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“I can see that.” He took the spot beside me on the driver’s bench, then spread a blanket across our legs. “For the cold,” he added quickly.
Too quickly. So maybe I wasn’t the only one entertaining images of snuggling intimately under a shared blanket.
“Of course,” I said dryly.
He clicked to the mules, and the wagon lurched into motion.
“That way, fair lady.” He pointed once we were outside.
“Don’t call me fair lady.”
“Give me a name, then.”
I kept my lips sealed.
“How about Marian?” he proposed.
I gulped. I’d hoped his comment the previous evening had been a wild guess, but it seemed he really did have me figured out. Drat. I shot him a hard look and played my ace.
“You can call me Marian if I can call you…say, Leo.”
His jaw dropped, and his lips moved a little. I could practically see the gears move in his mind. She knows I’m a lion shifter?
Then he flared his nostrils, testing my scent. And testing and testing…
“Wolf?” he finally murmured.
I shook my head.
“Fox?”
I snorted. I was no canine.
He looked perplexed. “Lion? Dragon? Bear?”
My smile grew smug. “None of those things.”
I probably shouldn’t have revealed I wasn’t entirely human, but it had just slipped out, and I doubted he would ever guess.
His voice dropped ominously on his next try. “Witch?”
“God, no.”
For the next long minute, the only sound was that of the mules and the creaking wagon. Then he tried again.
“Hedgehog?”
I smacked him. “Hedgehog?”
He laughed. “Okay, maybe not a hedgehog. What, then?”
I didn’t say a word.
Finally, he gave in. “A woman of many secrets, I see. All right, I give up. For now.” Twisting in his seat, he produced a couple of hot cross buns and a flask. “Warm cider. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
We did, and it was, though I enjoyed every minute. Despite the chill of winter and the fallow fields all around, there was a subtle beauty to the landscape.
“Oh! Look!” I pointed at a doe and her leggy fawn, surrounded by mist by the side of a stream.
