So he held her like a brother and rocked her a moment and finally set her back by the arms and said:
"Let's have supper. Let's not go off like lunatics, after you've waited two years. I'm not putting you off. I'm just saying let's pack in good order and not start out tired. Tomorrow if everything's in order, day after if it's not. All right?"
She wiped her eyes, turned her face away, embarrassed, and broke away from him, not hard, just not looking at him, not then, nor when she squatted down and busied herself at the hearth, wiping her eyes from time to time on her sleeve.
He came and squatted down peasant-style where he could see her face.
"I still want you," he said, in the case she had mistaken that. Gods, it was true. He hoped he had not made his point too strongly. "I just don't want to push you into anything. You make up your own mind. All right?"
"I made it up," she said, between clenching her jaw and wiping her eyes.
"You're not scared of me. After all this."
She shook her head fiercely. Lying, he thought. And reckoned she had had her courage all put together and he had done the wrong thing. He put out his hand, rubbed the back of her neck. Her muscles were hard as stone. But she allowed the touch, and went on working, measuring out the rice, ignoring him.
"Hell with dinner," he said.
She shrugged his hand off, not looking at him, and turned and reached for the water-dipper.
"Hungry, are you?" he muttered.
"Everything in good order," she said, giving him his own back.
It was a damned nervous supper, out on the porch. Her hands were shaking. His were, though not so conspicuously. They said not half a handful of words to each other. She hardly looked at him; and he kept looking at the yard, the stable, the place that had been home. His thinking narrowed itself to the road, to reaching Hua, to a possibility of getting away from that and getting back to the road—he planned his retreats the way he had taught the girl, right along with the action.
And he chided himself for the morose turn of his thoughts. But it was a long road home again; and the ones who came home again—would not be the man and woman who had left. Not after the things they would do in Hua. Or that would be done to them.
She took the bowls and washed them, and he lit the lamp and made down a bed for them, both their mats together.
By that time she had come back again, and seeing what he had done with her mat, she looked apt to bolt from the door; but she set the bowls down by the door and looked at him, then went to her side of the room where he had piled their gear and undressed with her back to him.
He undressed and when she delayed, taking more time than the matter ought, he went over to her and put his arms around her from behind, feeling the tension in her from head to foot.
"It's all right," he said into her ear. "No lady ever complained of me." He ran his hand over her skin, soft as any lady's to his calloused hands, and felt her shivering like a rabbit. "There's no hurry."
Ten years on this mountain and he could hold off a little longer. He could damned well wait the little time she needed. An hour, two hours, if that was what it took,
"I'll get you some wine," he said, and slapped her a stinging blow on the rump, the way he had done a few times in their working together. She jumped. "Both of us, all right?"
She gave him a shocked look, halfway offended, he thought, in her young pride. He got the wine down and poured a potful. And gave her a little smile, seeing her standing there somewhat confused and worried-looking.
"This isn't a duel," he said, and nodded toward the mat. "Get on over there."
She went. She sat down crosslegged, her usual way, and he took a healthy drink from the pot, sat down and gave it to her.
"Big one," he said.
She gulped down two huge mouthfuls, and blinked and passed it to him.
He took a drink and passed it back. She took two more.
"That ought to do it," he said, and took one more himself. She was looking a little pale and sickly. "Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "Face about, the other way."
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. Come on." As she edged about with her back to him. He rubbed her back and her shoulders, and uncrossed his legs and pulled her back then into his arms. He felt the panic in her, arranged his arms to let hers free. "There." He ran his hand gently over her skin. Her arms rested on his and he felt her sigh, finally, like a long-held breath, her shoulders relaxing against him.
"Good," he said, and worked lower, keeping his mind from what he was doing, deliberately, thinking that this had to be a long, slow night. He talked to her, nonsense. But the shivers grew fewer, and less frequent, even when his hand touched between her legs; and finally she jerked, doubled up, and nearly left his hold.
Damned surprised, he thought. She had that look on her face when she twisted over and looked at him. He felt his own reactions getting out of control then.
"Come on," he said, pulling her up against him. She had very little trouble taking the cues. He intended to have her atop. She turned to get him there, and he was careful going into her, with about the last control he had.
She was utterly still for a moment. Then he began to move, and finished faster than he would have wanted. But she wrapped strong legs around him and wrapped her arms around him and held on, just held him, for a long, long time, until he finally, realizing he was lying on her, eased over and held her the same way, gently.
"Was that bad?" he asked.
"No," she said after a moment.
"Did I hurt you?"
"No."
He lay there quite still a moment, wondering if he wanted to go on with the questioning.
Dammit, it mattered. But he was not going to ask question by question.
She tightened her arms around his neck, hard, with her considerable strength—not hurtfuclass="underline" trying, he thought, to say things too complicated to explain to a man. And he embraced her gently, a little pressure of his arms, thinking things too complicated to say to anyone that young and that old.
He thought he knew what she was saying: too separate, too different; and both about the same, that it was nothing like the poets, nothing like a physical release, nothing that this could settle. It just started things, that was all, that made matters more complicated than they had ever been.
But she was glad to be where she was, he thought. Maybe she was glad he was going with her. Maybe not. Maybe she knew she was being a fool. Maybe he was an older, wiser witness than her notions wanted.
Maybe she had gotten fond of him, and he was more than an older, second-choice man to fill in for whatever she had lost—or dreamed, in a young girl's way, of having.
A man got older. A man got wary of caring for things too deeply. A man got wiser and ended up on a damn mountain. A man could die alone up here.
There were a lot worse things than following a fool girl to Hua. There was a terrible end to it, of course; but lives always came to that, in some year; this spring's rabbit ended up a stain in the snow, but the world never cared, and the rabbit had no long memory of it either.
Chapter Ten
He had never expected her to get up from his bed with any different attitude: he had lived with Taizu long enough to know better than that: everything was ordinary with Taizu. She began to get up, waking him with her moving, she said she was going down for her bath, everything as matter of factly as if nothing had happened.
He reached out and grasped her wrist. "Well?"
"Well?" she echoed, worried-sounding. She was only a shadow against the light coming from under the door and through the cracks of the shutters.
"Was it all right?" he asked her.
A sort of motion of her head. He could not tell what. Yes, he thought.