Page 73 of The Shape of Silence

“Has another man spoken to ye?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Among my men.” The words clearly pained him. “One of Thain’s? Or is it Eòin—he took an immediate liking to ye.”

Eòin? “Morggán...”

“Lass, I can mend almost any trouble if only I ken what it is—but I canna turn yer heart if ye’ve given it to another. And I willna beg.”

Beg for her heart? She should be so lucky, was her instinctive internal response.

“Morggán, I promise you, there is... it’s nothing like that. It’s just me—it’s inside me. But can you just give me a little time to—” What? Come to grips with it? Work up the nerve to tell you I think I’m from the future? She didn’t know what to say. “Can you just give me a day or two?”

His scowl said he didn’t want to, but said he wanted to push her, to have answers now. For the life of her, she simply couldn’t bring herself to say the words, to tell of her fear, what she believed had happened to her.

“Aye,” he said gruffly at length, clearly displeased. “Keep it, if ye must.”

There was no softness in the words, only a quiet restraint that seemed far less forgiving.

Something in her chest clenched all the same—he wouldn’t beg, he’d said.

“I’m sorry,” she heard herself say.

Morggán nodded, his jaw tight, and backed away before turning toward the door. “I dinna ken when we’ll return. Stay close, keep Donnchadh with ye if ye go out.”

When he was gone, Avery covered her face with her hands, rubbing her fingers into her eyes. How was she ever going to be able to tell him?

***

He’d allowed himself—perhaps for the first time in his life—to imagine something more with a woman, something beyond merely keeping her safe. But now, he was compelled to reevaluate—not his own hopes but Avery’s. Pride, evidently, was a devious thing, which had allowed him to suppose that Avery shared the same sentiments as he, and was beset as well by emotions that were not only fleeting or superficial.

Riding out that morning to once more harass the English moving ever further north through the forest, Morggán reviewed where he had erred in his thinking, or what he might have done to upset her that she had begun to behave differently around him, was more indifferent, clearly more distracted. This was at complete odds with how he felt about her—in his mind and in his life, Avery was the distraction.

Did I presume too much? He wondered. Was it the kiss? He’d not shown her even half of what desire he’d begun to know in her presence. The armies camped all around her? In truth, he’d thought she’d handled the disruption fairly well, better than he’d have expected, but... had she been pretending?

Should he not have been so insistent when trying to get her to leave the forest? Had he approached it wrong?

Yesterday, the questions she’d put to him had only perplexed him, but today, they troubled him. She’d asked more questions in that short time yesterday than she had since he’d known her. Avery didn’t speak without purpose, and certainly she didn’t waste words or only attempt to fill awkward silences—to Avery, there was no such thing as an awkward silence.

“Half dozen miles we’ve gone, and for most of those ye’ve been elsewhere and nae here.”

Morggán eased his frown and gave his regard to Lucas, who rode less than ten feet away.

They’d moved quickly across the first half hour but had slowed in the last few miles, not intending to announce their presence to the English by shaking the ground beneath them with a charge from too far off.

The Thain watched him with a sideways stare, his dark eyes unreadable.

Morggán shook his head and straightened in the saddle, meaning to project focus and dismiss any queries about where his mind had been.

Lucas wasn’t fooled.

“I ken ye dinna fear what lies ahead,” Lucas said. “And I dinna suppose ye suffer now from wounds a fortnight old, so I’m left to imagine a certain lass has yer face twisted as it was.”

Morggán laughed, but only because of the way Lucas said it, with a hint of amusement that carried more fellowship than mockery.

“So obvious?”

“To any man who’s ever tried to understand a woman, aye.” Lucas gave one careless shrug. “God Himself made them, and I’m still nae persuaded He Himself canna explain them.”