Must Have Been The Moonlight Read Free Page A

he’d expected.
     
    Brianna opened her eyes and lay still for a time, listening. She was lying on her back inside a tent with both flaps raised. The breeze stirred the striped canvas walls of her shelter. She turned her head. A fire outside the tent had burned low, and the aroma of coffee mingled with the night. Someone had set a kettle and coffeepot atop the heat.
    Brianna sat up, the blanket slipping to her waist. Her hair was a tangled mass. She wore only a thin cotton chemise, still damp from her trek through the pond. For a moment she sat unmoving and confused.
    Someone had removed her outer clothing and laid a blanket over her.
    She twisted to find Alex asleep beside her, her skirt and jacket torn and stained with dust and dried blood. The blanket had slipped to her side, and Brianna covered her. Alex mumbled something, her dreams unsettled, and Brianna realized her sister-in-law’s restlessness must have been what awakened her. At once, her heart raced.
    She moved to the tent’s entrance to look out. They were camped against a pair of bent trees near the pool. The English-speaking nomad was nowhere in camp. Neither were any weapons that she could see after she’d rummaged through the packs a moment later. But there was food, and Brianna burned her hand lifting the kettle from the fire when she tried to see what was in it.
    With a cry, she sucked at her finger. She saw a discarded tin plate and utensils. Grabbing the fork, she dipped it inside the kettle and speared what looked like a piece of meat. She carefully put her tongue to the food to test for heat, then shoved the piece in her mouth. The food was heaven. Delicious beyond anything she’d ever had. She ate, shoveling forkfuls into her mouth. She guessed the lizards in the rocks had made it into this pot with the rice.
    Bent over the food, she didn’t hear the movement until she looked up, her cheeks bulging with food, and saw her captorenter camp. Carrying a spade and rifle in one hand and a knapsack slung over the other, he slowed when he saw her.
    Noting that she’d gone through his packs, he brought his eyes back to hers. With his other hand, he pulled his wickedly sharp knife from beneath his burnoose and stabbed it in the tree, just out of her reach. “Not that I would give you any ideas,” he said. “I see that you already went through my bags.”
    Brianna swallowed the chunk of food in her mouth. The blanket had fallen around her hips, and conscious of his male presence, she brought it up to her shoulders. Coming to her feet, she told herself that if he’d wanted her dead, she would already be buried. He was taller than most men and broad of shoulder. He and his knife certainly looked capable of carrying out the deed. The growth of beard shadowing his face didn’t hide the kind of decadent looks that a woman noticed. Not that it mattered. And she was appalled that she’d noticed it at all.
    Her chin went up. “Where are my clothes?”
    “Spread on the rocks to dry.” His footsteps made no sound in the sand as he walked to where she was standing and dropped the shovel and pack. “They’ll be dry sometime after the sun rises.”
    He slid a hairy waterskin off his shoulder. “Drink,” he offered. “It will help with your hunger.”
    Reluctantly, Brianna placed her lips to the malleable opening. She tasted coffee and a faint hint of something like peppermint where his mouth had been before hers. Her eyes moved to his. Tipping the skin, she drank the warm milk inside—and nearly gagged.
    “It’s something to which you have to become accustomed,” he said, his eyes faintly amused. “But it will give you back your strength.”
    She did as she was told, only because she’d oft heard that camel’s milk was a life-giving meal. After she drank, she returned the skin to him and wiped her mouth with the backof her hand. That he had undressed her seemed only logical and of no concern to him at all. At least he’d left her with some modesty