Slowly, he stood, staring at her the entire time. That same dark intensity in his gaze.
“Of course.” His voice was still hoarse from the sea water.
How odd to see him clothed in homespun wool trousers and a loose knitted jumper. Not a trace of London finery remained. Gray whiskers rimmed his jawline and his hair stood on end.
He appeared . . .
Well, he looked . . .lost.
Earnest and wary.
A trapped wolf, tentative and primed to startle at the first hint of danger.
Perhaps a part of him remained out to sea.
His eyes flitted up and down her body, no doubt taking in the equally haphazard nature of her clothing. His eyes lingered on her feet and ankles, clad in thick woolen stockings. The bodice fit her well enough, but her skirt and petticoat stopped mid-calf. Few women were as tall as herself.
In summation, Isolde was currently displaying far too much leg and ankle for propriety. Thank goodness only her husband was here to witness it. Though given how he appeared to forcibly drag his eyes away from her legs, perhaps even that was of concern.
Well, His Ducal-ness would simply have to manage.
Breaking his gaze, she spun in a circle, taking in the room.
The parlor was a homey place. A large cooking pot hung from a hook over the fire, ready for whatever food Isolde could find in the cold larder. A worktable sat before the front window, and a large hutch with dishes rested against the back wall. A pair of Orkney chairs—one large and one small—dominated the room, sitting proudly before the hearth. Woven of rushes, the chairs stood nearly at the height of Isolde’s shoulders, their hooded tops curved to trap every last morsel of heat from the fire. They seemed a pair of hunched monks, muttering prayers.
Tristan rotated as well, his eyes focused on herself rather than the room.
His attention was . . . confusing.
“I’m going to explore and see what provisions there are.” She motioned toward the room at the back of the house. “The storm may take a wee while to pass.”
In the cold larder, Isolde found red lentils, onions, a salted side of cured ham, and a bottle of excellent whisky from Talisker on Skye.
“You are very fortunate, Your Grace,” she said with mock severity when she re-entered the room, arms laden, “that I know how tae cook.” She shook the burlap sack of lentils at him.
He frowned. “That is a rather odd thing for the daughter of an earl to have learned.”
“Nae. I enjoyed spending time in the kitchens as a lass, and I had tae do some cooking for myself while at university in the States. This—” She pointed to the ingredients, setting them on the worktable. “—will make a lovely supper.”
Tristan located a fresh spring out the back door in a rear courtyard—a small space ringed by a series of even smaller outbuildings—and filled the cooking pot with water, setting it to boil. Isolde chopped the onion, adding lentils and a healthy chunk of cured ham to the pot.
For his part, Tristan laid out their sodden clothing to dry before the fire, draping her skirt and his coat over a drying rack. He carefully opened the case of his pocket-watch, gently dabbing seawater out of the gears.
“Is your watch salvageable?” she asked, nodding toward it as she tossed a laurel leaf into her makeshift soup.
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Though given that I have yet to see a clock in this house, I shan’t be able to reset the time regardless.”
The unconcerned tenor of his words snagged her attention. Heaven knew the Duke of Kendall had an obsessive sense of time. Vividly, she recalled his endless pacing while trapped in the ice house, voice militantly announcing the hour. Would he be soblasétomorrow without a clock marking the passage of each minute?
And yet, as she studied him bent over the watch—its gold casing glinting in the firelight—he didn’t look like the Duke of Kendall from the ice house. Instead, he appeared a scholar tinkering with a mechanical curiosity—an inquisitive expression on his face.
She looked away, unsure what to make of it or the confused tangle his expression made of her emotions.
Isolde stirred the soup, before crossing to the hutch and pouring a healthy finger of whisky into two pottery mugs. She handed one to Tristan as he set his watch aside, motioning for him to sit in the larger of the two Orkney chairs. She settled into the smaller, pulling it closer to the warmth of the peat fire.
“Are you warm?” His voice reached her like that of a disembodied spirit.
She glanced toward his chair, but only his legs and fingers cuppinghis mug were visible. The rest of him was tucked into the curved hollow of the chair back, hiding his face.
