She had just sat there, for a long, long time. Her head had been spinning… actually, the whole world had seemed to be spinning. And cold. So cold. She'd managed, with a great effort, to fight back the tears, but as soon as they'd subsided, she had become aware that her teeth were beginning to chatter.
Very slowly, moving with the weary stiffness of a woman three times her age, She drew up her legs, crossed her arms atop them, and dropped her head forward, resting her face in the protected space made by her criss-crossed forearms.
And she'd tried to regain her composure. And tried. And tried.
It hadn't happened.
Everyone had heard him. Everyone. He hadn't bothered to keep his voice down. The other men in their group had heard – God, even the prisoners had heard. Every word of it.
The humiliation was staggering. Other under circumstances it might have been all-encompassing. The only reason it hadn't been all-encompassing right then had been the fact that her physical condition had been worsening, it seemed, almost by the minute – to the point where it had started to eclipse everything else, even Gunther's devastating tirade.
[You just have to get home. Home, get home.]
Yes. That was the thing to focus on now. The only thing. She couldn't allow herself to focus on the rest of it, on Gunther. If she did… if she did…
She couldn't even finish the thought. Because it was too horrible to contemplate, yes, but also because all her thoughts, now, seemed to be flying away.
There were only three sure things left. First that Gunther didn't love her, and never had. He'd either been deliberately toying with her the other night, or – more likely – had been considerably more inebriated than she'd realized at the time.
Second, that she was hurt beyond belief, humiliated, overwhelmed, and just, in a word, dumbfounded by how wrong everyhing had gone. And yet, given the opportunity to do it all over again, she'd still have dived in front of that arrow, without a second's hesitation. Absolutely. In fact the worse she felt, the more grateful she was that it wasn't Guther that was going through this.
And third, that she was now absolutely bone-rattlingly chilled.
Clenching her teeth hard in an attempt to stop their chattering, she'd slowly and very carefully gotten to her feet, then trudged over to her horse, freed her bedroll, and lugged it, exhaustedly, to the base of a large boulder at the edge of the campsite.
She'd had to wrestle with it for what had seemed like a ridiculously long time, just to get it laid out. Was she really so weak that just getting her blankets straight had nearly taken more out of her, than she'd had left to give?
She supposed she must be.
But honestly it hadn't even seemed very important anymore.
Nothing had seemed very important anymore. The world around her, and everything in it, had seemed to be… receding, somehow. Just floating away.
And she'd found that she hadn't really much cared.
It had probably been for the best that Gunther had taken her off the watch rotation, anyway.
There'd still been light on the horizon, but she'd huddled down into the blankets, coccooned herself as best she could, turned her back on the rest of the camp, and closed her eyes.
About an hour later, one of the men had brought a plate of food over and left it beside her, but she hadn't stirred. She'd fallen into a fitful sleep by then, curled in on herself, a hurt little ball.
She'd been cold even in her dreams.