She held her breath.
“I find myself … in need of a kiss. I find myself … unable to work a moment longer without seeing you, my dearest darling.”
“I find myself parched, and came to see if you might spare a poor laborer one of those cups of milk you seem always to have at hand. But first—” He stopped just in front of her, a warm smile quirking his lips. “You have a bit of flour on your …”
“Oh!” Her apron was a frightful mess, so her hair and face must’ve been so too. Horrified, she clapped a hand to her cheek. Unfortunately, the cloud of flour told her she’d just mussed herself up even more.
“On your nose,” he finished, with a low chuckle. “Here, I’ll—” He raised a hand just as she did, and they knocked into each other.
She flinched back. “I’m sorry—”
“I’ve got it,” he said definitively, wrapping one firm, warm hand over hers while he used the other to smudge her nose and cheek.
“Th-thank you.” She stared up at him, and her mind went blank. His skin was weathered from the sun, and it made him seem so masculine. So unlike the pale Aberdeen fops in their velvet waistcoats and polished boots. Aidan might not have been a nobleman, but he was a man.
He pinched her chin. “The milk, luvvie? Hauling stone builds a powerful thirst.”
“Yes! Milk! Of course.” She clapped the last of the flour from her hands and went to the small pitcher they kept in a shadowy corner. “It’s fresh, just a couple hours old,” she told him, pouring him a small glass. Doubt froze her. “Unless you might like it warmed?”
“Never you worry,” he said easily, taking it from her. “Cool is best for a working man.”
He gulped it down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I came this morning, thinking to check on Achilles, but he found me instead. The pup’s spent the past hour nipping my heels. He’ll be more tired than I by the end of the day.”
“It’s because we’re fond of you.” She smiled, but it froze on her face. What had she just said? “He. I meant, he’s fond of you.”
“Are you not fond of me too?” He handed the cup back to her with a wink.
He’d only been playing, but still, her heart stopped in her chest. Was this what it was to flirt with a man? She floundered for words, fretting about what secrets her blush might be betraying.
Aidan gave her a peculiar smile, then, to her everlasting gratitude, changed the subject. “Weeks at sea, I’d forgotten how it is to have a dog trailing about.”
He seemed so comfortable working her farm, she’d forgotten he’d be just as at home on a ship. She’d never been able to muster insipid chat like other women, and found an unusual question spring to her tongue. “Was it grand, the sea?”
He considered her with an inscrutable look on his face, and she worried she might have offended him somehow. Was it possible that nobody had yet asked him—truly asked him—about his experiences? But considering the other MacAlpins, she saw how that might’ve been the case.
Bridget wouldn’t have thought of it, Anya wouldn’t have dared, Gregor would’ve been too busy, Declan too preoccupied, and Cormac too caught up in Marjorie’s pregnancy to have thought of much beyond himself and his new wife.
Aidan surprised her when, his features softening, he pulled up a stool and sat. “Aye, Beth,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes. “The sea was grand indeed. It scares some men. But confinement has always struck me as more frightful than any death.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Your days in captivity must’ve been horrible for you. More than horrible,” she amended, cursing the impotence of her words.
“Aye, horrible.” The word rolled on his tongue, as though he were testing it. The expression on his face said he found it wanting. Even though he shrugged, she could see the ghost of his pain in his tight brow and clenched teeth.
“For years I felt trapped—was trapped.” Putting his elbows on the butcher-block table, he leaned closer, as though anxious for her to understand. “But it wasn’t just that I couldn’t escape. I was … hemmed in. By day, it was the other workers, and the cane, and the heat, closing in around me till I felt I couldn’t breathe. But nights were the worst. Once my body stopped moving, the thoughts took over …”
Anguish swept his features, and he checked it just as quickly, with just a single twitch of his lip speaking to his pain.
“What thoughts you must’ve had,” she said somberly. “You must’ve been so terribly heartbroken, thinking of your family. And terrified—you were just a boy. How you must have longed for home. And for revenge.”
His eyes brightened. “Aye. All those things. I’d spend my nights in such dark reveries, too exhausted to sleep, surrounded by men who chattered on and on. On through the night, till I believed never would I know silence, never stillness.”
