Free To Burn by Claudia Dain Page A

insulted."
    Her anger stuck in her throat and she choked on it, speechless.
    "You have managed it," praised Cynric, watching her struggle for words.
    "I had almost given up," said Cenred.
    "You monster!" she screamed, her hands arching into talons.
    Balduff smiled and toasted her, saying, "Never underestimate a woman."
    "For a moment," Cuthred said conversationally to the table at large, "I thought—"
    "Shut your foul, Saxon mouths!" she commanded them.
    To their own surprise, they fell silent. The Roman looked closer to killing than they had yet seen her.
    Of them all, only Wulfred was unmoved, his blue eyes lazily on her face, his hands relaxed on his bulging thighs. Didn't the oaf have the sophistication to know that meals were taken in a reclining position? Didn't he even have the grace to look embarrassed? Blue eyes raked her body insolently and she stiffened as if he had touched her. As if he would dare.
    "Is it true?" she asked, breathing hard through her mouth, her eyes bright and hot in the whiteness of her face. "Have I alone been left untouched by you barbari?"
    The monster had the gall to grin. He ran his hands down the length of his thighs and then slowly back up to his hips. His hands were long-fingered and covered with a sprinkling of blond hairs that gleamed gold in the firelight.
    Why was she staring at his hands?
    "Only you can confirm the truth of that, if you can find it in your deceitful Roman heart..."
    "No one has touched me!" she shouted in ringing proclamation, forcing herself to look away from his hands, which were now resting on his narrow hips. "Is it because of you?"
    "Perhaps it is because of you," he answered simply and irritatingly.
    Because of her? Because she was clearly superior to them and they knew it? Because she had them cowed, in awe of her? It was not impossible; in fact, it was more than likely—
    The disgusting oaf interrupted her speculations.
    "There is little about you to commend you, Roman. You stink."
    It was easy to subdue the prick to her pride when he was smiling up at her so spitefully. Never would she allow him to win in a contest of insults, not when he gave her so many weapons.
    "No more than you, Saxon," she said, smiling coldly back. "My smell is of good, honest work while you smell of deceit. I prefer my own smell."
    "In that it seems you are alone."
    His eyes, so blue, so intense, stared into hers, and within the very heart of his eyes she saw that he was laughing at her. Laughing at her when he had ruined her world with his filth and left her alone to clean it up. She turned to leave, ignoring his men, who were laughing at her expense. Oh, he was having a fine time.
    "Alone is my preference," she said over her shoulder.
    "It is my preference which should occupy you," he called to her retreating back. Retreating... she would not retreat. And she would not be mocked by such as he.
    "Which it does not," she said, turning to face him across the triclinium's width. "Will you kill me, you who claim mastery over me? Shall it be death by knife or club or ax? Or will it not be death at all because you fear the retribution of Roman justice? Roman justice, the truest this world can give, protecting the weak against the monstrous and keeping the murderer from the innocent."
    "Keeping me from you?" he interrupted with a scowl. "I will not speak with you of Roman justice," he said in a snarl, the smile completely wiped from his face. She couldn't have been happier.
    "I can understand why, barbarian, when you—"
    "No," he interrupted harshly. "You cannot. Leave, Roman; obey your stated will if none other will serve. Leave. Now."
    She backed up a few steps at the intensity in his voice and the look in his bright blue eyes and then forced herself to walk away from him casually, as if it had been her decision to leave the triclinium. He had actually looked angry. In all she had done, in all the words they had thrown like daggers at each other, in all the moments when she had