Now she was lost.
It wasn't simply that she didn't know the best way home through these woods. She didn't even know how to find her way out of them. They seemed endless, like that forest where Caratacus had almost captured her before the marriage. It was summer by the calendar, cold but leafy, and the green canopy was so thick and dark that her way was a labyrinth of sylvan tunnels. Valeria was fiercely hungry; her escape had been so sudden and impulsive that she'd forgotten to bring food. She was cold because she'd fled without her cloak. She'd counted on sun that wouldn't appear and a swift route she couldn't find. Worse, she was dispirited and lonely. She hadn't enough sleep since leaving the Petriana, and was operating on fear.
Hours passed, a blur of trees and bogs and blind, tiny meadows. She came finally to a small stream winding through the forest, its steel gleam reflecting leaden sky. This brook was marshy and surrounded by dead alder, the sticklike trees drowned by dark water. It was a desolate place. Following the boggy waterway might mire her horse, so she decided to cross in hopes of finding firmer ground on the other side. She'd have to hurry because the day was waning. The thought of spending a night alone in the woods terrified her.
She started down the muddy bank, no different from a dozen others, and then stopped in confusion.
There were hoof prints in the mud, filled with water.
Valeria looked around. The woods were quiet, with no sign that other humans had ever passed here. And yet there was something familiar about this crossing, that leaning trunk, this sunken log…
Her heart sank as she realized the truth. She was riding in circles.
Valeria looked at her tracks in stupefaction, then slid from her horse to cry.
There was a boulder on the bank, and she sat miserably on that, weeping in frustration and cursing herself for not having remained on the ridges. Cursing herself for having come to Britannia at all! Clodius had been right. It was a hideous country of barbarians and swamps. Her decision to follow Marcus to Britannia had been a disaster, and her decision to find him on her own was disaster compounded. Her own girlish impulsiveness had finally doomed her. Animals would pick at her bones. And now she'd fled and left behind her closest remaining friend, Savia.
She wanted to go forward but had no idea how to find Hadrian's Wall, and wanted to retreat but had no idea how to find Arden's fort again. She wanted to sleep but was too wet and cold, and wanted to eat but had no food. Her horse looked as forlorn and soaked as she felt, and she supposed that if anyone from Rome were to see her right now, they would pass by a particularly dirty, bedraggled, drowned cat of a woman, a beggar, a leper, an orphan…
"It's easy country to get lost in, isn't it?"
Her head jerked up in surprise, alarm, and sudden outrage. Caratacus! Arden had somehow crept up on her and now was standing not twenty feet away, calmly taking a bite of sausage and looking perfectly at home. The thick woolen cloak he was wearing was drawn over his head and beaded with rain. His sword was sheathed, and his hands were weaponless. He made no move to come closer and looked as calm as she felt despairing, as if their reunion was the most inevitable thing in the world.
"What are you doing here?"
"Following you, of course, since no sane man would come into Iola Wood unless a particularly fine stag had run this way-and maybe not even then. It's a tangle. Do you know that when you haven't been traveling in circles, you've been riding northeast, away from that Roman wall of yours?"
"I most certainly have not!"
"You're farther from your rescuing cavalry than ever."
She whirled around to find evidence to contradict him, but there was none, of course. The sun hid, the sky was slate gray, the forest a maze.
"How did you find me?" she finally asked.
"I've been following you for hours."
"Hours! Then why didn't you recapture me?"
"So we wouldn't have to do this again. I don't want to cage you, lady, but you need to realize how hopeless it is to try to reach this wall of yours. You can't find your way. Even if you could, we wouldn't let you. Your only luck is that you didn't do slightly better, because that would have meant the hounds, not me. They might have chewed on you for a bit before I could call them off." He took another bite himself, which made her stomach growl. "Now come. I'm tired of this game."
"Why don't you just kill me?" she pleaded miserably.
He appeared to consider this. "Because you're entirely too valuable. Because poor Savia is at wit's end, furious that you left her behind. Because I enjoy watching the choices you make, even the stupid ones. Because you've got some spark to you."
"I'm too wet to have any spark left."
He grinned. "I don't think so. We'll turn you into a Celt yet."
They led their horses into the trees and tied them. Arden gave her a cloak he'd rolled behind his saddle, as if anticipating her recapture from the moment he'd called for his horse. His confidence infuriated her. Yet she took the garment with gratitude, her body thoroughly chilled, and watched dumbly as he gathered wood for a fire, picking dry scraps from under a log and flicking shavings with a knife. Flint and steel struck a spark. Despite her annoyance at recapture, his quiet efficiency at this vital task couldn't help but reassure her. A flame caught in the nest of duff, and he added twigs and then branches to nurse it to size, a reassuring pop sending sparks wafting upward. The heat was hypnotizing. She stood near, opening the cloak to dry her sodden clothes underneath.
"My thanks for the fire."
"It's not for you. The smoke signals that I found you." He handed her bread and sausage. "It lets everyone else go back inside and get warm."
"Oh."
"But it's true I don't want you dead of exposure. What use would you be then?"
"Oh." Was he mocking? Or afraid to admit kindness? The bread was ambrosia, the sausage a different kind of heat.
"I was lost," she admitted.
"Obviously."
"I thought you'd kill me if you caught me."
"Well, it might have saved me a piece of bread. But then why catch you?"
So he wasn't going to kill her. He gave no sign he intended to molest her, either. Despite all her dire expectations she suddenly felt strangely safe with this man, this barbarian, this murderer, this awful hunter of heads and consorter with witches and leader of brigands: not imprisoned but rescued, as if rescued from herself. The feeling was so unexpected that it confused her. She'd felt so bold and clever to escape, and now so foolish.
"I would have found my way eventually," she impulsively insisted.
"Your way where?"
"To my husband."
He grunted. Mention of Marcus irked him. "Who you barely know."
"He's where my heart lies. Sooner or later, it would lead me to him."
Arden shook his head. "You've yet to feel your heart, I think. Yet to feel love. You're nothing like your husband at all."
"You don't know that!"
"Everyone along the Wall knows that."
"How dare you say such a thing!"
"Everyone knows about the marriage, and his appointment because of it, and the fact that you're three times braver than your husband and five times smarter. The Romans fear you, and the Celts admire you. You've come to a better place, believe me."
She didn't believe him, not for a moment, and yet his comment about the longings of her heart disturbed her. Secretly she suspected there was some tiny truth in his presumptions, and yet he was also maddening. Who was he to say what her heart had felt, or how deeply she'd loved? Still, there was a yearning in her breast that remained unfulfilled, a formality to her marriage that seemed to belie the promises that the seer had made in Londinium. Perhaps deep love would develop, but this brigand had stolen some of her complacency. "I know my husband is looking for me right now, at the head of five hundred armed men," she said.