“You are thinking very hard about something,” Hauk said, breaking into her thoughts abruptly. “I do hope it is not something drastic concerning Valee.”
Emma jumped, feeling her face redden as she whipped a self-conscious look at him.
His lips twitched as he studied her face. “Hmmm—I am thinking mayhap it had nothing to do with Valee after all.”
“Why would you say that?” Emma said quickly.
He grinned. “The guilty start. Somehow your expression suggested … something a bit less violent.”
Emma felt her face grow so heated, sweat broke from her pores.
Hauk laughed outright at that. “You must never play games of chance, dear heart. You are very bad at hiding the things you feel.”
Emma didn’t know how to respond to that but, as it happened, Valee created a disturbance that completely distracted everyone when she let out a furious scream barely five seconds after that exchange and came boiling out of the curtained window of thespeti.“Stop! I have to get out! Stop! Now! He puked on me!”
“Uh oh,” Emma murmured. “I was afraid it probably wasn’t a good idea to feed him in that thing. Poor baby. Help me down! I should go get him and change him.”
Hauk flicked a suspicious look at her, but he could see she was worried about Nye, who was screaming louder than Valee by that time.
The troupe came to a halt.
Valee half climbed half fell out of thespetiin her rush to escape the mess—most of which she appeared to be wearing.
Kadin plucked Nye from the speti and then held him at arm’s length when the smell hit him.
Emma slipped down the side of the beast with Hauk’s help and rushed over to take the baby, who thankfully began to quiet as soon as he saw her.
She cuddled him, rocking him and trying to quiet him.
“I need a bath!” Valee demanded.
“There is no place for bathing here,” Gaelen growled. “You will have to suffer the smell until we reach the sea tonight.”
“You can say that when you are not wearing puke!” Valee shrieked at him.
One of the escorts volunteered his water skin so she could bathe off. Instead of thanking him, she snatched it out of his hand and stalked to the beast carrying her belonging to search for a change of clothing.
Emma carried the baby back to Hauk and took the water skin he offered her and then settled to bathe Nye off. Fortunately, most of the mess seemed to have landed on Valee. He needed a change because he’d soiled himself and been left in it, but she saw he would be fine with just being wiped down.
Valee used the entire contents of the water skin and changed every article of clothing and still bitched the rest of the day that she could smell the stench on her skin.
“I hope it was just the rocking and a full stomach,” Emma said worriedly, checking Nye for fever every half hour or so.
Chapter Nineteen
They lost so much time doing clean up that it was full dark by the time they reached the shore. It was brightly lit, however, by the huge moon hanging in the sky and two tiny ones further out.
Emma thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen and that she was never going to get used to seeing such things.
There wasn’t a sign of a boat as far as the eye could see, but the party halted and dismounted and the warriors began unpacking the animals and placing the packs on the beach.
Expecting them to begin to set up the tent and build a campfire soon, Emma took the baby down to the beach to clean him up.
He got more excited the closer they got to the water until he was virtually bouncing up and down and she was having a hard time holding him. Emma had never seen him so excited. Torn between irritation that he was bouncing so hard she was afraid she was going to lose her grip on him, fond amusement, and uneasiness, she laughed a little nervously. “My goodness we’re excited about bath time tonight,” she murmured as she knelt in the sand and sat him down to strip his clothes off.
He kept trying to get free of her, kicking and squirming, making Emma more uneasy. Every time she let go of him, he dove toward the water’s edge, trying to scramble across the sand to reach it before she could stop him until her nerves were frayed. “Behave yourself! You can’t get in. It’s too dark already. I’d never be able to find you again.”
Despite every effort to hold him, he managed to get loose as soon as he got slippery wet and moved like greased lightening toward the water. Emma screamed his name, racing to catch him, falling flat, scrambling on her hands and knees in an effort to catch up to him before he could get to the water and he still managed to reach the water. Not just reach it, but caught a wave and disappeared beneath the surface.
Pure terror gripped her.
She raced to catch him while she still had some hope of seeing him in the darkness. “Nye! Nye! Oh my god, Nye!”
She was hardly aware of the stampeed of feet as the men charged toward her in response to her screams of distress.
“What is it?”
“What happened?”
She was crying so hard she could hardly speak, scrambling around on her hands and knees feeling the ground beneath the water. “He got loose! I can’t see him! He got into the water!”
“He is fine,” Kadin said. “Nye! Come back. Now! You upset your mother!”
“You see him?” she asked hopefully.
“Kadin is right,” Gaelen said. “He is fine.”
Emma wasn’t fine. She was confused and terrified.
Abruptly Nye’s little head surfaced and he swam toward her, grinning ear to ear.
Emma swooped on him immediately, scooping him up and clutching him thankfully. Nearby she heard a derisive female laugh.
“Dat fool tink he sink in de water? He Hirachi, idiot!”
Emma turned to
