Chapter Eleven #2
At length he excused himself from the circle of men and crossed the clearing alone.
The nearer he came to the house, the more sharply he became aware of the contrast between the quiet life she had built here and the intrusion now surrounding it.
Horses shifted among the trees where before there had been only birdsong.
Strange voices drifted constantly through the forest. A quick glance into the deeper forest beyond her house showed a sprinkling of canvas cropping up, tents already being erected.
He reached the door and knocked once against the frame before entering.
Avery sat near the small fire with Charlie sprawled beside her feet, one hand on the scruff of the hound’s neck, as if to calm either the hound or herself, while she stirred her watery stew with her other hand.
She looked up immediately at Morggán’s entrance, but said nothing, only stared at him unblinking.
The hut itself felt smaller now somehow after standing among so many men outside.
Morggán began to close the door behind him but then decided against it, not wanting to add fuel to existing suspicions.
“I owe ye an apology,” he said, his back to the entrance, blocking an outsider’s view. “For this,” he continued, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder. “Ye took in one wounded man and now have half an army at yer door.”
Her gaze lowered briefly toward Charlie’s head beneath her hand. “I...it’s not that I didn’t believe you about an army, but I didn’t bother to...” she paused and shrugged, “to imagine it. It’s...I don’t know.”
Despite himself, Morggán nearly smiled. “Aye, mayhap it’s a spectacle to someone who has isolated herself for so long.”
Her gaze snapped to his. “I haven’t isolated—” she began.
“Ye have, Avery,” he countered. “Ye said yerself ye dinna go beyond certain points—ye’d never stepped foot upon the meadow ere two days past.” He let that be it—that wasn’t why he’d come. “Are ye frightened of the army, Avery? Do ye believe I would let harm come to ye?”
She shook her head almost at once but didn’t answer with words. Instead, she stared down toward the stew hanging above the coals, her expression tightening in a manner he’d begun to recognize.
“It’s all...” She stopped, searching for words that plainly would not come easily. “Wrong. Something is really wrong and I don’t know what it is.”
Morggán’s brows dropped low over his eyes. “Wrong how?”
Avery lifted her blue eyes briefly to his and then slanted them away again almost at once, as though the answer itself embarrassed her. “I don’t know,” she said again, frustration threading the words. “That’s the problem.”
Silence settled between them while Morggán let her gather her thoughts, unsure how to address something so vague as what she’d said so far.
“Nothing feels familiar,” she said quietly. “Sometimes I think I should understand this world, and then I look at all of you and I know I don’t.”
Morggán frowned slightly. “This world?”
Avery pressed suddenly at her eyes with one hand. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Her voice wavered unexpectedly then, enough that Morggán felt something tighten hard in his chest.
“It feels like everyone else was handed some information—like a script or something—and I didn’t get one. Like I woke up one day and everything had changed except me.” She laughed faintly after saying it, though the sound held no humor whatsoever. “I know how crazy that sounds.”
“Nae,” Morggán said quietly. But truthfully, he didn’t know what it sounded like. He only knew that she looked unbearably forlorn sitting there beside the fire trying to explain a sorrow she herself did not understand.
Her mouth trembled faintly then before she pressed it flat again, forcing the reaction back down with obvious effort.
She looked suddenly very vulnerable—as she’d never seemed to him before—sitting there beside the hearth fighting to hold herself together while confusion plainly gnawed at her from somewhere deep and old.
He felt a chagrin rising, for he did not know how to help her.
He could track armies through forests, hound the English across Scotland, thrust steel into flesh, but whatever troubled her now lay beyond the reach of any skill he possessed.
“Ye dinna sound crazy,” he said again more firmly.
Morggán stared at her a long moment after that.
He thought suddenly of the meadow two days past, of the wonder on her face stepping beyond the trees for the first time in years.
Of the way she watched ordinary things sometimes as though seeing them from a great distance.
And Christ, his chest hurt for her then.
It didn’t necessarily feel like pity, but something deeper and far more difficult to name.
“I dinna ken what burdens ye carry in yer thoughts,” he admitted quietly at last. “But ye neednae carry them alone while I’m here.”
