Chapter 23
Neil did not move at first.
The chamber held the quiet of damp stone and low flame. The candlelight picked up the shine on the rim of the copper tub and the droplets in Kristen’s hair.
She stood with the sheet wrapped high around her, water sliding down her collarbone and vanishing into the fold.
Neil’s jaw worked. He tried for steadiness but found only heat.
“So, that is what this is about?” His voice was quiet.
Not a challenge. Not yet.
“Ye want to do this again? Couldnae get enough of me last time, could ye?”
She peered up at him from beneath her lashes, her pupils dilating.
Neil stepped closer before he could think better of it. His fingers found the dip of her waist, the linen rough under his palms, the warmth of her skin almost burning through it.
The nearby candle guttered for a few seconds before it finally settled.
“Want me to get another taste, lassie?”
The words left him low and rough. He felt the rasp of them in his chest. He felt the smallest answer in hers, a sharp intake of breath that sounded like yes and no.
She did not step away.
He stood close enough to see the thin, damp strands clinging to her shoulder. Close enough to smell soap and clean skin instead of dirt and copper. His hands held her, firm and careful, asking the questions in his eyes.
He could lean in right now and take her.
He could claim her right there on the bed, and she would give herself to him. He knew that.
So why didn’t he want to? Why did a tiny voice at the back of his head keep repeating those two phrases?
Not yet. Not now.
Her mouth softened, and his breath mingled with hers. He bent his head, slow as if the air had thickened between them. Her lashes lowered and lifted. His eyes closed, then opened again because he wanted to see the exact moment her lips would part for him.
Heat coiled tight under his ribs. His thumbs stroked the sheet where it hugged her hips. He did not even mean to do it. He only wanted to feel that she was real.
Her forehead nearly touched his. One more inch. A breath. He could already taste the idea of her lips. He could already feel the first give of her mouth under his.
Kristen drew in a sharp breath and held it. Something in her went rigid, and she opened her eyes. The small sound in her throat carried more fear of herself than fear of him. She braced her hands against his chest and pressed on it. Then she stepped back.
It was one pace only, a slip of bare feet on the cold floor, yet it opened a space that felt wider than the room. The sheet tightened where she clutched it, and her eyes shone in the candlelight. Her mouth trembled slightly, before she pressed her lips together.
“Kristen—”
“I understand.”
“Nay, ye daenae—”
“I do.” It seemed as if she had to carry the words up a hill. “This is new for both of us. I think we need time.”
“Time?” His voice came out rougher than he wanted.
His pulse throbbed at his throat. The space between them seemed to suck the air out of his lungs.
“Aye. Time.” She pulled the sheet higher like a shield. “I will sleep in yer tower tonight, if that is all right with ye. I daenae want to sleep in this bed.”
Neil stood still. The flames flickered. Water trickled from the rim of the tub and tapped the floor.
He meant to say something that would keep her in the room. He meant to say that he had not finished, that he did not want to stop at the edge of a thing they had both asked for with their bodies, whether they liked it or not.
He found no words that did not sound like a command. He had given too many of those already.
“Kristen…”
But she had already turned around. The sheet swished around her calves, and her bare feet made no sound on the stone. She did not look back. Not once.
The door swung on its old hinges, the lock clicked, and the sound shot through him like the sear of a burn.
Silence fell. The candles cast a warm glow on the wall.
Neil stayed where he was, his hands frozen mid-air. The room still held her warmth and a hint of soap. It held the breath he had not drawn, and the kiss he had not taken.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth and tasted salt. His fingers had left faint creases in the linen where he had held her. If he closed his eyes he could see them still, tiny ridges pressed into the cloth for the heartbeat it had been his to touch.
He let his hands fall to his sides, then braced them on the edge of the table and watched his knuckles whiten. The bones under his skin stood sharp. The scar in his shoulder tugged and pulled. He breathed in and out until the pain ebbed.
He looked at the bed. The sheets lay neat from earlier, when he had straightened them for her and told himself that caring for her was enough of an apology. The sight now hit him like a punch to the gut.
He walked to the bed anyway and sat where she had earlier, where his fingers had cleaned the blood on her body. The mattress gave under his weight and sprang back as he rested his elbows on his thighs and bowed his head.
The pulse at his throat kept up a fast count. He tried to will it down. He tried to chase away the memory of her mouth. The smile on her face when she spoke to the clan members. The expectation in her eyes when she handed him the larger half of a cake back at the village square.
He tried to push the memory of her vivid presence out of his mind.
It stayed.
Not only that, it settled into him like an ache that would walk with him in daylight.
He lifted his head and looked at the door once more. The chamber felt larger without her. It felt colder.
He had thought the tower was the only place that could hold his thoughts. Now, the somber quiet of this room threw every thought at him. He clenched his teeth and breathed, and breathed again, and listened to the empty corridor.
Eventually, he flopped back onto the soft mattress and stared at the ceiling. His breathing matched the footsteps of a guard patrolling down the stairs, and he kept his focus on that.
Somehow, he did not remember when he fell asleep. All he knew was that a tap at the door had stirred him awake a few hours later.
