She shrugged. “I had many friends within the castle. And my father would often take me with him on his travels.”
Intrigued, Aiden paused. “Your mother allowed you to go?”
“Aye.” She shifted, her warm breath caressing his skin. “Often, she would join us. Do youlike to sail?”
“When I was young,” he replied, fighting back the crush of memories, the unbearable loss of a family he had loved.
For a moment, she remained silent, and then her hand rested over his chest, where his heartbeat thudded. “What happened to make you despise the sea?”
Wind howled as rain slashed against the branches. Lightning illuminated the sky and thunder shattered around them.
Water droplets slid down Aiden’s face, and his mind stumbled back to his twelfth summer, to the crash of waves slamming against the bow with merciless force, and his father’s shouts to his family to remain below. Not believing he would ever be harmed, Aiden had slipped away and climbedup the ladder.
A move he regretted to this day.
As he had stepped on the deck, the moans of the ship savaged by the sea merged with the screams of the passengers. The cog had plunged into the next trough. Terrified, he had clung to the ladder as water had rushed over the bow, ripping crates free as the turbulent force flooded the weathered planks.
On a demonic shriek, the ship had angled up. Massive waves of churning white crashed over the side, and several men who had fought to secure thecargo vanished.
Wind screamed past like the howl of death. Once again, the ship dove into the oncoming trough. The wall of water rushing down the deck tore himoff the ladder.
He had opened his mouth to scream but gulped seawater instead. Helpless against the brutal flow, he’d been swept overboard. Tossed about in the storm-fed water, by sheer luck he had caught the edge of a plank.
In the darkness, he’d clung to the wood, prayed for help, for any sign of life. Hours had passed, and with each his hope that somehow the cog had survived, that his family had lived, faded. Exhausted, numb from the cold, sometime during the night he hadbeen overcome.
Fractured memories poured through him of being hauled into a fishing vessel, of the sailors prying his fingers from the water soaked board. In those devastating moments, he’d learned that theship had sunk.
Days had passed, and with them his hopes that his family had somehow escaped a watery death faded. In the end, naught was retrieved except wood strewn along the shore, one plank bearing the ship’s name.
Another burst of thunder jerked Aiden from the horrific images of his past. With a shaky hand, he wiped away the water streaming down his face and damned the memory, one he hadn’t allowed to surface in years.
“Bróccín?”
“Aye?” he rasped.
“What happened to cause you to despise the sea?” she repeated.
Despise? Too tame a word for his family, who had been torn from his life. A void he’d smothered beneath duty as a Templar, a loss he’d never meant to revisit. Except she’d made him think, made him remember,made him hurt.
“I simply tire of the days of seeing naught but the endless sea and sky,” he said, evading the truth. “I yearn to walk on land, to smell something as simple as the scent of grasson the breeze.”
She shifted her body to face him, her hand pillowed beneath her cheek. “Did you often accompany your father on his business travels?”
“Aye.” The simple answer, one she would expect. “I know you are exhausted. Try to sleep. I will let you know when ’tis time to go.”
“And what of you?” she asked on a yawn. “You areas tired as I.”
“Once we reach the cave and I have ensured nay one is about, I will rest.”
The distant rumble of thunder echoed, and she gave a slow exhale. “I should stay awake with you.”
He stroked her cheek, his fingers hesitating below her jaw, aching to lift her mouth to his. A mistake. “Go to sleep.” At her silence, he tucked the blanket tighter around them. The pounding of rain ebbed into a steady thrum and, however wrong, Aiden savored her presence. Another mistake; soon his time with Gwendolyn would end.
* * * *
The first rays of dawn cut through the murky sky as voicessounded nearby.
With a silent curse that he’d missed the Englishmen’s approach, Aiden pressed his finger over Gwendolyn’s mouth. “Dinna move,” he whispered. With stealth, he eased up, crouched behind the limb.
