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“Aye,” he said, his voice tight.
The sound of it tugged at her heart. Aidan was surely concealing a riot of emotion in that strapping chest of his.
“Were you afraid what you might find?”
He seemed amused by the question. “Afraid? I can’t think of a thing I’ve not yet seen, nor yet endured, that might frighten me. ”
She leaned her hip against her worktable, completely enthralled. “Well, surely you were excited. ”
He gave it some thought. “Not excited, precisely. More like there was a fire in my blood. A hunger. ”
“A hunger for what?” she asked quietly, risking the question foremost on her mind. “What had you missed most?”
Again, she spied that pained expression. It flickered quickly and then disappeared, replaced by Aidan’s dis-missive good humor.
“You ask of hunger. I daresay, that’s what I missed most. ” He shot a lighthearted glance toward the ball of dough on the butcher-block table.
“Bread?”
“Well, yes, I suppose that. But I mean …” He gave a boyish shrug. “I missed food. Real food, good food, the kind my mother would make. ”
She froze, holding utterly still, despite having one hand knuckle-deep in bread dough. Her rogue had been young and happy once. Vulnerable, needful, and joyous. Was that person still to be found somewhere in his heart?
She didn’t want anything to make him think twice about continuing with this amazing confession, and her voice came out a near whisper. “What would she make you?”
“Well, I remember one thing. ” He chuckled, his gaze looking to someplace faraway. “She’d call it her Whim-Wham Pudding. I adored it. Lord, how sweet it was, made with sugar and wee currants. But ’twas filling too—thick, like a meal. ”
The sound of her father’s shouts brought them back to the moment. Her heart thudded to the floor. All she wanted was to sit there forever, listening to Aidan, knowing him.
He must’ve read something in her expression, because when their eyes connected, she fantasized that his carried a message. She read an apology, for her situation, and a question too.
Aidan’s real question, when voiced, was unexpected. “What does he do all day?”
She stood upright, resuming her kneading. “Who? Da?”
“I’m here, and I see you doing woman’s work,” he said, with a nod to her bread dough. “Yet I see you doing man’s work too, minding the accounts, tending the animals. ”
She wiped a sleeve across her brow, then continued with the bread. “I’m cannier with numbers. And he’s too old to be mucking about in the pasture. ”
“So?”
She could no longer meet his eyes. “So?”
“So, what does he do?” He reached across the table and stilled her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “Much more of that kneading, luvvie, and you’ll be serving hardtack not biscuits for dinner. ”
She pulled her hands free, smudging the excess dough from her fingers. “There are just the two of us,” she said, bristling. But even as she said it, she wondered why she defended her father so unquestioningly. Trying to convince herself as much as Aidan, she explained, “I’ve had to be responsible for things a woman generally isn’t. But he does things a woman could never do. ”
“Like?”
“Like traveling to Aberdeen. He does a fair bit of that, setting up the new business. He visits neighboring farms, arranging trade. ”
But the seeds of doubt had been planted. Did he really need to spend that much time on these so-called business relationships? It wasn’t as though his efforts bore great fruit.
“I’ve fashed you,” Aidan said, misunderstanding her frown. “And I’m sorry for it. ”
She tuned into her father’s voice, growing closer and louder, singing in the way he did after a good mug or three of ale. It’d been just the two of them for so long, it wasn’t until she’d seen their relationship through Aidan’s eyes that she felt there was anything wanting.
And though she knew her da loved her, she’d never felt truly taken care of. She’d been the one who always cared for him. She’d done all the fretting and the tending, as though their roles were reversed and she were the parent and he the child.
