Chapter Eighteen #3
Before she could, Morggán closed the door behind him and demanded to know, “Avery, what the bluidy hell was that about earlier?”
Her eyes widened, but only briefly, before they narrowed at him. “It was about me having no business helping these men, since I’m not trained to do so.”
“Ye stitched me and saw me through a fever—” he countered hotly, moving around the fire, closing in on her.
The little house afforded precious little room, but she stood her ground with her back pressed to the counter and shelves behind her.
“That was necessary—there was no one else, and I did believe you would have died if I didn’t do something,” she countered.
“Today, I was afraid I would cause someone more trouble than their actual wound did. And also,” she announced smartly, thumping her hands onto her hips, “there was no one shouting at me—ordering me to do something as if I’m a servant. ”
“Ye are nae a servant,” he stated, scowling heavily.
“Exactly. I understand it was... chaos then, but you don’t get to talk to me like that—I’m not one of your soldiers.”
“There was need—”
“There was,” she agreed evenly. “I understand that, but—”
“Ye expect I should pause for pleasantries?”
She looked at him as though he were deliberately refusing to understand. “How many more words does it take to ask, rather than command?”
“That’s what this is about? Because I dinna beg prettily?”
She rolled her eyes—right there in front of him, not three feet away. Men had met the lash for less.
And yet, he was close enough now that he could see the tiny crease forming between her brows, and the flush that had risen across her cheeks despite the long day's exhaustion.
He had become accustomed to her quietness over the past weeks, to the thoughtful pauses before she spoke, to the almost uncanny calm with which she met hardship.
This woman was someone else entirely. Her eyes flashed with indignation, her hands punctuated nearly every sentence, and every word came more quickly than the last, as though she had grown weary of swallowing her thoughts. It should have exasperated him.
Instead, he found that he was unexpectedly intrigued.
“What’s this?” she wanted to know, seeming exasperated.
“This, yer refusal to help—”
“I refused at first, yes, because you were acting like a jerk. First, you accused me yesterday of...whatever—being interested in someone else. And then I saw how you looked earlier, when you saw Eòin holding my hand—”
“Aye, and dinna that only justify the questions of yesterday?”
“No!” she burst out, rising onto her toes as though the extra inch might somehow lend greater force to the argument.
“It doesn’t. It only proves that Eòin follows you blindly—you’re the one who put him and Donnchadh in charge of”—she paused and lifted her hands, curling and pulsing her forefinger and middle finger twice as she said, “watching me. When he heard the armies return, he felt something was off and he took my hand to drag me along behind him, as in he didn’t want to leave me in the forest alone and suffer your wrath if you found out. ”
Morggán was briefly speechless. She’d spoken more words in the past few moments than she often managed in an entire day, each one delivered with a conviction that seemed to animate every part of her.
She stood scarcely to his shoulder, yet somehow filled the little room until it felt too small to contain either of them.
Never in all his years had anyone challenged him as she did now, meeting every argument head-on without the slightest hint of hesitation, and though the habit of command urged him to put an end to it, another part of him could not help admiring the fierce courage it undoubtedly required of her.
“Avery,” he began, intending to explain necessity and the urgency of command in the midst of battle, “in times of trouble, we dinna hold with—”
“You can still ask rather than command,” she said over him, striking the back of one hand against the palm of the other in time with every word. “You are not my laird.”
That brought his brain to a halt, his next argument forgotten.
She was wrong—every instinct within him rebelled against the words. Aye, she was not a mac Ruaidhrí. She owed him no oath, no fealty, no obedience. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name, but she was his, all the same.
She said, You are not my laird, and he couldn’t help it, but he heard, You are not my man.
He didn’t like it, not one bit. Every fiber of his being rejected the idea.
But bluidy hell—did she not see it? Did she not understand?
He looked her in the eye and considered her behavior of the last few days.
She’d pulled away from his kiss, had rejected what lived and breathed inside him.
She’d been distracted, had probed with strange questions, had returned from the forest holding Eòin’s hand.
She’d refused his command publicly, and now told him he had no authority over her.
Every sign pointed to her rejecting him.
He didn’t know what words to use to correct her, in fact had reached the end of language he knew how to speak.
And so he kissed her.