Instinct and travel through England made her glance behind her before she responded, and she lowered her voice as well. “No. It’s… We would have trapped it and then cut its throat. There are other restrictions too.” Seeing concern enter his face, even if it was just the worry of a host for a guest, Sophia smiled and fought back the urge to step forward and touch his cheek in reassurance. “If my life is in the balance, that will no longer matter. And until then, I do very well. You set a good table.”
“I sit at one,” he said, shrugging, “and I nod at the right times when the cooks and the steward talk to me. Forgive me. I know that the Mussulmen hunt and eat their game. I’d thought it might be the same for your people.”
“It was a kind hope.” The reference made her remember the profanity she’d overheard that morning and that his statement that he spoke Arabic. “Were you on Crusade?”
“A few.”
She had always been good at figures. The ones she did now showed a picture almost as staggering as his flight overhead had been. “How old are you?”
Sandy eyebrows came together as he thought. “A century and a quarter? Maybe less. Remembering each year gets difficult. I’m the youngest. I knowthat,” he added with a wry tone that she recognized well.
“You and my brothers,” she teased in return. “Never will any of you forget it, and heaven forbid the rest of us should.”
“Oh aye,” Cathal said, “I expect we’ll let it go the moment our elders forget to remind us oftheirplace in things.”
Sophia laughed and held up her hands. “I can’t argue that point with you either… I’ve an older sister myself. And she knows it. I canstillremember every word of her last lecture.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“When I boarded the ship for England. She was worse than our parents. They resigned themselves to my peculiarities years ago, but Rachel…” She shrugged. “Her eldest daughter should be getting married soon, so that might take her mind off me.”
“Peculiarities?” Cathal asked, cocking his head slightly.
Sophia couldn’t make out whether he was teasing or honestly curious. She wrinkled her nose at him. “Alchemy. Scholarship. Being a Catherinette—” Cathal’s puzzled look reminded her that not everyone had spent the last ten years or so in France. “Over twenty-five and unwed. I never worshipped the saint, of course, but…you understand. You must know that none of these are usual in a gentlewoman.”
“Oh,” he said, like one reminded of long-forgotten things, and smiled ruefully. “Aye. That. I haven’t spent much time with…gentlewomen…these past few years.”
“I’d imagine there weren’t many on Crusade.”
“A few. Wives. Daughters. A handful who themselves fought.”
“What was it like over there?”
“Hot. Dry. Old, and it’s me saying that.” Cathal smiled again, then sobered. “Or do you mean the fighting? It was war. War is verra much the same, one time to another. The English, the Saracens…” He spread his hands, and Sophia saw again how large they were. A scar, long faded but still visible, crossed one palm. “We all bleed the same. Even my clan. Everything I’ve faced, anyhow.”
The restriction caught her interest. “Are there things that don’t?” she asked, because curiosity was stronger than dread andnotknowing had never helped anything.
“So I’ve heard. Ghosts. Shadows. Demons, mayhap. But I’ve only ever fought men.”
“Oh.”
Sophia glanced down, looking at ground where the snow had disappeared in patches. The earth revealed was muddy and dismal looking.
Lost in thought, she didn’t see or hear Cathal move, only felt the sudden warmth of a hand under her chin—warmth that spread down her neck the way heat from a normal touch never would have. She wanted to blame his nature, but she didn’t think she could.
He tilted her chin up, his touch unexpectedly gentle. “Whatever you’re thinking of,” he said, “you may as well ask. I’ll take no offense from it.”
“Oh,” she said again, this time because she couldn’t initially remember where her thoughts had been going. She took a breath. “You don’t sound like… There are those who talk about glory. High purpose. In war, I mean.”
“There may be those who find it.” He slid his hand away and stepped back. Sophia fought off the impulse to follow him. At least his distance was clearing her head, and his expression was less playful—although, as he’d claimed, he didn’t look offended, simply matter-of-fact. “The glory fades by the second war, I find. Perhaps the third.”
“But you keep going.”
“Aye, well, there’s little enough glory in most tasks most days. They’ve still got to be done…here for my people and there for the rest of us. Wars are better for all when skilled men are fighting. I’m skilled. At that,” he added, and sighed. “And it was a damned sight simpler out there.”
She looked up, past the square line of his jaw, and saw the shadows under his eyes. MacAlasdairs, it seemed, were no more immune to sleepless nights than any other men. As much as the words Cathal said, as much even as the resignation in his voice, those shadows illuminated her experience of him from a different angle. Beneath distance and curtness, she now saw weariness and uncertainty, a man struggling to fit himself to an unfamiliar role.
“Anything is simpler when you’re used to it,” she said. “I don’t think your steward would fare so well on campaign, any more than he would in my laboratory. I know I wouldn’t.”
