His lips twisted, and when he spoke, he sounded as bitter as she. “Hard training session.”
“I suppose ye will want those hurts tended.” She’d often cared so for Conall’s simple cuts and strains, him never wanting to trouble the healers.
“Nay, mistress.”
“But—” She saw now that he was bleeding from a cut on one forearm and what looked like a nasty slice to his right hand.
“Nay, mistress. Leave it be.”
“Then I suppose ye will want to eat.”
Again, silence met her statement.
She began to ramble, the words spilling from her aching heart. “Conall always came home from training gey ravenous. Well, he was eager to eat most times, but after working hard he swore he could eat a whole boar on his own. And when he returned from a battle, well… But”—she caught herself—“I expect ye would know that.”
“Aye.”
“Since I would ha’ fed Conall, I suppose I should feed ye instead. Such a simple thing, is it not? Feeding someone. Someone who is hungry. Yet it means a great deal. I used to enjoy seeing Conall eat hearty. Whether Mam fed him or I—”
She paused because her voice broke under the weight of her tears. She could not—would not—weep in front of him. Not in front of him.
“I need naught, mistress.”
Well, that had to be a lie. He needed feeding and a change of clothing, and those hurts tended, without doubt. But he was a liar, was he not? He’d lied about killing her brother.
A question screamed in her head. Why? Why, by all the gods, would he hurt the friend he loved? It made no sense.
She set about preparing a hasty meal, mixing the grain for cakes to lay on the hot stone, stirring a pot of meat. She filled a mug with ale, laid the whole of it aside, and lifted the vat of warm water from the fire.
“Now then, let us have a look at ye before we eat.”
*
Ardahl stole alook at Liadan from between his lashes as she tended the cuts on first his one arm and then the other.
She hated him. He could feel that in the stiffness of her touch as well as the antagonism streaming off her. Her eyes remained cool and distant as she swabbed the ugly injuries, smeared on some kind of salve, and wrapped them in clean cloth.
Never had he been so close to her. Indeed, until two days ago he had still thought of her as a child, if he’d thought of her at all.
Could he have been more mistaken?
A child no longer, she had a lovely bosom that pushed against the inside of her bodice, of which he could catch the merest glimpse when she leaned forward to him. Graceful hands and long, narrow limbs. Her honey-colored hair, all plaited, fell over one shoulder. Her eyelashes, the color of autumn barley, were sinfully long, and she had a scattering of tender freckles on her nose. More dusted across the tops of her breasts.
She made it difficult for Ardahl to breathe, and for more than one reason.
He uttered no sound as she tended him. Occasionally she glanced up as if measuring his response to her touch, and their eyes met. Held.
She had beautiful eyes, did Liadan. Blue like Conall’s, like the sea on a clear day when it turned still and depthless. A beauty withal, was Conall’s sister.
But she was Conall’s sister. And she hated him.
When she finished her work, she sat back on her heels, still only a hand’s reach away.
“Did they do this to ye on the training field, batter ye this way?”
“Do no’ worry for me.”
“’Tis difficult to break the habit o’ worrying for someone once ye’ve begun.”
