Chapter Eight
Aihan woke the next morning in the yellow room he had moved her into, feeling much better. She was still sad, still angry, but she was stronger. Her head felt clearer, her throat less raw, and her lungs less congested.
The urgency to leave, now that theShaolinhad left without her, was gone. Yes, she needed to discover what had happened to Liang, but she could afford to wait until she got her strength back now. And she could spend her time learning as much as she could from Mac. He had invited her to use his given name, Col, but her tongue couldn’t get round the foreign ‘l’ sound, so she resorted to thinking of him as Mac, It was easier.
She couldn’t deny that he had taken very good care of her. Even though she was angry with him for keeping her here, from preventing her from returning to theShaolinand going home, she was conscious of a certain gratitude. He had saved her life, after all.
He was fascinated with her, too. He wanted her as a man wants a woman—that searing kiss in the cell had told her that. Why he fled from her, why he was so angry with her, she didn’t know. But he wanted her, and she could use that. Her body pulsed with the memory of rubbing herself on his generousmanhood. She had to admit the prospect of letting him bed her was an attractive one.
If she spent a little time here, learning the language and customs of this foreign land, it would help her when she was ready to go look for her brother. Liang had taught her the importance of preparation for any endeavour. A woman alone was vulnerable in any environment, even with her skills. In a foreign land with neither money nor resources, when she looked so different, without being able to speak the language or understand how to get along, it would be dangerous and foolhardy.
She would bide her time, learn all she could, and gather her resources. Then she would go. She suspected that Mac hadn’t told her all he had discovered about Liang in any case. Whether that was a deliberate omission or just because of the language barrier between them, she didn’t know. But she would do everything she could to learn his barbaric language so that she could discover the truth. And she would use every weapon in her arsenal to bend him to her will.
A knock at the door jerked her out of her thoughts and she called, “Come in,” in her own language.
The door opened, and Mac stood there with a large metal tub in his hands.
“Bath,” he said, holding it out, and when she nodded her comprehension, he set it down by the hearth. Then he said, “Water,” with a pouring motion into the tub, and she nodded again and smiled. A bath would be very welcome. “Thank ye,” she said, clasping her hands and bowing from the waist in gratitude.
She stayed in the bed while Mac and the boys, whom she concluded by the resemblance were his sons, plus a younger lad and an older man, all filed in with buckets and filled the tub for her.
The boys stared at her much as they had done when she was in the cell. The redheaded one had brown dots on his skin like his father, as did the other lad with the tow-coloured hair. It seemed it was a common look in these parts.
Mac left her soap and towels and shut the door, opening it again a moment later to say, “Breakfast, downstairs.” His gestures made his meaning clear, and she filed away all these words for later use. It was a good thing she had an excellent memory. He shut the door again, and she ventured out to strip and step into the hot water. It was so wonderful she groaned, lying back in the water and letting the heat seep into her bones. After she had washed her hair and soaped herself all over and rinsed it off, she stepped out of the now-cooling water to dry herself off and discovered Mac had left her more than the towels and soap.
A brush and comb for her hair and a gown lay under the towels. The gown was one of the strange high-waisted ones she had seen the other women in this place wearing. It was made of a fine wool fabric in a pretty shade of sky blue and had long sleeves. She measured the gown against herself and found that the length reached to the ground. She would need to lift the hem when she walked to avoid tripping. Really very impractical compared with her sensible trousers, but warmer, she suspected, for this climate.
With the gown was an under-skirt and what she assumed must be another undergarment, a simple cotton sheath dress. There was another weird contraption with lacings that looked very uncomfortable. She wasn’t going to put that on! And under it all was a pretty, cream cashmere shawl, with embroidered roses round the outer edge. As she picked up the shawl, something heavy fell out of it onto the floor. Bending, she saw that it was her little knife. She had dropped it when Mac captured her and thought it lost. He must have found it. Herfist closed round the little ivory-handled knife, tears pricking her eyes. It had been a gift from Liang for her fifteenth birthday. Nice of Mac to give it back to her.
She got herself into the strange clothes and did her best to lace up the gown so that it didn’t fall off her shoulders. The front of it was a bit baggy; it was clearly made for a woman with larger breasts than she had. She had seen no women in this house, so she concluded that whomever these garments belonged to was no longer here. Which might account for Mac’s air of sorrow.
Dressed and wearing her boots, she headed for the door to venture downstairs in search of the “breakfast” Mac had promised. She was famished.
She reached the ground floor and followed the sound of voices to a room containing a large table at which the entire male contingent of the house were seated. She wondered again at the absence of servants in a lord’s house. He was clearly impoverished, which the worn state of the house and furniture supported. The whole place needed female attention.
When she entered the room, Mac, who was seated at the head of the table and facing the door, rose to his feet and coughed. The other males stopped talking and, after a moment, rose too. This was clearly a courtesy paid to females in this country.Nice.She smiled and, holding up her too-long skirt carefully, came towards the chair on Mac’s left hand that had been set for her. The older man sat at the foot of the table and Mac’s boys sat opposite her, with the other young one beside her.
“Aihan,” said Mac, gesturing to the other males. “This is Rory, Callum, Fergus, and Willy.” He indicated each of them in turn. She smiled and bowed to them with her hands clasped politely, and they bowed back, but without the hand gesture. She took note of this and all their names. There was a lot to learn. Mac held her chair, and she sat, and he pushed it in for her.Another courtesy, she noted, was that the males only sat once she was seated.
Mac waved at the food, and she helped herself to the “parritch.” She was glad to see more of the crumbly offal mixture. She liked that, what was it called?Haggis.
She filled her bowl and began to eat, then became aware that the men had been silent since she had entered the room. The boys were staring at her, and even the older man was stealing looks at her under his bushy eyebrows. She lowered her eyes and kept eating. Mac growled something at the rest of them, and they resumed eating. But her presence seemed to have stifled conversation.
After a bit, Mac leaned towards her and said quietly, with a gesture to his chest and throat, “Better?”
She nodded, swallowing her mouthful. “Aye, thank ye.”
At the sound of her voice the others all looked up from their plates and the dark-haired boy said, “She can speak English?” English, that was their language. She knew that from Liang.
“She’s learning,” said Mac. “She is a quick study,” he added. The words didn’t quite make sense, but she divined a compliment in them somewhere.
The dark-haired boy uttered a “Humph!” noise and then said, “Are ye awhore?” She didn’t know what awhorewas, but the word made Mac roar at him.
The language Mac used to address the boy was not like the language he had been using to speak to her, and she understood not a word, yet she knew Mac was very angry with his son. The boy flushed bright red with equal fury and stood up, flung down his spoon, and marched out of the room.
Mac bolted after him and the rest of them stayed put at the table. The older man, Fergus, said, “I’m sorry, Lassie, the lad is mighttrína chéile.”
She blinked at the strange words and just nodded.
