Chapter 17 #2
Every muscle in her body ached. Her inner thighs were tender. There were other places she felt the ache the moment she shifted.
She also, urgently, needed to empty her bladder.
Una attempted to slide out of bed quietly. Instead she groaned and winced loudly.
"Good morning, wife," Cormac said behind her, warm and entirely too alert for a man who had been awake half the night.
"Dinnae speak to me," she said. "I am sore and I need to visit the garderobe."
Cormac was up immediately and reached for his plaid.
"What are ye doing?" she asked.
"I'll carry ye there."
"Ye will do no such thing, Cormac Stewart! Carrying me about is precisely how I ended up sore." She slapped his hands away.
Cormac grinned but stepped back with his hands raised in surrender.
Una slowly stood, pulled on her shift, and shuffled out the door and down the short passage to her destination.
She was back within a few minutes. She crossed to the washstand, poured water from the pitcher into the basin, washed quickly, and brushed her teeth.
Then she returned to bed and sat carefully on the edge. Cormac was not in the room.
Several minutes later he returned. His hair was damp and he looked refreshed, as though he had visited the washrooms below stairs.
He gazed at her with a heated glance and opened his mouth.
"Not a word," she said, pointing at him.
"I said nothing."
"Ye were about to."
"I was going to ask if ye were all right," he replied.
"I am sore and it is entirely yer fault!" she snapped.
"Aye, I'm sorry, love," he said gravely. "But if ye remember, I warned ye to stop after the second time."
"Ye should have been sterner with yer warning!"
"I tried, but ye threatened me with death if I didn't satisfy ye, ye lusty wench."
Una blushed deeply, remembering she had in fact threatened to gut him in the heat of passion.
"I was not in a position to make sound judgments by the third time and ye knew it!"
"I'll remember to deny ye from now on."
"Ye are an inconsiderate, selfish, insatiable—"
"Husband," he supplied.
"Menace," she finished.
"Husband," he said again, and the warmth in it was so unguarded that she lost the rest of her train of thought entirely.
She closed her mouth. He moved toward her and kissed her gently on the lips. His breath smelled of mint.
Una could not help but grin at him.
"Stay there," he said, and kissed her forehead on his way past. "I'll not be long."
***
SHE HEARD THE DOOR open and close, heard his voice low in the corridor.
She was still thinking about it when Cormac returned.
"Up," he said.
She stood, and then the room tilted as he scooped her up and carried her out the door.
"Where are we going?"
"'Tis a surprise."
***
THE SCULLERY WAS WARM. Someone had already filled the large tub with hot water, steam rising from it, carrying the faint scent of lavender and something herbal.
Cormac set her on her feet beside it. "Chamomile and yarrow," he said. "Maisie's suggestion."
"Ye asked Maisie?"
"She offered. She has apparently done this before. For newlywed women."
The blush started at Una's chest and moved upward to her face. "She knows I'm sore from coupling?" she asked faintly.
"The whole inn knows it," Cormac replied. "Ye were not quiet."
"Neither were ye!"
"No," he agreed, untroubled. He reached for her shift and she caught his hands.
"I can undress myself."
"I ken it, but I enjoy doing it for ye." He waited.
She looked at him, then sighed. Cormac lifted the shift over her head and helped her into the bath. The hot water met her skin and she sank into it and let out a long involuntary groan of relief.
"Better?" he asked.
"Aye, thank ye," she admitted.
He pulled the low stool to the side of the tub, sat, rolled up his sleeves, and reached for the soap.
"I can bathe myself," Una said.
"But I want to touch ye, wife. I'll wash yer hair. I promise I'll do nothing more."
Una considered arguing. Her reluctance lasted four seconds before his fingers moved against her scalp and dissolved it entirely. She closed her eyes and let him.
Cormac was careful with her. He washed her hair and rinsed it, then massaged her shoulders and lower back with slow, unhurried hands, and she sat in the steam and felt the soreness ease.
When his hands moved a little too close to her sensitive areas, she slapped them away. Cormac chuckled and kissed her shoulder.
"I owe ye an apology, wife," he said, after a while.
"For last night?"
"Aye, for not having enough control around ye when ye were new to it all."
Una saw the amusement in his expression and just shook her head.
"Well, I cannot put all the blame on ye. And despite the slight ache," she said, "I have no other complaints, husband."
His hands stilled a moment on her shoulder. Then resumed. "I'll take that," he replied.
She turned her head to look at him. "Ye're not really sorry, are ye?"
"That ye're sore, aye, I am sorry, and I'll have a care to take better care, even when ye're begging me to give ye more pleasure. But for the rest of our wedding night ... not at all."
