“You’re more than that.” Marguerite reached for something reassuring and uplifting to say, and instead heard herself blurt out, “I’m less broken when I’m around you.”
Oh holy hell, I didn’t mean to say that.
Shane went very still. Marguerite waited, wondering if she had just ruined everything past all mending. What was I thinking? Granted it was true, but her entire life’s work hinged on weighing the truth out, grain by grain, not simply dumping it in someone’s lap like a dead fish.
She wouldn’t have blamed him if he ran away screaming, or at least the polite paladin equivalent of running away screaming, whatever that looked like.
Instead, he said, “I don’t want to hurt you.” Which, in most other men, she would have taken as a brush-off, but in Shane was probably nothing more or less than the truth.
“Physically or emotionally?”
“Errr…” He had to think about that. “I was mostly worried about physically. You, um…don’t seem very vulnerable emotionally.”
Marguerite’s lips twitched despite herself. “You’d be surprised. But why are you worried?”
“Berserker. You know.”
“Oh, is that all?”
Shane gazed into the night sky. “At least one religious order wanted us all killed after the Saint died, because they felt untethered berserkers were a public menace.”
“I bet Beartongue loved that.” She remembered Stephen’s rampage through the city after Grace’s arrest. It had been impressive, particularly in terms of property damage. “Should I be worried?”
“Nothing is ever certain,” he said morosely.
Marguerite rolled her eyes. Why am I attracted to this man? He can’t go five minutes without sinking into despair. “Are you worried about Grace?”
“What? No, of course not. Stephen would gnaw off his own sword arm before he’d lay a finger on her.”
“And you wouldn’t?”
He huffed. She waited. “Fine,” he said, after a moment. “I’m being ridiculous.”
“Not at all.” Marguerite leaned back. “You’re being cautious.”
“I’m trying.”
“And also, at a guess, you’re afraid of getting your heart broken, so you’re hiding behind being noble and self-sacrificing.”
Shane turned his head to look at her. She gave the look right back, still with a slight smile, waiting.
“Damn,” the paladin said finally. “Warn a person before you stab them like that.”
“Am I wrong, though?”
He studied his hands. “Are you going to break my heart?”
“I might. Not deliberately, though. Are you going to break mine?”
His glance this time was wry. “Is that possible?”
“Oh, very much so.”
“I’ve been informed that people in your line of work don’t fall in love.”
She snorted. “Whoever told you that was full of shit. We just try not to, because it might make someone a target. But as these things go, I’d say a berserker paladin is about as well-equipped as anyone to survive it.”
“I suppose there is that.”
Marguerite sighed. “You told me your story, so I’ll tell you one of mine. When I was young and thought I was clever, I attempted to get information from a man who…well, let’s just say that he learned far more from me than I did from him. Every question I asked, he worked out why I was asking it and traced it back to what I was trying to accomplish. By the time I figured out what was happening, his client had neatly cornered the market and mine was hemorrhaging gold.”
Shane winced sympathetically, which Marguerite appreciated, even knowing that he probably didn’t think money was nearly as important as undead-hermit-crab-wolverine monsters. Which,
granted, it probably isn’t.
“I went to Samuel, my mentor, and confessed everything. Exactly how foolish I’d been, and why I hadn’t seen it sooner.”
“That’s never easy to do.”
“No. The only thing worse would have been not confessing. I told him, and he made me recite every single conversation I’d had with the man, as close to verbatim as I could manage. And from that, he deciphered enough information to soften the worst of the blow. The client was even pleased.
He thought we’d saved him from losing everything.” She grimaced. “It was horribly embarrassing, and I expected Samuel to fire me on the spot, but he didn’t. He said that I’d learned an important lesson about believing that I knew what was going on.”
“If I’ve learned anything,” Shane said, “it’s that I have no idea what’s going on.”
Marguerite reached up a hand and stroked the back of his neck. He jerked slightly but didn’t pull away, and after a moment, she felt the tension under her fingers ease.
Even the back of his neck was muscular. There ought to be a law against things like that.
“You know,” said Marguerite gently, “one other thing he taught me is that some choices aren’t wrong, no matter which you choose. They just are.”
“Hmmm,” he said. Not a negative sound, but a thoughtful one. Marguerite let her hand drop, somewhat reluctantly, and decided that she’d pushed far enough and fast enough for one night.
“This is all a bit moot at the moment anyway,” she said, glancing over her shoulder toward the inn. “It’s not as if we could spend a night together, even if we wanted to.”
“Dreaming God, no.” Shane blanched at the thought. “I’d never ask Wren to share a room with Davith.”
“I was more thinking that Davith would be murdered in his bed, but it’s the same thing.”
Shane frowned. “Is it just me, or has he been quite…errr… caustic toward Wren? I have been wondering if I should step in.”
“Yes, he has, and no, you shouldn’t.” Marguerite got to her feet. “It’s the kindest thing he could do under the circumstances.”
Shane looked blank. Marguerite sighed. “She fell in love with him, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Yes. And now he is trying very hard to make sure that any feelings she had for him are gone. It’s much easier to get over a total jackass than it is someone who’s kind and decent and noble and…”
She closed her mouth before she started describing Shane instead of Davith.
“Oh.” The paladin digested this. “That is…yes. All right.” He nodded. “I won’t break him in half, then.”
“I appreciate that,” said Marguerite, and then, because he was still sitting down and thus was just about the right height, she leaned in and kissed him.
He said “Mmmf!”
It was a good kiss. It started to deepen into a great one, but Marguerite tore herself away. This won’t make anything easier, unless you want him to take you right now on this bench, which, actually—
No. You’ve left Davith and Wren alone long enough. It’s like that riddle with the goose and the fox and the corn, and if you don’t stop now, you’re going to find that the goose has beaten the fox to death with the corn.