Chapter 17
“I should get ye inside,” Hunter said as he fastened his belt.
“I’m not ready to go back inside yet,” Nancy replied, before turning her gaze up to the cloudy night, where shy stars played hide and seek among the heavens.
He didn’t argue as she’d anticipated. Instead, he lay down on the stone and joined her in looking up at the night sky. For a while, neither said a word, their heavy breaths the only thing filling the silence.
As their breathing evened, however, Nancy couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
“Why were you here tonight?” She paused. “I mean, I’m grateful you were there to stop me from drowning, but…”
“To think,” he replied. “I was sitting up there on the wall when I saw ye swimmin’. I came down to tell ye to stop before ye froze, which is when ye went under.”
She eased her weight off her elbows and lay flat. “I misjudged the wall of the pool.” Tilting her head back, she peered up to where the garden wall stood. “What were you thinking about?”
“A lot of things.”
“Such as?” she probed. “I know you have this strong, silent type thing going on, and it suits you, but you can talk to me. For one thing, I don’t know anyone to tell. For another, when I go back home, no one would believe me anyway.”
And you’ll be gone in a month.
Her heart lurched violently, a sick feeling that dried up her mouth and twisted her stomach into knots.
He turned his head to look at her. “I was thinkin’ about me wife.”
“Pardon?” She sat up sharply. “Is that why you…?” She gestured vaguely at the pool, hoping that what he’d just done to her hadn’t been some sort of desire to replicate what he’d done to his wife.
A sly smile lifted his lips. “Nay, lass, that’s nae why I pleasured ye until ye trembled and cried out me name.
” He slid his arm underneath her and pulled her to him.
“Me wife hated me. I wanted to do me duty and take care of her, but I didnae feel anything but responsibility toward her. We lay together once, to end a war. It had to be done, though neither of us wanted to.”
“Freya?”
He nodded. “Aye, she’s the one good thing to have come of that.”
Nancy snuggled into the warmth of his body. She couldn’t help it, when the alternative was cold stone and a chilly wind.
But as she rested her head in the juncture where his shoulder met his arm, she felt a sudden swell of pity for him.
She couldn’t imagine having to sleep with someone to end a war.
That seemed like an awful lot of pressure, and not at all pleasant for either party involved, especially if they were former enemies.
“Is the war where you got your scars?” she asked.
He nodded. “Aye.”
“I heard what else you had to do to end the war,” she said hesitantly, uncertain of where the lines were drawn and if she had any right to cross them.
It was the perpetual balancing act of an investigative journalist.
“Your wife,” she continued. “She would’ve been your enemy’s daughter?”
“Me cousin’s enemy, but aye,” he confirmed.
She cleared her throat. “How did she die?”
“In childbirth,” he replied stiffly. “I didnae ken she was with child when she left this castle. I only told her to go so me own people wouldnae do her any harm for tryin’ to have me killed.
If I’d ken she was carryin’ me daughter, I’d have…
I daenae ken what I would’ve done. She’d have gotten worse if I’d made her stay, but maybe Lady Gibson could’ve saved her if she had. I daenae ken.”
Nancy thought of Adeline. If anyone could have saved Hunter’s former wife from dying in childbirth, it would have been the time-traveling doctor. But she kept that to herself, seeing no reason to rub salt in the wound.
“I daenae blame me wife for nae wantin’ anythin’ to do with me.
I was content with us living separately, I just wish she hadnae summoned her braither to kill me.
She could’ve just fled back to her faither in the night, and I wouldnae have gone after her,” he added with a sigh.
“It didnae need to be such a great mess.”
“No, but there’s no story in everything working out neatly,” she replied. “Nothing ever does. It’s human to be messy. I am the queen of mess-making.”
He glanced down at her. “Why? Who did ye kill?”
“No one, but I definitely made a few people want to kill me over the years. Maybe more figuratively than literally, but still, I was a nightmare from about ten-years-old to fifteen—stealing, skipping school, running away, getting into fights, drinking underage, getting hauled in by the cops, generally doing everything in my power to make a mess of my life,” she said with a bittersweet smile, remembering the lost, resentful girl who would lash out at just about everyone.
He pulled her a little tighter into his hard body. “How old are ye now?”
“It’s rude to ask a woman that,” she retorted with a grin. “But I’m twenty-seven. I think it’s fair to say that I turned things around.”