Una replied, "Well, if ye weren't so good at it, once would've been enough."
Cormac chuckled. "I'll try to underperform next time. Would that help?"
To that he got a wet cloth slapped across his face, which only made him laugh harder.
***
The Journey to Edinburgh
AN HOUR LATER THEY were dressed, saddled, and ready.
Cormac was waiting in the yard when Una came downstairs.
Her travel bag was already loaded in the back of a cart alongside Bella's boist packed with everything she might need, and a second bag holding the garments Cormac had provided along the road, including the dress she had been wearing the morning she was taken.
That dress had been washed, mended, and folded with the rest. She had not remarked on it, and neither had he.
He handed her up into the cart, then produced a small, wrapped parcel from his coat and set it in her lap.
She unwrapped it. A compact sewing kit: bone-handled needle case, scissors on a ribbon, a paper of pins, two spools of thread.
"I spoke to Maisie," he said. "She had most of it. The needles came from a peddler."
"Ye went out and found a peddler this morning."
"He was not difficult to find." He checked the cart horse's traces without looking at her. "Ye'll need something to do with yer hands on the road."
Una looked down at the kit and felt something press warm against her ribs.
"Thank ye," she said quietly.
He nodded and turned to go.
"I can ride a horse," she said. "If it would make the journey faster."
He paused and looked back at her. "'Tis four days to Edinburgh. Given yer discomfort ye're better off in the cart than astride a horse."
Their eyes met. A beat of silence. Una felt the color rise in her cheeks when she realized what he meant and looked away first. She nodded and said nothing more.
He went to his horse.
She settled the Stewart arisaidh around her legs, tucked the sewing kit into her lap, and threaded a needle before they had cleared the inn yard.
***
THE MEN MOVED OUT AND Una noticed it immediately.
Or rather, she noticed their absence. There had been fifteen of them in the yard, she had counted out of habit, and now there were four visible on the road: Cormac riding on her left, Seumas a length behind, Ros on the right, and Donal at the rear with the pack horse.
The others were simply gone. No sound, no signal.
She looked at the tree line on both sides of the road. Nothing moved.
"Where are the rest of yer men?" she asked.
"About," Cormac said.
"About where?"
He glanced at her. "Ahead. Behind. In the woods. Ye'll not see them unless something requires it."
Una looked at the empty road and the still tree line and felt the hair on her arms rise slightly. She had traveled with these men for days and thought she understood how they operated. She understood now that she had seen only what they chose to show her.
"They've been doing this the whole journey, haven't they," she said.
"Aye," Cormac replied.
She absorbed that. Then she picked up her needle and went back to her stitching.
"I see," she said.
Seumas, riding behind, caught Cormac's eye and said nothing. But he was smiling.
***
THE ROAD SOUTH WAS quiet, the morning cool, the cart moving at an easy pace. Cormac rode alongside her close enough to talk but he continued to scan their surroundings.
Una sewed as they talked.
"Cormac, what matters must ye see to in Edinburgh?"
"I'm just going to visit an old friend. He often has work for me and my men."
"And how long will we remain there? Will we need to camp in the woods?"
Cormac chuckled. He was going to have to tell her soon that he was not just a nomadic raider and that her life had changed irrevocably by marrying him.
But for now he enjoyed the peace of knowing he had found a woman who accepted him as he was.
"I have accommodation in the city. I'm sure ye'll find it comfortable.
We'll not need to camp in the woods, love. "
Una nodded and got back to her sewing. She had decided on a coin purse for Cormac: flat and wide-mouthed, one he could wear on his belt, sturdy enough for hard use.
Dark linen from material she had found in Bella's boist, buttonhole stitch along the edges.
She intended to embroider his initials in gold thread on one face when it was complete.
Cormac could not keep his gaze from Una.
She sat in the cart with the Stewart arisaidh pinned at her shoulder now and her needle moving and her head bent in concentration, and he thought: I do not regret a single moment of any of it.
Not the road, not the inn, not the wedding.
He knew, with the same certainty he gave to every decision that mattered, that he had fallen in love with his wife.
He looked at the road ahead and felt only contentment.
Una for her part was blissfully happy and knew it and did not take it for granted.
Cormac had not stopped being attentive since the moment she had become his wife: the bath, the sewing kit, the cart, the way he kept riding close enough that she could reach him if she needed to. She loved him for it.
Around them the road remained empty and peaceful.
Occasionally she'd spot one of the men moving through the forest, keeping pace without a sound.
She looked at the road ahead and felt the cart sway gently beneath her.
This was her life now, and she did not mind it one bit.
***