted. “But it’s not something I like to assume, unless the man tells me so himself.”
    “Well, now you know for certain.” My good mood was fading. I wrapped my hand around a fast-growing strand of threadbind, and pulled hard, heedless of the way it dug into my fingers. The long, wiry stuff resisted my efforts. I’d have twined it around my right forearm for an assist, as I often had to, but Tobin’s strong hands landed on the stem below mine and together we dragged it from the earth. I dropped it on the pile, and wriggled my fingers to return circulation.
    “It’s not a bad thing that you’re fay,” he murmured, closer to my ear than I’d realized.
    I jumped sideways, and concealed it with a quick tug at my boot. “I didn’t say it was.” But I moved away from him down the row.
    “Is your garden why you don’t want to leave? Are you worried about this place? I’m sure someone from the village will be willing care for it for a few weeks. On the king’s coin, of course.”
    He hadn’t followed after me. At a safe distance I turned. The sun was behind him and I had to squint to see him while my features were no doubt clear in the light. Unfair. “I’m sure they would, except that I’m not leaving it.”
    He scrubbed his face with one hand. “How do I convince you? You don’t have a choice. I’m charged with bringing you back to Riverrun, one way or the other.”
    “You’d have to tie me up and throw me across the horse!”
    The long silence that followed was cold as winter.
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “This isn’t some kind of whim for His Majesty. Something serious is afoot, something vital. I could tell by the way my instructions were given. I’ve already waited a day for you to agree, but… I have orders.”
    “Damn you then. You’ll have to do it! You’ll have to drag me back there.” I was so angry it froze my bones. Deep down shaking-with-it angry. I’d said never again . Never again would I let myself be suborned or coerced or forced at another’s will. I’d die first. I wished there