Pushing back her chair, she rose and came toward him. It was easier to divert Janek when he was near enough to touch. His gaze fixed on her as she skirted the table. She stopped directly in front of him and lifted a hand to his face. Her knee bumped against his, and he widened his legs to make a space for her.

“The fever? It happened before you left the village?”

She shook her head and scraped her nails over the whiskers on his strong jaw. He didn’t really look like a Ghadrian. He was too rough looking, his features unrefined. She’d have thought him a Karaeli tribesman if not for his eyes.

“My family died nearly three years after I left,” she said. “If I’d stayed, I’d likely have died with them.”

“Just as well that you’d run away then.”

“I didn’t run,” she said. “I had their blessing.”

Erysian society was not as constrained as it was on the mainland. Women often took to sea or horse, earning their way as did the men. The man who’d led the troupe, old Drustan, had been a friend of her mother’s. He’d watched out for her the first few years. After the invasion, when the troupes were disbanded, she’d learned many new skills, few of which a high-ranking Ghadrian advisor would approve.

“Our world is not the same as yours.” She lifted one shoulder and let it fall, moving her arm to allow the shawl to slide to her elbow. Her nipple tightened in the storm-cold air and finally Janek’s attention began to falter.

His fingertips followed his gaze along the side of her exposed breast. Calloused skin scraped along the edge of her scarf until he reached the knot and loosed it. His voice roughened. “And how old are you now?”

“Thirty-six,” she said, and smiled thinly. “You'd probably rather have someone younger.”

“The very young have no appeal for me.” He gripped her hips and pulled her smoothly forward so that she straddled his thigh. “They’re far too malleable. You're mature enough to have developed lines for yourself that you think you won't cross.”

That sparked her interest and amusement. He did have a way of drawing her in. “You mock my resolve?”

“I like that you have resolve. It's far more interesting to discover where you'll bend and where you won't.” Running the backs of his knuckles between her breasts in a straight line to her navel, he smiled. “You don't bore me.”

It was meant to warn her as much as to reassure. “Don't bore me,” was what he truly meant. She smiled. Well, that was easy enough.

Threading her fingers through his thick hair, she leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth. She didn’t like to talk to him anyway. Conversing with Janek was like walking through a bog, full of pits and traps and shifting ground.