He looked profoundly uncomfortable. She imagined that was because he was attempting to find a way to tell her that he would be depositing her on someone’s doorstep and fleeing as quickly as possible. Perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised her. It wasn’t as if she’d had a long line of suitors in her time, either, so she was accustomed to it.
“It might take a few weeks to not be startled by things,” he continued gingerly.
“I have a strong stomach.”
He nodded and fell silent.
“You obviously have things you need to see to,” she said, supposing there was no reason not to have everything out there in front of them right off.
He blinked. “I suppose so.”
“I’m certain I’ll have many important things to see to as well,” she said, watching him to see what, if any, impression that thought might make on him.
He only nodded slowly.
“Perhaps Lord Patrick will find a place for me in his house,” she added. “As a kitchen maid.”
He seemed to be chewing on his words. In fact, he chewed on them so long and so well, she wondered if he might never speak again. She was a little surprised to find that she knew him well enough to be able to say that he was a man of few words and many deeds, but he had, after all, plucked flowers for her thatwere purple, because he’d known that was her favorite color. She suppressed the urge to simply elbow him sharply in the gut to dislodge a bit of conversation and settled for waiting him out.
He finally simply held out his hand toward her.
She looked at it, then at him.
He only regarded her with a grave expression on his face. “Or,” he said very quietly, “you might stay with me.”
She would have said the smoke from the fire was terrible, but they hadn’t made a fire and she was freezing.
But she put her hand in his just the same. That task accomplished, she considered her next move. She supposed there was no reason not to point out things he might have missed.
“I am very plain.”
“Are you?” he mused. “I disagree.”
“I would say you hadn’t seen my sisters, but you have.”
“I have,” he agreed. “And whilst they are very pretty, I think you are far lovelier.”
She would have blustered a bit to save herself the discomfort of a compliment she didn’t deserve, but she was honestly too unbalanced to do so. “I think you’re daft.”
“And I think I see very clearly.”
She reached for something else he might not have noticed. “My teeth are crooked,” she admitted. “Not perfectly straight like yours.”
“A couple of mine are fake,” he said with a shrug. “Cricket batt to the face when I was younger, so I don’t care.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what a cricket batt was, but the result sounded painful. “Did it break your nose as well?”
He smiled. “It did, as it happened. But your nose is perfectly straight, which makes up for mine.”
“’Tis a noble nose,” she offered. “But for the rest of me, I don’t think you’ve looked properly.”
He turned toward her, took her face in his hands, and looked at her seriously. “I have,” he said. “Your beauty comes from your soul, Mairead MacLeod, and will be shining through your features when we’re both ninety and mooning over each other like a pair of wizened apples.”
She was slightly appalled to find her eyes were burning, but there was nothing to be done about that. “Will I be mooning over you then?”
His expression was very serious. “I don’t know. Will you?”
“Do you care if I will?”
