Free Wild Wind by Patricia Ryan

cool draft.
    “You’ll get your tunic dirty,” she said. “And ripped.”
    Envisioning his stepmother’s fury should he present her with yet another shredded tunic—an unfortunate consequence of swordplay—Alex took off his belt and tunic, hanging them over the branch of a tree. As he rolled up the sleeves of his damp linen shirt, he noticed Nicolette’s gaze light on his forearms. He glanced at her and she swiftly looked away.
    Gradually stripping away the prickly growth—and earning scores of scratches in the process—he revealed an opening in the rock, small and low. But deep.
    “‘Tis a cave!” she exclaimed, joining him in pulling away the last few branches. Her delight was infectious. They both trembled in anticipation as they squatted down to peek into the cavern’s dim interior.
    She grinned at him. “I didn’t know we were going to have an adventure!” She had an oddly beguiling mouth, her lips naturally rosy and rather wide, but not full. He loved it when she smiled, yet her smiles had always seemed oddly restrained—until now. There was something so rapturous in her expression of happy triumph that it made his heart ache.
    Alex cleared his throat and said manfully, “I’m going in.”
    “I’m going with you.”
    “Nay. It could be dangerous.”
    “Nonsense.” With an airy wave of her hand, and bending low, she ventured into the dark aperture. “This cave has been closed off for a very long time, considering how troublesome it was to clear away all that old growth. There will be no bears to eat us—and I’m not afraid of spiders.”
    “That’s fortunate.” Following her at a crouch into the cave’s cool interior, Alex grinned. “Watch out for the bats, though.”
    “Where?” She bolted upright, thumping her head on the low ceiling of rock overhead.
    He winced, feeling like a drooling lackwit. “‘Twas a jest. I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”
    “Aye!” She rubbed her head, but she was laughing, thank the saints. “I’ll have a lump the size of a swan’s egg—see if I don’t.”
    I’ll kiss it for you. That’s what he wanted to say. Instead, he said, quietly, “I am sorry. I’m such a dunderhead.”
    She graced him with an astonishingly luminous smile. “I don’t go on adventures with dunderheads.”
    He grinned in absurd gratification as she turned and continued deeper into the cave. “Here, let me go first,” he said, hurrying to catch up.
    “We’ll go side by side,” she said. “That’s fair enough.”
    It seemed to Alex that “fairness” had little to do with safeguarding the weaker sex, but seeing as he saw no real danger at hand, and was eager to be as close to her as possible, to revel in her warmth and the spicy-sweet scent of her, he graciously let her have her way.
    The cave opened up several yards in, the floor dipping down somewhat and the ceiling rising over their heads, enabling them to stand fully upright. What they saw when they did so stole the breath from their lungs. For long moments, all they could do was turn in slow, measured circles, staring incredulously at the cave walls.
    They had been painted, embellished with myriad images in tones of rust and black and sepia. Most of the pictures seemed to be of animals. Alex recognized a deer and some sort of bull. Some of the others were less identifiable. Small figures of men with spears were interspersed among these creatures, as if hunting them.
    “Look.” Nicki pointed to the dark outline of a tiny hand, her expression wistful. “A child.”
    “Who did this?”
    “I can’t imagine.” She crossed herself, shrugging self-consciously to find him watching her. “It makes me think of a church, somehow.”
    Alex nodded and followed suit. There was something almost holy about this long-empty chamber, a sort of rustic sacredness.
    “These pictures must be at least a hundred years old,” Alex said in his most authoritative voice.
    “Older than that,” she murmured, then pointed. “The cave