Avery’s eyes remained lowered after that, her fingers still moving absently through Charlie’s fur while the hound lay heavy and warm against her.
Morggán leaned one shoulder against the wall beside the door and watched her in silence for a moment longer. “We’ll nae remain here long,” he told her at last, supposing it was possible that simply the intrusion had upset her. “A few days at most.”
He nearly said then what had circled stubbornly through his thoughts ever since Tormod forced the matter plainly before him outside.
Ye canna remain here.
Come with me.
But even imagining the words spoken aloud, he could already picture the resistance rising immediately in her. He could picture her retreating inwardly, could picture in advance her quiet stubborn refusal.
He said nothing—if he were honest with himself, he was not prepared yet to hear her deny him.
Avery nodded once, though appeared yet stiff with frustration.
Outside, sudden laughter broke loudly somewhere among the nearer trees followed by the unmistakable smell of roasting meat drifting through the air.
Morggán glanced briefly toward the door.
“They’ve already started cooking,” he said. “Likely a kettle full of stew thick enough to stand a spoon upright in. And Fergus guards his bread like church gold.”
Avery gave a faint shake of her head before he said anything else. “No, but thank you.”
Despite himself, Morggán nearly smiled. “Ye havena heard the offer yet.”
“I can guess where you’re going,” she told him, raising her blue eyes to his once more, her gaze marginally less troubled.
“Aye, but hear it proper.” He kept his tone deliberately easy. Light. “Come eat wi’ us tonight.”
“No, but thank you,” she repeated with the same strained politeness.
Morggán watched her another moment before speaking again. “Avery, can ye tell me why ye’d refuse a hearty meal among honorable men?”
The words, when she answered, came quiet and matter-of-fact, not pitifully but merely as truth telling.
“I don’t know how to...” She gestured vaguely in frustration.
“Behave around that many people. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
Or when to speak. Or...” She exhaled sharply through her nose. “It would be too much.”
Morggán regarded her silently for a moment before crossing the narrow space between them and lowering himself carefully onto his haunches. He took care with the movement still, though his strength had returned enough now that he no longer needed to think through every shift of his body beforehand.
“Ye did well enough already,” he said.
Avery shot him a look that clearly said she thought otherwise.
“Alasdair talks enough for six men,” Morggán continued mildly. “Tormod holds court when he’s in the mood. A dozen others will talk non-stop if we dinna shut them up besides. Ye need scarcely say a word at all if ye dinna want to.”
Another reluctant softening touched her expression then vanished again almost immediately.
“And if after five moments ye decide ye hate every one of them,” he added, “I’ll walk ye back here myself—and with a bowl full of stew and enough bread to make ye sick.”
Avery gave him a knowing smile, plainly recognizing the attempt to coax her. The small grin faded as quickly as it had come, however, and she studied him then in that intent silent way she had, as though weighing not merely the words themselves but the truth behind them.
Morggán held her gaze steadily.
In truth, he wanted more than simply to feed her properly tonight.
He wanted the sight of people around her to not seem like an approaching storm.
He wanted her to know or remember perhaps that voices and laughter and company need not send her into retreat, that the world beyond this hut did not exist solely to threaten her.
At length Avery looked down toward Charlie again and scratched slowly behind one ear.
Finally, she acquiesced. “Maybe for five minutes.”
Relief moved unexpectedly through Morggán at the words.
He rose again, as slowly as he’d gone down, and said quietly, “Five moments it is. I’ll collect ye when the boards are set.”
***
Avery paused as they rounded the corner of the house, stopping near the little garden plot in which she and Morggán had labored only hours earlier.
As promised, Morggán had come to get her about an hour after she’d accepted his invitation—an entire hour in which she’d regretted every minute she’d not been more staunch in her refusal.
But then Morggán had extended his hand to her, helping her to her feet, and yeah, for a moment, she’d been so preoccupied with the feel of his hand around hers that she hadn’t really prepared herself for what waited beyond the corner of the house.
He had not immediately released her after pulling her to her feet inside, and though at last she had gently tugged her hand free as they’d crossed the threshold, the warmth and strength of his grip seemed strangely to linger still.
She’d just caught herself clenching and unclenching her fingers absently, as though some part of her wished to hold onto the sensation.