Neil hissed a breath through clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” she breathed.
“Aye.”
Silence settled over them.
Kristen dipped the cloth again and gently dabbed it along the edge of a burn that curved around his neck. The raised skin was warm under her touch.
“Who did this to ye anyway?” she asked again.
This time, her voice cracked.
“I told ye, Kristen, it is nothing,” Neil insisted.
“It is nothing,” she echoed, because he needed the lie even if she did not. Her eyes traced the map his body had become. “Folks here call ye the Wolf of the North, and ye still willnae tell me who did this to ye.”
He turned his head a fraction. “Leave it.”
She nodded and said nothing more.
She folded a strip of linen, tied it with neat fingers, and set the knot where it would not rub against the edge of the wound. Neil picked up his shirt with one hand, but did not put it back on.
For a moment, they stood there, unsure of the next step.
“Ye should sleep in me chamber tonight,” Kristen urged. Her voice belonged to a woman who knew steadiness by practice. “For the bairns’ sake, if nae for mine.”
“I told ye I would come,” Neil muttered.
“I daenae ken. Something about yer voice makes it hard for me to believe ye.”
When he did not respond, her hand hovered and then dropped. She turned to wash the bloodied cloth she had used to clean the injury and wrung it once, twice—an easy task that kept her from shaking. Then she pushed the ewer aside and looked up at him.
“Trust me, Kristen,” he said, his voice softer, as if that might make it true. “It is nothing ye need to worry about.”
She looked at the ruin cut into him. It wasnotnothing. It was a battlefield carved into his skin.
“Well, I think I should,” she responded, her voice a tad harsher than she had intended. “Should I nae ken who did this, so I can be prepared if ever I or—God forbid—the bairns are in danger?”
Neil went still. The silence thickened.
“As long as ye’re nae important to me, ye’re safe.”
Kristen frowned. “Nae important to ye?”
Neil nodded. “Aye. Ye ken what I mean.”
“Nay, I daenae ken.”
Neil exhaled. “As long as ye’re nae carrying me child, ye daenae need to worry about being hurt. Ye’re safe.”
The words struck clean, and her hand trembled around the cloth. She felt the tremor pass into the wet linen and back into her skin, as if it had also heard his words and reacted to them.
“Kristen…” he trailed off, having caught the shift in the atmosphere.
Kristen said nothing. Instead, she folded the now clean cloth and set it on a table, her breathing shallow, each knot set as if it were a small wall she could put between his voice and her chest.
“I see,” she whispered.