“To have been plunged into such a nightmare as a mere boy. It’s unthinkable.” She imagined how it would be, to spend one’s days laboring, surrounded by men—and among such as those who’d find themselves indentured on a faraway island. Aidan was intelligent and thoughtful. He’d not have found a like-minded soul among them.
She sighed. Despite the weight of his memories, she’d willingly share every one. “My own days are spent alone. Well,” she amended with a rueful laugh, “alone but for the sheep. And I can’t imagine it differently.”
“Aye, sheep would’ve been preferable.” He caught her eye, and it seemed to her that his brow had smoothed a fraction. “So you see, I longed for peace … until I first climbed to the top of my ship’s rigging. There I found naught but the sea for miles all around, the only sound the creak of the lines and the slap of the waves. And me, my own man.”
“How exhilarating.” She gave him a wistful smile, wishing she might one day have her own adventure, knowing at the same time she’d only find it in the pages of a book.
“Aye, Beth.” He looked blindly in the distance, savoring the memory, and then snapped back, with a rakish wink. “The only thing grander was the escape itself.”
“Will you tell me of it?” She was desperate to hear how he’d broken free. Desperate to hear all his tales … were there pirates, and sea monsters, and storms? She snatched at the first detail that flitted across her imagination. “Do men really sing on the open sea?”
He gave her a startled smile. “Do they sing?”
“I mean,” she said, feeling her cheeks color, “is it like the books? With pirates singing sea-shanties, and men crying the oars?”
He stared at her, an unreadable look in his eyes. “A bit, I suppose.”
“I do so long for a sail someday.” She drifted for a moment, thinking how she’d stand at the railing, shading her eyes from the sun. Aidan would come stand beside her. He’d wrap his strong arm around her shoulders. The heat of him would warm her, shielding her from the chill winds whipping off the sea.
“It would be dangerous for a woman.”
“No,” she protested at once, enthusiastically quoting the old proverb “Danger and delight grow on one stalk!”
Chuckling, he kicked his legs out and relaxed against the table. “I’ve told you before, Beth, you’re an odd one. But I daresay, I like it.”
She thought she might burst from the joy in her chest. Never would she have thought being called odd would be so distinctly wonderful.
She wanted to hear more—she could listen all night to that resonant voice, telling swashbuckling tales. “Would you tell me a sea story?”
“A story of the sea?” Spying Elspeth’s intense attention, he gave a low laugh. “If you’re longing for tales of serpents, or Arabian pirates bearing silks and scimitars, you’re to be sorely disappointed. Truly, once we got under way, I mostly spent my days wondering what I might find when I arrived.”
“It’d been many years since you’d been home,” she murmured, speaking her thoughts aloud. Acquainted with the MacAlpins, she’d thought of Aidan as a Scots-man. But really, his country and his family would’ve been strange to him. It must’ve been unsettling to sail for home, not knowing what or whom he’d find. “You must’ve wondered what’d come of your family, of Scotland. I’ve always wished for siblings, but I imagine it must’ve been daunting indeed to return to a castle full of them.”
“Aye,” he said, his voice tight.
The sound of it tugged at her heart. Aidan was surely concealing a riot of emotion in that strapping chest of his.
“Were you afraid what you might find?”
He seemed amused by the question. “Afraid? I can’t think of a thing I’ve not yet seen, nor yet endured, that might frighten me.”
She leaned her hip against her worktable, completely enthralled. “Well, surely you were excited.”
He gave it some thought. “Not excited, precisely. More like there was a fire in my blood. A hunger.”
“A hunger for what?” she asked quietly, risking the question foremost on her mind. “What had you missed most?”
Again, she spied that pained expression. It flickered quickly and then disappeared, replaced by Aidan’s dis-missive good humor.
“You ask of hunger. I daresay, that’s what I missed most.” He shot a lighthearted glance toward the ball of dough on the butcher-block table.
“Bread?”
“Well, yes, I suppose that. But I mean …” He gave a boyish shrug. “I missed food. Real food, good food, the kind my mother would make.”
She froze, holding utterly still, despite having one hand knuckle-deep in bread dough. Her rogue had been young and happy once. Vulnerable, needful, and joyous. Was that person still to be found somewhere in his heart?
She didn’t want anything to make him think twice about continuing with this amazing confession, and her voice came out a near whisper. “What would she make you?”