Sanctuary by Bree M. Lewandowski

Author:Bree M. Lewandowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bree M. Lewandowski
Published: 2024-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It would be demure to hesitate. It would be a sign of a lady to pause before taking a man’s hand. But with a husband? Did women of stature lower their eyes when alone with the man they had married?

She took his hand, and he guided her to sit beside him.

“What,” she asked, a little more breathless than she would have preferred, aware of how her Ensign washed something like relief throughout her insides, “did you want to know about me?”

From her hand, Rand took the cup and poured more tea. “Anything. Your life before you came here. Your pastimes. Anything.”

Their fingers touched as he passed it back to her.

“I don’t think I have any pastimes. I grew up on a farm with fields to thresh. We had one cow and some chickens. I remember I always wanted to ride the cow and pretend it was a Lushu.”

“Your cow a mythical horse with a white head, tiger stripes, and a red tail. Did it neigh, as legend says, sounding like villagers singing?”

Petra smiled and shook her head. “That was difficult to imagine. Our sow protested whenever I tried to climb on her.”

He laughed and encouraged her to share more about her childhood.

Sights, sounds, and smells that had slipped from her senses came rushing back. She wished she had the right words to describe the sound of wind rushing over newly shorn grass. She wished she could relate what hay smelled like on a summer afternoon or the feel of a freshly laid egg, heavy and warm.

Petra told him about the hours she spent in the fields with her mother, planting, culling, and reaping. In the foggiest parts of her memories, she could still see her father’s figure. He worked himself into an early grave and then Aldney stepped forward, at the tender age of twelve, to do a grown man’s work. She recalled seasons when the harvest was thin and the rains unforgiving. She remembered her mother’s determination to teach her the little reading and writing she knew, so Petra would not be like most of the rural adolescent girls—ignorant.

Petra watched Rand listen. Sometimes it distracted her. He listened with his whole being, only sipping tea or adjusting his position when she paused to think. He looked at her in wonder, humor, and tenderness.

If I were a soldier, I would be proud to serve under him. See how he gives himself entirely to what he pledges. Hours ago, he swore himself to me and he listens to me now like we had courted for years. If I were a soldier, I would rush into battle for him. As it is, I will fight beside him as a woman can, as a wife can. This is my duty.

She told him about the times she and her mother fought. Back then, it did not seem like the small house could bear the pressure of their arguments, though she could not recall what any of the disputes had been about.

“My mother deserves everything I can give her.

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