Page 24 of So Close To Heaven
Ivy blinked, surprised—she hadn’t thought of him as someone whoeverallowed himself comfort.
He stopped when the water reached his calves, a few yards in front of Ivy, who watched, slightly in awe, the blood-soaked linen in her lap momentarily forgotten.
The laird bent and splashed water onto his face in handfuls, the droplets shining against his short, stubbly beard. Then, as she watched, he scooped a mouthful, gargled, and spat into the reeds.
Ivy stared, half fascinated, half amused. She hadn’t realized she was staring until he turned his head, catching her in the act. Their eyes met, and the brown of his reminded her instantly of a long-ago trip to the zoo, when she’d had a staring contest with a leopard from behind a glass wall. She flushed now and looked quickly back to her work, commanding her hands to resume scrubbing, which they obligingly did.
He lingered in the loch water only another moment longer before stepping out, glistening drops sliding down his face and neck. He sat heavily on the bank, stretching his long legs, letting the summer air dry his feet.
She thought he might have simply left after refreshing himself, but something in the way he settled, fairly close to her, made her think he might not mind some conversation.
Ivy scoured her brain for topics, at a loss for anything they might have in common to discuss.
“How was your day?” she asked finally after a long moment. Her cheeks pinkened for how lame and unnatural that sounded.
He turned his face slightly toward her, brows lowered.
“Anything found?” she pressed. “English soldiers... or the nuns who lived here?”
He shook his head once. “Naught. Nae English, nae sisters. The rain had washed any trail we might have followed.” His voice was rough, his disappointment obvious.
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted in reply, gaze fixed on the horizon.
Clinging to the logic that since he hadn’t risen and walked away, that some part of him was choosing to stay, to engage or be engaged, Ivy asked next, “How long do you think we’ll stay here? At the priory, I mean, not the loch.”
With his hands set into the sand behind him, he lifted and dropped his shoulders negligently. “I dinna ken. We’ll head outagain on the morrow for another search, I expect. But if we find naught, there’s little reason to bide here.”
Eyes on her chore, swishing the scrubbed linen in the water in front of her knees, Ivy then asked, “Do you...have other things you should be doing?”
He watched her thoughtfully while he answered. “Aye, lass. So long as even one English banner flies on Scots soil, there’ll always be something I should be doing.”
A patriot, through and through, she supposed, something she might have guessed about him even as soon as within hours of meeting him.
Ivy wrung the linen hard, watching the water bead and drip from her hands. She tried to focus only on that, but her brain was screaming inside her,Tell him! Ask him for help!
Predictably, her thoughts circled back, again and again, to her inexplicable, improbable predicament.
She bit her lip.Didshe need to tell him? Maybe not. Maybe she could just keep her head down, keep pretending she belonged here until she figured something out. Yet the thought of one day being left behind by him and his army made her throat tighten. She was scared enough as it was, but alone? Completely alone? She wasn’t sure she could handle that. She was going to have a baby. She certainly couldn’t do that alone.
Her gaze slid toward him. Alaric sat solid and silent at her side, his arms braced behind him, the sun catching in his golden-brown eyes as he stared across the loch. Strong. Capable. Steady in a way that hadn’t ever come easily to her. If anyone could help her make sense of this, surely it was him.
But what if he thought she was insane? What if he told the others? She’d seen how quickly suspicion flared here, had suffered plenty of those stares. If she said the wrong thing—Christ! Was losing her life a possible outcome?
Her stomach fluttered, a sharp, urgent twist. Because of the baby, she really believed she had no other choice but to confide in him.
“I ken it’s dead already,” he said, startling her out of her tortured reverie.
Ivy snapped her gaze to him. “What?”
He lifted one hand out of the sand and pointed to the linen strip she’d been wringing out. “'Tis dead, lass. Has nae more life in it.”
“Oh,” she sighed and breathed a laugh. “Right.”
Still, her hands twisted, even as she lowered the tightly wound linen to her lap. The words crowded at the back of her throat, wild and impossible, but they wouldn’t leave her in peace. She simply had no choice. She had to say them.
“Alaric—um, sir?” she began, her voice catching. “Can I tell you something?”
