‘We did talk about carving it into wood or stone,’ I pointed out, keeping my eyes on the bucket.
‘Aye, we did.’ Lachlan loomed at me so that I could see his chest and couldn’t avoid it unless I shoved my entire head in the bucket, so I did look up now.
‘But then I thought, it’s a bit extreme, don’t you agree?’
Those grey eyes were really very captivating. Either that or I would stare at his chest, so I kept my eyes on his. And I did agree. ‘I think it was desperation talking,’ I said. ‘We want to go home so badly that we’re going a bit…’ I tried to think of a nice way to put it. ‘It’s not healthy.’
‘You’re dripping.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That shirt, it’s dripping all down you.’
Damn.I’d thought I was being all insouciant and careless, but he was right and the shirt, inadequately wrung as it was, was splatting water down my front. I held it away from me and went over to drape it with the others, carefully hidden away behind a barrel. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention by putting them outside. ‘We really need to concentrate our minds on how we get back before we all descend into madness. Probably driven there by having to eat turnips all the time,’ I said.
Wriggling ensued as Lachlan put his jumper back on. I began to dunk his shirt in the bucket, to stop me staring at him. There was something about being confined here with him, and having him whip his shirt off as though it were nothing, that felt very intimate. As though we were set apart from the rest of the group, problem-solving where they were existing.
He drew up a stool and sat watching me scrub. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to do that? Itismy shirt, after all.’
I carried on. ‘I’ve done the others. Might as well get the full set.’
‘If you’re sure. I don’t want you to feel obliged.’ A smile. ‘Or that I’m sexist. I amnotletting daily life in this castle rub off on me.’
The smile was nice. It was ordinary and prosaic and I wondered what it would be like to be smiled at like that by Lachlan under ordinary circumstances. Or circumstances that didn’t involve anything more historical than an antique piece of furniture, anyway.
I smiled back.
Lachlan put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. ‘If we get back…’ he began.
I jerked my head so fast that my neck clicked. ‘You think we won’t make it?’ I asked.
‘Sorry. Poor choice of words.’ The smile had faded now.
‘Please, Lachlan, don’t even think it.’ I straightened all the way up. ‘I’ve had Kaylinn in tears today over her family missing her and I’m running out of reserves of “stiff upper lip”.’
He nodded then and I saw his own lips, now hidden within his reddish beard, bite together. ‘When we get home—’ he emphasised the ‘when’ and I relaxed a fraction ‘—we are all going to need so much therapy that we might as well take out shares in a counselling business.’
I relaxed a bit more. Humour was the only thing getting us through this. Humour and basically pretending this was only temporary. But I still didn’t like his slip. There could be no ‘if’ about it. We had to keep thinking ‘when’, because if we resigned ourselves to staying here then we’d stop planning. And planning what we’d do when we returned to the twenty-first century was one of the only things that were keeping me bent over this bucket.
‘Please do not let your vocabulary slide into the inevitable,’ I said, scrubbing fervently because I had pent-up frustration to get rid of. ‘We all need to stay positive here.’
He sighed. ‘I know. I know. It’s just that – och, no. Never mind.’ Lachlan clearly made an enormous effort to turn around a descending mood. ‘I like it when you try to beat positivity into me. Stops me feeling as though I’m the only one in charge around here.’ The grin he gave me now was slightly weak, but he was trying.
‘The only one in charge around here is our good earl out there.’ I squeezed as much water out of his shirt as I could and draped it with the others, concealed behind an upturned crate.
‘I can relax with you.’
I wasn’t sure how I was meant to take that. ‘You know you don’t have to pretend to the others either,’ I said carefully, wiping my red and stinging hands down myself. ‘We’re getting a handle on life here. We’re managing.’
‘But we shouldn’t.’ He spoke softly but the words had a force behind them. ‘We mustn’t settle, Pax. I’m fighting here to keep the urge to go home. If we lose focus and give in then…’ He tailed off and shrugged. ‘I’m afraid and I’m struggling,’ he said. ‘And you’re keeping me afloat.’
I couldn’t look at him now. This was all getting way too psychological for me, so I stared into the bucket, where a slight scum on the surface told me that our clothes had been very overdue for that wash.
‘Can I have a sluice in the bucket? I really need a good hot shower for, oh, about a week, but a bit of a wash will do.’ Lachlan hauled the conversational supertanker back onto its normal course again and stopped my contemplation of the filthy water.
I handed over the bucket. ‘Knock yourself out. But please wait for me to get clear first.’
‘In case the sight of my gorgeous nakedness inflames your desire and you are overcome with the urge to ravish me?’ Lachlan gave me a huge grin of assumed innocence. The effort it took him must have been almost superhuman and something inside me ached for him.
