Adrian by Heather Grothaus

she’s known me all my life,” Maisie said contemplatively. “There was nae one—absolutely nae one—else to trust. I’m doing what I must to save my home—our home,” she emphasized.
    â€œThe fate of all of magical Wyldonna rests on the efforts of a brave but humble lady-in-waiting,” Adrian said, unable to help his smirk. “It does sound like something of a tale, you must agree.”
    Maisie Lindsey let her head roll against the wood back of the chair to regard him. Her forearm lay across the rest, her palm up, and even from across the cabin Adrian could make out the bright blue veins just beneath her ivory skin.
    â€œAye. Or a legend.” She regarded him for a moment. “I know you doona believe any of it.”
    Adrian looked back to the drawings. When he answered her, his voice was intentionally gruff. “You’re right—I don’t.”
    She sighed from her chair, and her voice sounded weary. “You will.”

Chapter 4
    M aisie did not slip easily into slumber that night, even though she was fatigued beyond measure when she crawled into her berth behind the thick woven curtain in one corner of the cabin. Adrian Hailsworth seemed to find a bit of difficulty falling asleep himself, if the tossing and turning she heard from the opposite corner of the cabin was any indication. She tensed at every little sound he made at first, but then, when the cabin was quite still, signaling that he at last slept, Maisie found that she actually missed the evidence that there was another human being on the crawler with her. She had been alone for weeks before fetching Adrian Hailsworth from Melk. But the simple knowledge of his presence must have given her some measure of comfort, for when she finally succumbed to exhaustion, she slept deeply.
    So deeply, in fact, that she had not heard the Englishman rise before her, and she only came awake—quite at once—when she heard him struggling with the hatch.
    â€œOh, nay. Nay, nay, nay,” she mumbled as she fought to disentangle herself from her covers, pedaling her feet against their strangling hold and then throwing back the curtain before she had come to stand properly.
    Her vision was still clouded with sleep, the dimness of the cabin lit by only the cauldron hampering her ability to see beyond it. She staggered forward, one hand rubbing at her eyes, the other held before her.
    â€œWhat is it?” she called groggily. “What’s wrong?”
    There was a pause in the cursing and scraping. “This blasted hatch is stuck.” She heard two thuds as his feet assumedly came from the ladder back to the floor, and then she saw his outline move toward her. His brown monk’s robes were gone, leaving him clothed in a white undershirt and brown chausses and his boots. The stubble on his jaw had increased from yesterday, and Maisie found his appearance quite large and startlingly masculine. “Likely the humidity,” he added.
    â€œThe what?” Maisie turned away from him to approach her provisions trunk beyond the table. She squatted down and lifted the lid, in search of a jug of cider.
    â€œThe moisture in the air,” he said, his footsteps coming up behind her. She closed the trunk quickly and then used a hand on the edge of the table to help her to stand. “From being on the water. Ofttimes wood—”
    She waved a hand to cut him off. “Yes, yes,” she said gruffly, and poured a measure of the crisp drink into a cup.
    He seemed to be waiting for her to say something further, and when she only attended to her drink, he continued. “I’ll need a hammer, or a lever of some sort.”
    Maisie looked up at him, her irritation barely in check. Couldn’t he see she’d just come from bed? “A lever? Whatever for?”
    He stared at her, blinked once. “To pry loose the latch.”
    â€œWhy would you want to pry loose the latch?” she