“Twenty-seven?” There was a note of shock in his voice that drew her gaze up to him, her eyes narrowing. “And ye daenae have a husband? Or do ye, back in the Americas?”
She puffed out a breath. “Where I come from, no one is getting married anymore, and barely anyone is doing it young. If I were back in New York and announced I was getting hitched, they’d call me a child bride. So, no, I don’t have a husband. Not even close.”
A low chuckle rumbled in the back of his throat, though his look of surprise lingered. “Ye come from an odd place, lass.”
“You have no idea.”
Whether she was home in New York or home-home in New Jersey, both would seem bizarre to someone like him.
Hell, she’d been living in New York for five years, and it still seemed strange to her at times.
There were things one encountered in that city, especially on the subway or late at night, that felt like a fever dream.
A few moments of silence passed before he spoke again. “So, ye were a brawler, were ye? I can imagine it. Ye’ve a lot of fight in ye, lass.”
“You wouldn’t take me on?” She smirked.
“I wouldnae have to.” His eyes glittered with amusement. “I’d just have to kiss ye, then spread yer legs and run me t—”
“I was cold and needed warming up!” she interrupted, her face flooding with heat. “That was life-saving. If I wanted to fight you, it would be your life that needed saving.”
She realized, a beat too late, that that was exactly what his former wife had done. She had wanted him dead, so she’d called upon her brother to assassinate him, and woefully misjudged what Hunter’s reaction would be.
But Hunter took it well, a smirk lingering on his lips as he continued to gaze down at her. “I’m pleased I could resurrect ye, but if ye think ye could beat me in a fight, try to get out of me arms.”
With a snort of amusement, Nancy pushed against his chest to try to free herself from his unexpected embrace. All he had to do was tighten his arm a little, barely putting any effort into it at all, and she stayed stuck to his side.
Not that she actually wanted to remove herself from his embrace, not when he was so warm, and she felt so content and sleepy, her body completely relaxed in the afterglow of her orgasm.
“I wasn’t a brawler,” she said with a smile, “just angry.”
“Ye’ve a temper, then?”
She hesitated. “Sometimes, but it wasn’t that kind of anger. It was an… angry-at-the-world kind of anger. Stealing and fighting and being insufferable were just my way of alleviating that anger for a little bit.”
“Why were ye angry at the world? I ken the feeling, but why was it there for ye?” he asked, his voice softer, making her eyelids heavier.
Nancy lowered her gaze, focusing on the ridges of his bare abdomen and the faint scars that marred his skin. “My mom went missing, and I blamed myself… then I blamed her, and then I blamed the world that made it possible for her to go missing.”
“What happened?” he asked, before falling into a silence that she felt compelled to fill.
She settled deeper into his embrace, surprised by how natural it felt. How easy. As if they’d lain that way a thousand times before.
“She was all I had,” she began quietly, hesitantly, as if recounting a dream.
“It was always just me and her. Didn’t know my dad, not his name or what he looked like.
My mom never told me anything about him, other than the fact that he was dead and that if he’d been around, he would have loved me very much.
Never spoke about how he died or anything like that.
I’d ask sometimes, and she’d just… glaze over, getting this distant look in her eyes.
Then, she’d change the subject, and I’d forget until the next time I asked. ”
“I ken that look,” Hunter said softly as his fingertips lightly stroked her arm.
He’s lost people, too. How many, I wonder?
In this era, it was probably more unusual to have both parents still alive than it was to have both of them gone, whether by sickness or war or famine or something as simple as a cut that got infected.
“She worked two jobs to make ends meet,” Nancy continued as that silent encouragement nudged her again.
“She was the most beautiful woman in the world. I remember being little and a man walking straight into a lamppost. He was so distracted by her beauty. She had me young, though probably old in comparison to here.”
An awkward chuckle shook her chest, and though she wasn’t looking at Hunter, she sensed him smile.
“I was happy, even though we didn’t have much,” she went on, frowning.
“Then, as I got older, the children at school grew more interested in why I didn’t have a dad.
One of them called me a bastard and said my mother was probably a whore.
I must’ve been nine or so, and didn’t know what the word meant.
So, when I went home that night, I casually asked my mom if she was a whore. ”
A quiet gasp tore from Hunter’s throat. The exact reaction that Nancy herself would’ve had if she’d heard her own story now, with the wisdom of age.