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that your feet are in sorry shape. Most women would have cried."
"Says you," Laurel snapped, irritated by the generalization.
He tilted his dark head and studied her for a moment more. "When the tree fell you didn't hesitate. You
rushed into its path. When the branches were falling around you, and the lightning crashing, you didn't
panic. You scarcely reacted. Almost as if& "
"As if what?" Laurel asked.
His eyes were piercing. "As if you didn't fear death."
"I don't," Laurel said simply. Funny, that he should have noticed, when she herself hadn't consciously
realized it. But it was true. She no longer feared death.
"And what about you, Seth Goodwin?" she demanded. "You were dying, weren't you? You were doing
the whole floating, going toward the light trip, weren't you? Are you afraid of death?"
His expression was guarded, cautious. He seemed to weigh his words carefully before he spoke. "I
believe that there is a logical and explainable reason for everything. One has only to search long enough
to find it. Even that which appears unexplainable."
"Hah," Laurel said. She put her hands over her mouth and puffed against her cold fingers. It didn't help.
Seth watched her like a hawk. "Again, you make no sense. There you've been sitting, for likely three
hours, shivering like a leaf. Yet it never occurred to you to complain of the cold."
"Well, what good would that do? It's not as if we could build a fire or anything. I'm sure there isn't a dry
piece of wood within fifty miles."
"Interesting," Seth repeated. "Did it ever occur to you that if you complained, I'd be obliged to give you
my blanket?"
"You would?"
He smiled again. His teeth looked very white in the dark of the room. "For a price."
"What price?" Laurel asked. She wondered if he'd ask something indecent, and what she would say if he
did. Maybe it would be something simple: a kiss. She could handle that. She stared at the shape of his
mouth and thought about the time he had kissed her by the river, the dark, flooding heat of it, the way her
knees had trembled&
He held out the wool blanket like a gift, his eyes mocking and bright. "Tell me where you got your
information."
"Oh, for crying out loud," Laurel exclaimed. She laughed, and the sound was hollow in the empty cellar.
"I thought you were going to ask something indecent."
He looked shocked by her bluntness, and by her laughter. He raised a reproving brow at her and
tightened his heavy blanket around himself, as if for protection.
It made Laurel laugh even harder.
"You're a hardheaded jade," he said at last, sounding very surly. Laurel wasn't sure what a jade was, but
she was pretty sure it wasn't flattering.
"Whatever. Do I get the blanket?"
"Do I get the truth?" he shot back.
Laurel wavered, cold and miserable. "I told you, I read it someplace."
"Half-truth," he snapped.
"So, do I get half a blanket?"
He glared across the cellar at her, his eyes glittering and dark.
And then he sat up and lifted one side of the wool blanket. "Come, then. Half a blanket, if you dare."
Laurel stopped short, her breath catching. Did she dare? Oh, to curl up next to his warm, hard body, to
be pressed against him&
To be warm.
"You bet your butt I dare," she muttered. She lifted her chin and met his gaze, her spine stiffening at the
challenge in his expression. Oh, he was handsome. Oh, the way his eyes glittered over his slanting
cheekbones, the strong, firm line of his jaw.
With as much dignity as she could manage, she crossed over to his side and sat next to him.
He enfolded her into the warmth of the wool, his long arm closing around her shoulder, pulling her
shivering body next to his warm one. For a moment Laurel resisted; and then she wrapped both arms
around him and buried her face into the heat of his chest.
She wondered if he, too, felt the surge of desire that flooded through her body. After a moment he gave a
long, ragged sigh. They were both perfectly still.
"You should sleep," he suggested, "while you can." His voice sounded strained.
If I can, Laurel added silently. She was painfully aware of the feeling of his warm skin beneath his shirt,
the scent of his damp hair and sweat, the feeling of his breath against the top of her head.
Don't think about it. Think about anything else. Think about how cold you are. Think about the
storm. Think about high school. Just don't think about sex. You can handle it.
It was a long, long time before she slept.
The year he was eight, he had met his grandfather, Nathaniel Goodwin, a clockmaker. He remembered
going into his grandfather's workshop and seeing an open clock on his table, its works exposed, its key in
place. He had turned the key around and around, fascinated by the inner workings of the machinery, the
way the springs and cogs had moved and tightened as a result of his touch.
Typical of a child, he thought, to continue a motion without thinking through to the consequences.
He had been fascinated by the mainspring of the clock, watching it tighten and tense; until he gave one
too many twists of the key and the entire works seemed to explode.
He felt much like that mainspring now. Tight, tense, tested beyond reasonable endurance.
He had forgotten to think through to the results of his action. For other men, it was stupid; for a spy,
deadly.
But he had looked across the cold floor of the springhouse, and the sight of Hope had moved him to act
illogically.
He wondered if she had done it intentionally. She had looked so pathetic her hair loose from her braid
and felling in golden waves around her face. She had seemed pale, fragile. Her shivering had made him
feel like a brute, cozily rolled up in his army-issue blanket. And the way she had sacrificed her own
blanket to her frightened little sister, without even hesitating& She seemed not to notice her skirts, ripped
and gray with mud, or the leaves tangled in her hair.
Beautiful, like a pagan goddess decorated with earth and leaves. Fearless, like a sorceress for whom
death holds no mystery.
And damnably dangerous. Just like the child who had wound the clockspring with no thought of the
consequences, he had offered her the warmth of his body and blanket.
The consequences were painfully uncomfortable.
She had fallen asleep hours ago, the little witch. She was quite comfortable and happy.
Seth was in agony. He had never been so tempted by a woman. She was sleeping close to him, the top
of her head resting against his throat, the gold silk of her hair caressing his bare throat with every breath.
Her arm lay across his torso; her soft hand had fallen to his hip bone. It was impossible not to think of
that hand moving back, and down a few inches&
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