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“Aye. Ye did.”
Her lips pulled inward for a long breath.
“What did ye mean, Karta?”
“I meant…” A long exhale escaped her chest. “I meant everyone always wanted to use you because of it—you were wanted for your brawn—the strongest man around. That’s why you’re too strong for your own good. Those at Vinehill never wanted you for your mind. For your kindness. For your astute observations. For the person you truly are.” She paused, tipping the flask up to her mouth for a healthy swallow. “That’s what I always wanted—you. Not for what you could do with your muscles, but for who you are. Your soul.”
His eyes narrowed at her, his fingers tightening around the edge of the board. “I knew that, Karta. I did.”
“Did you?” She shrugged, looking to her left at the horses waiting impatiently in the snow. “For if you had, you would have shown at the ball.”
He spun from her, thrusting the board deep into the drift of snow before him and continuing to dig in silence. The set of his shoulders was rigid—taut and angry.
She took another swallow of the whisky as she watched his jerking movements.
It wasn’t fair and she knew it.
She couldn’t keep blaming him for how they were parted. He hadn’t known what was at stake by not showing at the ball. But the fact that he didn’t arrive in time still burned bitter deep in her belly. The humiliation of it. The loss of everything she’d truly thought she could have. If he had loved her—wanted her enough—he would have shown. If she’d been the most important thing to him, he would have upheld his promise to be at the ball on time.
But she wasn’t.
They hadn’t been anything that she thought they were. And that stung most of all.
Domnall got to the last corner of the drift by the barn, clearing it quickly. Sticking the board into the tall mound of snow he’d just shifted, he went to the door of the barn and pulled it open. The four horses inside whinnied at the gust of air going into the stable.
Karta stepped to her horse and grabbed the mare’s reins, leading her into the stable. Domnall brushed past her as she went in, then went to retrieve his horse and followed her.
So he was staying.
She eyed him over her shoulder as she led the mare into an open stall and started to work free the girth of the sidesaddle. He’d led his horse into the empty stall next to her and busied himself with removing his saddle.
How long did he think to stay here?
Five minutes? An hour?
And why?
Hell.
She shook her head. She knew exactly why. That was the trouble.
Her look went forward and she concentrated on the leather of the strap she was attempting to free. Her fingers were still shaking from the cold. The whisky had warmed her belly but not her limbs.
His feet shuffled across the floor, stopping at the entrance to her stall. “Why is it ye cannot come back to the abbey, Karta?” His words, soft and raw, drifted across the stale air to her.
She didn’t turn to look at him, instead setting her focus on her trembling fingers on the leather strap and wishing them still.
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, her gaze locked on her hands. “I don’t have the answer for that. Not now. You appeared in that field last night—oddly and magically so, and it wasn’t something I was expecting. I was expecting death to come for me. Not you. You were not something I ever could have dreamed. So I don’t yet know what to think on it.”
Her head lifted and she looked at him over her shoulder. “But I cannot be near you—not without you drawing me into something I cannot control.”
“Why do ye want to control it?” The heat in his dark blue eyes seared her. “We never could fight what was between us. And now ye are free. I am free. So why is that something to run away from?”
She spun on her heel to face him, her fingers lifting to point at his face. “Because of this. Because of how you look at me. How your voice drops into a low rumble. When you stare at me like that, when you talk to me like that, I am the exact same girl I was years ago when I would get lost in everything about you. But I’m not that same girl anymore. I can’t be. So this thing between us—it has to be controlled. You look at me as you do and I have to hold stalwart against it. I once risked everything for that look of yours, and I paid dearly for that gamble.”
For a long moment his stare pierced her, more heated than a breath ago. Then he smiled, forced, covering whatever it was he truly wanted to say. “So let us take care of the horses and then go into the dower house, warm up, and prove how very controlled we can be.”
Karta blinked hard, her head snapping back.