His eyes flew open, and his heart thudded hard against his ribs. For a moment, he thought he had imagined it. Then the soft tap sounded again. And again. And again. After which the scraping of wood followed.
He sat up as the tap became a knock, and the knock became open hinges and small feet.
Right. He did not lock the door from the inside.
Finn burst in first, and Anna ran in after him, her hair a wild halo. Maggie squeezed between their legs and shot straight for the bed, her nails clicking on the floor.
They all skidded to a halt at the sight of him.
Finn’s mouth fell open, and Anna blinked once. Maggie gave a confused growl, somewhere between a question and a complaint.
Neil rubbed a hand over his face.
“Christ.” His voice came out rough.
Of course. The bairns. How in God’s name could he have forgotten?
“Me Lady?” Finn asked, as if Kristen might be hiding under the pillows.
“She isnae here,” Neil said.
He tried to make it gentle, but it still sounded like a verdict.
Anna did not care for an explanation. She crept closer anyway and grabbed a fistful of his pant leg.
Her hand was small and a little sticky. She leaned back with all her weight and tugged at him like a fisherman pulling a rope.
When he did not move, she changed tactics. She took his thumb and yanked on it.
Finn hurried to translate with the gravity of a herald. “She wants to go to the kitchen.”
“The kitchen,” Neil repeated.
“Aye.” Finn nodded. “She chases us there every morning.”
She.
Neil swallowed. “She chases ye?” he asked.
The words tasted strange in his mouth.
Finn nodded again, his eyes very serious. “Ye are supposed to chase us.”
Neil stared at him. Finn stared back.
Maggie wagged her tail once and huffed as if to say the boy had made an excellent point.
In the corridor, a maid passed with a basket on her hip. Neil pointed at her as a drowning man would point to shore. “Can ye chase them instead?”
The maid opened her mouth, but Finn gasped in horror before she could get a word in. “Nay, it has to be ye.”
Neil closed his eyes for a beat. He drew air in slowly, the way he did before a blade met a throat.
This was not a blade. This was a boy with hair that stuck up like straw and a girl who had his thumb in a trap. This was a dog who had already decided where the pack would go.
“Where is yer nurse?” he tried.
“In the nursery,” Finn replied. “We daenae start there. We start here. Then we go to the big table. Then the stairs. Then the kitchen. Ye have to pretend that ye nearly caught us. Then ye carry Anna the last stretch because she gets tired.”
Anna lifted her arms at the word carry. The meaning was plain in any tongue.
Neil looked down at himself. Bare feet. Shirt wrinkled from a restless night. He thought of the men in the village square and the rage that had swept over him. He thought of the woman who had left this room because wanting and not wanting had almost made her break.
He had no skill for this. He had no training for soft mornings.
“Chase,” he said, as if the word might yield sense if he turned it in his mouth.
Finn brightened. “Aye. Now ye say, ‘I am coming for ye, rascals.’ Then ye roar like a bear. But nae too loud. Anna daenae like it when it is too loud.”
Maggie sneezed. It looked like an agreement.
Neil dragged a hand through his hair, then swung his legs off the bed and put his feet on the cold floor. Anna laughed, pleased with the progress, and tugged harder on his thumb as if to test the strength of the giant she had captured. He let her win and stood.
“Right,” he said. The urge to command tried to rise and found nothing to lean on. “We will see.”
Finn frowned. “That isnae the line.”
“What is the line again?” Neil asked.
Finn squared his small shoulders and lowered his voice. “I am coming for ye, rascals.”
Neil looked at the door. He looked at the girl. He looked at the boy who waited for a game that had rules he did not know. He felt the first curl of something he could not name. It was not dread. It was not anger. It felt like a rope that took a weight and held.
He swallowed. “I am coming for ye, rascals.”
Finn grinned so hard his face might have split. “Now, roar.”
Neil stared at him.
Finn lifted his hands like a conductor. “Roar.”
Neil tried. The first attempt was miserable, more breath than beast. Anna clapped anyway. Maggie barked once in full support.
Finn nodded. “Good. Now, we run.”
Anna squealed and set off at a wobbling gallop, clapping her hands as she went. Maggie bounded after her, her tail swinging with each jump.
Finn took two quick steps, then paused and looked back at Neil with a kind of worry that did not belong on a child. “Are ye coming?”
Neil was half-dressed, his hair a mess, standing in a room that still smelled of soap and the ghost of last night.
He could knock a sword from a hand in a blink.
He could read a lie in a blink, too. He had no idea how to pretend to almost catch a child.
He had no idea how to carry a girl the last stretch because she would tire.
He looked from Finn to the corridor and back. The boy’s hope was a small, bright thing. It did not feel like a test, and yet it did.
He let out the breath he had been holding. “Go.” His voice had weight again, but a different kind. “Run.”
Finn whooped and shot after his sister. Their steps pattered down the hall. Maggie skidded at the turn and recovered, her nails scratching for purchase.
Neil stood there for one last heartbeat, his hands empty, his mind loud. His body wanted steel, but the morning wanted something else.
Something he had no choice but to provide.