Chapter Twelve
Two hours, and by God, she was still here.
When he’d coaxed her to the fire, Morggán had imagined she wouldn’t actually last all the five minutes he’d suggested.
She’d hardly spoken, true enough, and hadn’t inserted herself into conversation nor attempted to compete with the constant back-and-forth among the men.
Yet neither had she retreated into silence as fully as he had expected. And she hadn’t fled.
Her subdued curiosity held him captive tonight.
She observed everything, though not with the tense wariness of her first moments by the flames—still measured but less restrained now, as though her every gesture was controlled.
She followed conversations as though trying to learn from them.
She watched the way the men interrupted one another without offense taken, and Morggán thought she understood that insults were a sign of affection half the time.
And Christ, her expressions.
She offered small, sporadic smiles. Never broad, only slight curves of her lips—fleeting glimpses before she drew her mouth into a composed line. Yet with every passing minute she seemed to forget a little more that she’d only planned to stay five minutes.
Presently she attended a senseless argument between Alasdair and Eòin, the latter still too young and earnest to understand that Alasdair rarely cared about the argument itself so much as the opportunity to provoke someone into defending a ridiculous position—honestly, no man alive did it better.
“Say it plain then,” Alasdair barked across the fire. “Ye ken ye’re a better drunk fighter than I.”
Which was utter nonsense, of course.
Eòin leaned forward and stated vehemently, “I never said that.”
“Ye implied it.”
“I didnae.”
“Ye looked it.”
“Looked it?” Eòin demanded incredulously.
“Aye. Wi’ yer face.”
Several men snorted into their flasks.
Tormod muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer for patience.
Tonight none of it irritated Morggán as it might have. He found himself more interested in Avery than the argument itself. She seemed to understand what Eòin did not, that Alasdair was stirring the pot for sport.
Her lips twitched in a near-smile as her gaze moved back and forth between Eòin’s growing outrage and confusion and Alasdair’s entirely fabricated indignation.
Firelight softened her features warmly, catching gold through strands of pale hair that hung in loose waves over her shoulder.
The smile was quickly concealed, though, as she pressed her lips together, as if to remind herself to stay composed.
He’d grown accustomed to her quiet solemnity, but this—this sweetness emerging slowly from beneath all that caution and isolation—felt like witnessing something rare.
She’d always been beautiful, but these guarded hints of warmth revealed something he had begun to suppose the world itself had nearly pressed out of her, some lighter part of her nature long buried beneath solitude and survival and years spent speaking mostly to herself and a hound.
More than once tonight, when amusement touched her, her glance slipped sideways toward him, as if seeking his acknowledgement, or perhaps only wanting to share her reaction with him.
And every time she did, it left him increasingly and intoxicatingly aware of her beside him, and he began to wish she did it more.
“Ye see?” Alasdair demanded suddenly, pointing a spoon accusingly toward Eòin. “Even the lass kens I’m right.”
Avery startled slightly at being dragged into the argument. She straightened her back and waved her hands together before dropping them back to her lap. “No. I don’t know what you’re arguing about,” she confessed.
“Nae one does, lass,” Tormod muttered.
“Simple-minded, ye all be,” Alasdair informed them.
“Simple-minded?” Eòin repeated. “Ye began this by claiming drunk fighting is a skill.”
“It is a skill.”
“It’s idiocy.”
“?Tis nae,” Alasdair agreed easily. “?Tis skill. Ask the lass—said as much herself.”
Even Tormod huffed faint amusement through his nose at that.
It was one of Alasdair’s hallmarks, to claim that another had said something, or agreed with him on one of his bullshite statements.
Like Tormod always says, was a constant in Alasdair’s repertoire.
Donnchadh avowed just yesterday ye dinna have the upper body strength to wield the mace, was another fabrication Morggán had overheard more than once, used most often on green soldiers.
Laird claims ye’d drown crossing a puddle.
Tormod said if stupidity were coin ye’d outfit three armies—just yesterday, he said that to me.
Finlay says to me—and I dinna invent this myself, ?tis I’m only the messenger—that ye’ve the courage of wet bread.
The list went on. It was, in fact, endless. It seemed every day, Alasdair had some new quote to share.
