Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
"Ye're learnin' fast."
She registered him and lowered it. Didn't step back.
"I am a fast learner," she said.
She had water on her face and her braid had come half undone and she was looking at him the way she always looked at him. Like she was deciding which way the argument was going to go.
He stepped closer. "Defiance especially."
"Perhaps if ye didnae command every breath I take, I wouldnae need to defy ye."
"I command because I must."
"Or because ye can." She said it flat. No heat in it. Worse than heat. "There's a difference."
He felt it land.
He'd heard those words before. Not from her, from himself, in the dark after the fire, going over every decision he'd made that night.
Because I can.
Because no one had stopped him. Because he'd been the Laird's son and certain and twenty-four years old and there had been no one in that corridor willing to put a hand on his chest and say wait.
He took another step. "Ye test me at every turn."
"And ye cage me at every door."
"Ye walk freely through me halls."
"With guards at me back."
"For yer safety."
"For yer control." Her chin came up. "Daenae pretend they're the same."
"Ye daenae ken what ye're talkin' about."
"Then tell me." She took a step toward him. "Tell me why ye brought me here in chains and kept me behind yer gates and sent men to me back on a market road. Tell me what ye're actually afraid of."
"I'm nae afraid of anythin'."
She looked at him steadily.
"Ye told me once ye feared many things. Ye among them, ye said." A beat. "Ye were referrin' to me."
Something shifted in his jaw. "I was havin' a moment of unusual candor."
"And now?"
"Now I'm back to me normal self."
"Everyone's afraid of somethin'." Her eyes stayed on his. "What's yers?"
He moved.
His hand closed around her wrist.
She didn't flinch, she went still, which with her was different. He pulled her one step forward.
"Ye think I enjoy this?" Low, close to her ear. "The gates and the guards and do ye think any of it is what I want?"
"That's nae me burden." She didn't try to pull her wrist away. "I didnae ask to be brought here."
"And I didnae ask to want ye there."
Her mouth opened.
He kissed her.
Hard.
His free hand came up to her jaw, tilting her head, and she didn't move. Rigid, surprised, and he thought,
Mistake, back away, now.
And then she kissed him back.
Her hand fisted in his tunic and pulled. That was all it took.
Whatever had been holding the last week in place came apart and he had both hands in her hair and she was up on her toes and the well, the courtyard, the whole of the afternoon ceased to have anything to do with either of them.
She kissed him the way she did everything else, completely, without apology, nothing held in reserve.
He felt her heartbeat against his chest. He felt her exhale against his mouth when she came up for air and then came back without pausing, like she'd already made the decision and wasn't revisiting it.
He pulled back.
She swayed slightly when he released her.
Her eyes came open. Wide, breath uneven, cheeks flushed from the cold or from something else.
She looked at him without the armor for the first time since he'd known her. Just her face, entirely present.
"So," she said quietly. "This is what lips feel like."
He went still.
She wasn't being arch. She wasn't making a point.
The words came out soft, slightly stunned, the voice of someone who had arrived somewhere unexpected and was simply noting what it was like.
She had never been kissed before.
He stood at the well and let that register while she looked at him with her braid coming down and water drying on her face. Her expression was the expression of someone who had just discovered something and was turning it over with both hands.
She stepped toward him.
Her hands came up toward his chest. Not grasping, not urgent, the slow deliberate reach of a woman who wanted to understand something better.
He caught both her wrists. Gentle. Firm.
She stopped. Looked at him.
"This was a mistake," he said. His voice came out rough. He didn't fix it. "I apologize."
She blinked. Something shifted in her face, the wonder still there, now with something else moving into it, something sharper.
He released her wrists and stepped back.
Cold air between them. The gap was two feet and exact and he held it.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she picked up her basket from the edge of the well, turned, and walked back toward the keep at the same pace she walked everywhere.
Fox appeared at the corner and fell in beside her. She didn't look back.
He stood at the well and watched her until she went through the door.
He went to find Fergus.
Not because he had anything to say to him. Because the alternative was following her through that door, and he had taken exactly one step in that direction before he'd caught himself and turned toward the stables instead.
He told himself it was the sensible choice. He told himself this with some conviction, and almost believed it by the time he reached the stable door.
Fergus was there, checking the shoe on the bay gelding. He looked up when Anthony walked in, read whatever he saw, and looked back at the hoof.
"North boundary's clear," he said. "Donal rode the eastern ridge this morning. Nothin' to report."
"Good."
The horse shifted its weight. Fergus moved to the next leg.
"Callum finished his patrol," Fergus added. "Both ways. He was in a fine mood about it."
"He'll live."
"Aye." A pause. "She's inside. In case ye were wonderin'."
"I wasnae wonderin'."
Fergus made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
"Say it," Anthony said.
Fergus set the hoof down and straightened and turned around.
He only did that, the full turn, facing direct, when he'd decided something was worth the trouble of a proper conversation.
He looked at Anthony for a moment.
"Six years is a long time to be alone," he said.
"I'm nae alone. I have sixty men and a keep full of people."
"Alone." Fergus said it the same way he'd said it the first time.
Flat. Final. Like a door closing.
Anthony crossed his arms and leaned against the post. Said nothing.
"She's good," Fergus said. "Stubborn as a wall and she argues like it's a skill she's been honing her whole life, but she's good.
The boy likes her. Seumas likes her, though he'd rather eat his own boots than admit it.
