Chapter 8
Eight
Neal
Iforced myself out the door and spent the next ten minutes sitting in the hallway with my head in my hands—listening to make sure she was okay.
Eventually, I worked up the courage to go back in and check on her, grabbing a clean towel in case she was still awake and I needed to keep up a pretense of practicality.
So I cracked the door open and saw Sorcha curled up on her side, dress still disheveled, clutching the ranch’s big tortoiseshell cat to her chest, and sobbing.
I shut the door again immediately and bolted down the stairs, where I ran straight into Ansel.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” Ansel said jovially. “I know you said you sent scouts out to the hillsides but . . .”
“I need to talk to you.” I grabbed Ansel’s arm and steered him down the hall. “Privately. Now.”
I hurried through the house, dodging servants and guards along the way, and shut us in our tiny office.
I lit a lamp and herded Ansel into his desk chair—too wired to sit.
Instead, I paced. The room was cramped with one desk, overfull with two, which made it a repetitive three steps one way, three steps back.
“I made her bleed,” I finally said, stopping and making myself look Ansel in the face.
“I think that’s normal, Neal,” Ansel said, simply.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said, pacing again. “It was on the sheets, her legs . . .”
“You’re overreacting,” Ansel soothed.
“I’m not.” I paused, then, “Ansel, I don’t know what came over me. I shut off the lamp. I wouldn’t let her undress. I wouldn’t even let her kiss me.”
Ansel stifled a laugh.
“You did what?” he asked.
“It was like I was scared to watch,” I admitted.
Because she had been warm and soft and perfect under my hands. Because it had felt so many eons better than any of the times I’d snuck off with some servant girl after midnight while I was studying. Because if I’d let myself, I would have felt things.
Ansel raised an eyebrow.
“Let me get this straight. You wouldn’t kiss her, wouldn’t let her undress, wouldn’t even light a lamp, and now you’re shocked that she’s upset? What did you expect, Neal?” Ansel asked, snorting. “That she’d thank you for treating her like she’s invisible? You’re married.”
“And I went back to check on her afterward. And she hadn’t moved. Not at all. She was lying there holding one of her cats, crying.”
“So you left?” Ansel’s voice dripped with condescension and disbelief.
“I didn’t want to make it worse.”
“And you ran off to me instead of comforting her?” Ansel snorted.
“She made it very clear up at the cabin that I had to commit one way or another. Either I married her because our parents requested, to strengthen our political position or . . .”
Or because I loved her.
I stopped. I couldn’t say those words out loud—not right now, not to Ansel of all people.
“If I let myself,” I continued, taking a deep breath, “if I kissed her . . . this is my job, Ansel. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.”
“Yeah, but that’s a stupid plan anyways,” Ansel drawled.
I froze. Shit. He was right.
I crept back up to Sorcha’s room. The cats had multiplied.
She still held the big tortoiseshell against her chest, but now the orange tabby lay on her feet, missing half an ear with jowls that proved it liked to fight, and a little black kitten licked at the skin behind her ear.
The water on the table was untouched. She clearly hadn’t moved. She was still crying.
“That went badly,” I said softly, taking the water and sitting down on the bed beside her.
Her grip on the cat tightened, but she didn’t respond. The little black kitten stopped licking her and glared at me.
I paused before continuing, “You’ll be sore for a few days. I’ll find you some medicine to take the edge off.”
“Thanks,” Sorcha mumbled into the cat. “Did it hurt for you too?”
The question hit like a blow to the gut. What was I supposed to say to that?
“No,” I murmured. “It didn’t.”
“Nokona always said it wouldn’t hurt if he loved you.”
I was fighting tears of my own now. It was time to get over my qualms, my pride, to fix this—or at least attempt to. I stood up and shrugged out of my coat.
“It’s cold, and you need to sleep,” I said, tucking the blankets up around her and wrapping my own wool coat on top. She tried to push me away, but I persisted, repeating, “It’s cold, and you need to sleep. The last thing I need right now is you getting pneumonia.”
“You’ll get more blood on the sheets,” Sorcha protested.
“It’ll wash out.”
Then I took a deep breath, reminded myself that trying to keep distance had, as Ansel said, been a stupid plan anyways, and climbed into bed behind her. Sorcha stiffened as I curled at her back, resting a single hand between her shoulder blades—on top of the coat, on top of the blankets.
“I messed up.”
“That is a horrendous understatement,” Sorcha mumbled, voice still thick with tears.
“It is,” I replied. “And I’m sorry.”
One of the cats took a swipe at my ankle and I hissed as the claws met flesh.
“You deserved that,” Sorcha said dryly.
“I did,” I admitted. “I deserve a lot more.”
Silence stretched between us, broken only by the cats shifting and settling in the blankets and the crickets outside.
“I’ve been training for this job one hundred and eleven years,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to take it for another fourteen.”
“And I wasn’t supposed to have this job for another three centuries. Your point?” Sorcha snapped.
“This isn’t what I prepared for. This isn’t what I expected.” I took a deep breath, steadied myself. “But, Sorcha, I think I’m in love with you.”
She flinched. And for a long, horrifying moment, I worried this was going to be the end. She’d tell me she didn’t share the feeling—call me unprofessional, request an annulment, send me back to Europe in disgrace, and bring on a new Steward.
But she didn’t. Instead, Sorcha rolled over, grabbed my shirt collar, and kissed me—hard, long, and deep, her body pressing against mine and her free hand tangling in my hair.
“I love you,” I murmured against her throat when we separated. “And I’m sorry.”
“You better be,” Sorcha muttered, turning over again. “You pull another stunt like tonight and I’m summoning the fattest pig in town to come smother you in your sleep.”
“Not a very dignified end.”
“You think what you did to me earlier tonight was dignified?”
“Fair enough.”
Sorcha shifted, moved my coat, pulled back the blankets. “Get in. You say you love me? Act like a real husband.”
The tension leached out of my chest and I suppressed a laugh as I climbed under the quilt.
Sorcha cuddled into my chest immediately—warm and soft and perfect, still emanating that smell of lavender honey, mace, and campfires.
I brushed coils of sweaty hair back from her face and pressed a gentle, soft kiss on her temple.
“You’ll stay until I wake up?” Sorcha asked.
“I’ll stay until the world ends, Sorcha,” I promised. “Now sleep.”