Page 86 of The Shape of Silence

“I canna say for certain,” was his cool response. “Nae much longer.”

Avery nodded, dropping her gaze to the threshold at her feet, and closed the door.

Chapter Twenty-One

For the next two days, the army remained in place.

Morggán and Lucas agreed that the English had grown accustomed to the daily raids. Let them believe, for a little while, that the Scots had withdrawn farther north or lost their appetite for harassment. Complacency, they reasoned, could prove a sharper weapon than any blade.

Ordinarily, Morggán would have welcomed the respite. His men repaired tack, fletched arrows, allowed wounds to heal, and rested horses that had carried them hard for days. Plans were still made, scouts dispatched, and reports traded between captains, yet he found himself hearing much of it without truly listening.

Always, every hour, and sometimes every minute, he thought of Avery, and noticed without surprise how she shut herself off from him and, in fact, from everyone and everything. He became aware of her in the peculiar way one becomes aware of the absence of something once expected or anticipated. She rarely ventured beyond her house except in the early mornings, when she fetched water from the burn or disappeared into the forest to tend her snares. By the time the camp had properly stirred to life, she was almost always gone again, returning unseen to the shelter of the little house.

He thought often—regularly—of the night they'd shared. The intensity of his recollection refused to fade. He remembered the weight of her in his arms and the feel of her silky skin, the way she had welcomed him without fear, the astonishing rightness of being joined with her. He had known desire before, but never anything that had left him so utterly spent, so profoundly content. Even now, days later, he could still feel the echo of it—something he had no name for, only the knowledge that he had not felt it before and could not say when, or whether, he would feel it again.

He wondered if it had been different simply because it was Avery. He had no words for the thought and no wish to examine it too closely, yet no other reason surfaced. The memory was more than passion; it was tangled with everything else he felt for her, and that was the part he could not name.

How bitter, then, that dawn hadn’t brought greater closeness but the widest gulf he had ever known.

Twice he sought her company, and twice she met him with the same quiet reserve as she had at her door the evening after they’d made love and she’d told him, with no particular drama, that she had come from another century. She answered his questions politely, never with more words than necessity demanded, and never once lifted her eyes long enough for him to know what she was thinking. It was not anger that met him but something far worse, a purposeful indifference that left him cold. He might have pressed her—ordinarily he would have. Yet every imagined conversation carried him back to the same impossible place. What more could she tell him that she had not already said? She claimed to have crossed seven centuries. He could neither believe her nor explain her, and he found himself with no notion of how to bridge the chasm that had opened between them.

On the second afternoon, when he hadn’t seen her, hadn’t noticed her return to the sanctuary of her hut, he asked Donnchadh if he knew where she was.

Donnchadh pointed toward the grasslands, and Morggán’s heart skipped a beat before Donnchadh said, “Sitting there, near the edge of the trees—been there for a spell, hours mayhap.”

“Sitting? Doing what?” Morggán asked.

Donnchadh shrugged. “Just sitting. Staring out into the grass. The hound gamboled about a bit in the field, but she dinna follow.”

He frowned. Stillness on Avery had never looked like this. Hers was a quietness of purpose, her hands always occupied—mending, gathering, carving. To sit staring at nothing felt wrong.

To sit for hours doing nothing...

Try again, he decided.

He found her where Donnchadh had said she was, upon the fallen trunk of an old ash near the edge of the forest. Beyond her, the grasslands rolled away beneath a pale afternoon sky, the sun rolling downward to the west.

She heard him approach. Her slim shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly, yet she didn’t turn to see who came—mayhap only resented any intrusion.

He drew a slow breath. Hold your temper, he reminded himself, knowing anger was not an effective tool with Avery.

“Avery,” he said as he came around the log to stand before her.

“Morggán,” she said, but did not look at him.

“May I sit?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, all the invitation he would receive, he guessed, and then his jaw tightened when she pushed herself to her feet just as he moved to sit beside her.

“I was just leaving,” she said.

He felt his patience snap, and he seized her hand as she made to walk past him.

“Avery,” he said, as gently as he could manage. “Talk to me.”

And now, finally, she met his gaze. A strangled and bitter laugh burst from her. “About what?”

“I’ve tried to make sense of what ye told me—”