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She had tried to persuade Gwynplaine to take her bed, but he had made his case so unequivocally—by immediately lying down in his usual place on the floor and refusing to get up again—that she had been forced to back down in the end. For all his gentleness, his warmth, he could be remarkably obdurate when he wished it.
She could hear him, the laboured rasp of his breathing he had been trying unsuccessfully to muffle since they turned in, the usual soft sounds he made when he slept replaced by the restless rustle of blankets. It was cold in the caravan, despite the stove burning—a rare indulgence, even at this time of year, but Ursus had taken no haranguing for once. She liked the cold; liked the feeling of the sharp air on her face, her fingers when she sat at the window as they travelled from town to town. Liked the crisp sound the frost made beneath her feet in the morning, and the way father would complain noisily every time he or anyone opened the door and insist that he was getting too old for this sort of thing. To which sort of thing he was referring, Dea had never been sure. The thought of father away from the caravan, the forests and moorland, living in a house with four walls and a door and wearing a wig and buckles on his shoes—the thought made her laugh, and it made her sad. Father's hair was wiry, thin on the top and broad at the sides, and he hid it beneath a woollen hat in December.
She liked the cold for these reasons, and for the warmth of the caravan and the care which they took of her—unnecessarily, she told them, but they never listened, and she was privately glad of it.
She hated the cold for the pain it brought Gwynplaine: the way his knees and wrists and elbows and hips and fingers would be stiff and grating in the morning, though he tried to hide it. The way it exhausted him, the sickness of the constant ache, making him silent and still. He was quiet always, in presence and speech, softly-spoken and light-footed, reclusive in his thoughts; but the quiet of pain was different. She heard it now, in his wakefulness. The sputtering fire and Ursus's deep, grumbling snores could not drown it.
Gwynplaine slept on the narrow strip of floor between the bed and the stove, on a blanket which they sometimes shared to sit on the steps in the cold mornings. If she reached out her hand, she could touch him.
The air was icy on the bare parts of her legs, so she moved swiftly and as silently as she could to avoid waking Ursus, sliding out from beneath her blankets and feeling with her feet across the floor until she found the warm part—hearing the grunt of surprise—dropping down onto the blankets, placing her knees and hands carefully to avoid the body beneath them, and shuffling quickly into the tangle of warmth and long, strong limbs.
"Dea," Gwynplaine whispered, and she could feel his breath on her cheek, his hands wrapping the blanket around her even as he spoke, "Dea, go back to bed, you'll get ill."
"I won't," she said, burrowing closer until her hands were pressed up against his chest, her legs twined into the space he had automatically made for her with his own. "It's not catching."
"You don't know that." The familiar sound of his voice, the strangled syllables she loved so well, cracked by the cold and winter sickness.
"I do. And anyway, you'll wake father if you try to move me."
"Dea—"
"And I'm cold."
He huffed the breath that was the closest he ever came to laughter, drew the blanket up higher over her shoulder, tucking it in behind her back, then withdrawing his hands into the cocoon of warmth and enfolding her own. "Better?"
"Much."
Quiet, apart from the fire and the sound of breathing: her own, father's—loud and hoarse—and Gwynplaine's, soft on her face.
"Does it hurt badly?"
Gwynplaine drew her hands closer to his chest, bent his head closer so she could feel his hair brushing her forehead, keeping the heat in. His heart tapped gently against her knuckles. "It's not so bad. It's better now. You're helping."
"I am trying," she said seriously, and he made his laughing sound again, brushed her hand with his thumb.
"It's only the cold," he said, after a moment. "Father feels it, too. He says he's only an old man in his knees."
"Well, you're not an old man anywhere."
"I feel like one sometimes."
The stove made a popping sound as a log crumbled to powder. The caravan smelled of wood and wet fur.
"The fire just made your hair turn gold, Dea."
"Mm, that's nice."
He was lying still now, holding her hands at his chest. She could feel the heat of his knuckles where the pain was; could hear in his voice the stiffness of his jaw, the ache there. Carefully, she extracted one hand and lifted it to his face, resting it gently against his cheek, and felt him sink into her touch, heard the soft exhale. It was comforting to feel all the familiar shapes beneath her fingers: the ridges and grooves, smooth seams of scar tissue. For so long, the only faces in the world had been father's and his. She could remember every angle, every hollow, all of it in her mind and in her hands.
"Are you warm enough now?" Gwynplaine murmured, and she felt each word in her palm.
"Yes, much better. Will you be able to sleep?"
"Now that you're here."
She listened to his breathing until it evened out, and then listened some more, finding it within the sound of the wind making the door-frame tremble and the old wood groan and creak, father's grunting snores, the dying fire. His heart beating in her hand like a bird.