When he finished, she turned to face him, her heart in her throat. Richard Sharpe had been quite a fixture in her life in Luceti. Trusted, gruff, uncompromising -- and here he was, even in sight of her scars, wanting something she was only now beginning to imagine -- something she'd forced herself not to think about that early morning in his bedroom.

"How much time do I have?"

To heal. To mentally and physically prepare herself. To sew up her life with as fine a stitch as she could manage. Because maybe this would not be a bad thing. She only hoped now that the major would be patient. It wasn't a quality she had learned to look for in him.