Even that fox of hers has stopped stealin' from everyone except Callum, which I consider a reasonable judgment. "
"Fergus."
"I'm just notin' what I see."
"What ye see is yer Laird's business. Nae yers."
Fergus looked at him for another moment. Then he raised both hands in the gesture that meant as ye like while communicating the complete opposite, and turned back to the horse.
Anthony pushed off the post and walked out.
In the yard he stopped. Looked at the well. The bucket still sat at the edge where she'd left it.
He walked past it and went inside. He went up to James' room.
The boy was awake, propped on his pillows, working on a small piece of wood with a short knife, shavings scattered across the blanket.
He looked up when the door opened.
"Ye're early," James said.
"I had a moment." Anthony pulled the chair to the bedside and sat. He looked at the wood. "What is that?"
James turned it. Pointed end, a rough curve at the top that was trying to be ears.
"Fox," he said. "Catriona said she'd show me how to do the tail."
"Hm."
"She kens how to carve. She said she learned it so she could make her own tool handles when she was travelin' and broke one." James looked at the carving. "She said ye have to learn a lot of things when ye're alone."
Anthony said nothing to that.
"She's teachin' me the names of all her herbs," James continued, picking up the knife again. "The real names, the Latin ones. She says if ye ken the real name of a thing ye can find it anywhere, even if people call it something different."
He turned the wood carefully. "She said that's true of people too."
"She talks a great deal for a woman who rides alone."
James glanced up at him. "She talks to me," he said. As if clarifying something that Anthony might have misunderstood.
He sat back in the chair and watched the boy work.
Outside the window the sky was going dark, the last grey of the afternoon thinning out.
The candle on the side table threw a steady light. James's breathing filled the room at its new pace, easier than it had been a week ago, easier than it had been yesterday.
"Anthony," James said, without looking up from the carving.
"Aye."
"Why does she look sad sometimes? When she doesnae think anyone's watchin'. She just looks at the wall."
He looked at the boy. James was focused on the wood, tongue between his teeth, making a careful cut.
"I daenae ken," Anthony said.
James nodded slowly. "I think she's been alone a long time." He turned the carving over in his fingers and examined it. "Like us."
Anthony sat in the chair a few minutes longer after James's eyes went heavy and closed, the carving still in his loose hand on the blanket.
He lifted it carefully and set it on the table by the candle, and sat in the dark listening to the boy breathe.
Then he went downstairs to supper.
The hall was full.
Not loud, it was never loud since the fire, hadn't been since his father's time. But occupied, the long tables filled, the fire going, the ordinary noise of men eating at the end of a day's work.
He took his seat at the head of the table.
Fergus sat to his left. Donal was three seats down, talking to the man beside him about the eastern ridge. Callum, at the far end, was eating with the focus of a man who had recently run a long patrol and had decided food was the priority.
Catriona was at the middle of the table, beside Mairi.
He didn't look at her directly. He didn't need to.
He was aware of where she was in the room the same way he was aware of any variable that required monitoring. She was at the middle of the table talking to Mairi about something that made Mairi press her hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh.
Fox was under the bench at her feet. Asleep, apparently. Or pretending.
Eidith set a plate in front of him. He nodded.
"The north compound needs the south wall re-mortared before the frost," Donal said, from three seats down. "It'll hold the winter if we do it now. It willnae hold two."
"Tell Seumas. He'll want to look at it first."
"Seumas will tell me it's fine and then complain about it for the next six months."
"Aye. Tell him anyway."
He picked up his knife and ate.
The hall had its usual rhythms around him.
Two of the younger men arguing good-naturedly about something. The fire settling. The sound of plates and cups and ordinary conversation that had filled this room every evening for as long as he could remember, before the fire and after it.
From the middle of the table Catriona said something he didn't catch and Mairi dissolved again, shoulders shaking.
Fox woke up. Stood. Put his front paws on the bench, looked at Anthony's plate, and sat back down.
Anthony looked at the fox. The fox looked at the table with the blank focused attention of an animal that had not been thinking about anyone's supper.
Fergus, to his left, was eating and very carefully not saying anything.
"Nae a word," Anthony said.
"I wasnae goin' to say anythin'," Fergus said.
Anthony returned to his meal.
Catriona, at the middle of the table, didn't look at him.
She was talking to Mairi and then to Donal, who had leaned across to ask her something about James, by the look of it, something that made her nod and gesture with one hand, explaining.
Donal listened with his arms folded and the slow attentive nod of a man who was actually considering what he was being told.
She had been inside his walls for a week.
She'd built a place for herself here with the same efficiency with which she did everything else, without asking permission, without appearing to try.
He ate his supper and looked at the map in his head and thought about her lips.
He thought about them for the rest of the meal.
In the study he sat at the desk and did not look at the correspondence. The map lay open in front of him and he looked at it for a long time without seeing it.
He pressed both hands flat on the desk.
He had kissed her at a well in his own courtyard because she'd said or because ye can and looked at him like she already knew the answer.
And she had kissed him back. Not tentatively, not uncertainly, not like a woman who needed to think about it. And then she had stood there with water on her face and said,
This is what lips feel like
And he had stepped back and called it a mistake.
He'd called it a mistake because the alternative was standing at that well and telling her the truth. Which was that it was the least mistaken thing he'd done in six years, and that was not a truth he had any right to offer her.
He pulled the nearest dispatch toward him. Read it. Set it aside.
He had held for six years.
He would hold.
He had no choice.