Anything to provoke another, anything to entertain himself.
Just now, he did not disappoint. Into the brief lull, he announced heatedly as young Cailean happened to walk past the seated group, “Why do ye speak so, Donnchadh? I trow young Cailean could best one of God’s men in a fight, and aye, even if the priest had but only one hand.”
Cailean jerked abruptly at the mention of his name, and stared, aghast, at Donnchadh, who happened to roll his eyes at Alasdair at the moment, and hovered with uncertainty until Tormod waved him on, telling him to ignore Alasdair.
Avery’s mouth curved again before she could quite suppress it, and as though compelled by habit now, her gaze flicked briefly toward Morggán once more.
He found himself smiling back at her, enjoying every blessed minute of her wee abandon.
“Tell the lass about Perth,” Finlay said suddenly around a mouthful of bread. “When Alasdair challenged that blacksmith.”
“Christ,” groaned Donnchadh.
“It wasnae a challenge,” Alasdair objected immediately. “The man insulted my mother.”
“He did nae! He said ye cheated at dice,” Tormod reminded him gruffly.
“Aye. And my mam raised nae cheater.”
Finlay snorted out a burst of laughter. “Ye broke his nose.”
“Ye struck him wi’ a stool,” Eòin reminded him.
“A tactical decision,” Alasdair acknowledged with a straight face.
“And then ye hid behind Tormod,” Finlay goaded.
“Aye, another tactical decision.”
At that, Avery laughed outright for the first time all evening, the sound unrestrained, though sadly too brief.
Sweet Christ. The sound struck Morggán like a blow through the gaps in his armor.
Her hand flew almost immediately toward her mouth afterward as though she had forgotten herself entirely, blue eyes widening faintly before yet again they darted instinctively toward him.
And there it was again, that unconscious seeking of him. Morggán scarcely heard anything that was said next. He was too occupied watching the way firelight danced across her face and being enticed by the brightness in her blue eyes.
***
If someone had told her that morning that she would spend the evening seated beside a fire surrounded by men who looked more medieval than real—who were armed to the teeth besides—and that she would enjoy herself, Avery would have laughed in their face.
And yet she had.
Not every moment perhaps. There had been stretches where she scarcely knew where to look or what expression to wear upon her face while the men argued over things so foolish she often lost track of the point entirely.
Several times she had become aware of her own silence and wondered if it appeared strange to others, only for someone else to begin speaking loudly enough that no one could possibly have noticed her lack of contribution at all.
But somewhere along the way, she had stopped wishing herself back inside the house.
The realization crept over her slowly while she sat listening to Alasdair torment Eòin over whether a man thrown from his horse still technically counted as one of the mounted cavalry.
She found herself warm from the fire and pleasantly full from the thick stew and soft-as-heaven-on-the-inside bread.
Charlie had drifted freely between the men all evening, accepting scraps and scratches behind the ears as though he was long familiar with them.
A strange ache rose in her, something she couldn’t immediately place.
For one odd, drifting moment she found herself thinking of crowded school cafeterias and noisy holiday gatherings at her aunt’s house where cousins shouted across tables while adults argued cheerfully over one another in the kitchen.
The memory came faint and disjointed now, worn thin by time, yet the feeling of it remained strangely immediate, the simple, easy warmth of belonging among other people.
She hadn’t realized until tonight how long it had been since she sat among voices without feeling she ought to flee from them.
Ten years in this forest and in this life, five of them alone, had pared her existence down to survival and silence so gradually she had ceased noticing the absence of everything else.
Yet sitting there beside Morggán while his men bickered and laughed around the fire, something deep within her recognized the shape of ordinary companionship with a familiarity that almost hurt.
And Morggán was at her side all evening—he, himself, so different from what she knew of him. Well, no, not different exactly, but more complete perhaps.
More than once, certainly inside her house, he seemed slightly too large for the space around him, a hulking soldier forced temporarily into stillness while his wounds healed.
Here, among his men, command settled on him like a second skin.
Even when his voice was quiet, other conversations would dip, men turning their heads to listen without seeming to notice they’d done it.
The entire gathering seemed to shift its weight around him, a fact she found strangely pleasing.