“Damn!” he said as he entered quickly and pushed the door closed behind him. “I was hoping to find ye yet asleep under the covers.” He rubbed his massive hands together and blew on them. “The air is much colder today. And it feels like snow is approaching.”
“The water will be ready soon, and I will make some hot tea—a concoction that Moira favors—that will warm ye from the inside out,” she offered.
Standing up after checking the not-boiling water, she pushed her hair out of her face and back over her shoulders. The silence alerted her first. He stood by the door, not moving now, just staring at her.
“Come here, lass,” he said in a soft voice.
Robena walked to where he stood, and he opened his arms to her. Embracing her, he leaned his chin on her head and rubbed down over her back. She may have sighed aloud at the comfort of it. When he laughed, the rumble of it spreading out through his chest so she could feel it next to her face, she understood she had sighed loud enough for him to hear.
“I canna help it, Iain. Ye are a warm man on a cold morning,” she admitted. When she would have stepped away, he held her close.
“I needed to speak to Rob,” he said. “Or I would not have risked freezing my bollocks off outside.”
“Dinna risk yer bollocks, Iain,” she said, laughing then.
Now he let her free and she went over to the hearth. After moving the pot for the tea closer to the flames to warm, she went to get the crushed betony leaves from the shelves. He was behind her, reaching over her head to get the jar down for her.
Over the next short while, this give-and-take continued as he wordlessly helped her make the tea, stir the porridge, and ready the bowls and cups to break their fast. If truth be told, this was one of her most treasured things about the time they spent together. On mornings like this one, and the ones like this that they’d shared over the last five years, she could almost pretend that their life was something different than it was.
As they moved around each other, sharing gentle touches as they carried out the menial and usual tasks of the morning, Robena could almost let herself believe they were man and wife rather than a man and his whore.
The revelation of last night was nowhere to be found between them now. They fell back into the comfortable pattern that had developed during his longer visits, and the morning meal passed in companionable ease.
“I have been helping Moira out several mornings a week, Iain. Would ye like to come with me?” She watched as he considered her words. “Or we can stay here, if ye’d rather?”
“Although I did see Pol at the miller’s, I have not seen her yet. Do ye think she would mind me stomping into her cottage?” He retrieved her cloak, dropped it on her shoulders, and then got his.
“Ye have to see her lasses. They seem to grow inches every week.”
He met her gaze and she recognized the wariness there. As though he was worried over her reaction to bairns. ’Twas one reason she did not reveal the truth to very many people.They treated her differently once they knew. Now, though, Iain opened the door and waited for her to pass.
The walk to Moira’s cottage, a much larger one that sat on the edge of the village, took a short time, but they may have been rushed along by the cold winds that swirled along the paths and roads. Winter was here, and as Iain had said, snow was coming soon. Iain reached out and took hold of her hand to steady her steps along the ground that was hardened and slippery from the frost.
Another moment that filled with a dreamlike feel of a normal life wove around her, just as their heated breaths spun over their heads before dissipating in the cold. Moira opened the door before they could knock, and bade them to come in. As always, the scents inside Moira’s cottage rushed over Robena as she entered. Racks of dried and drying herbs and plants hung over their heads, though Iain came close to knocking into them as he walked.
“Come in! Come in and warm yerselves,” Moira said.
Iain leaned down to enter through the doorway that was shorter than him. “Move nearer the fire, where it is warm.”
Iain released her hand and followed her across the cottage to the hearth. In the far corner sat large tables next to a hearth that dwarfed her own. Moira lived and worked here—blending and concocting brews and tisanes and poultices and more from the herbs and plants she grew in the large garden outside or sought in the countryside around the village. So accomplished was she as a healer that Moira was permitted to send to other villages and even a monastery for the ingredients she needed but did not or could not cultivate herself.
Over the last month or so, as the harvesting reached its peak, Moira had asked for Robena’s help and Robena had gladly given it. Spending time working and learning at the woman’s side fascinated her. Though only a few years separated herage from Moira’s, the woman’s knowledge and experience were vastly different. The woman never stopped moving, doing, and making, and Robena trailed behind or alongside her as she worked. In that time, she’d learned to make a decent tea with several different leaves, to properly bind up a mixture of herbs for cooking various stews and soups, and when to move certain drying plants away from the fire so they were not too brittle. Without thinking, she did that now, seeing the color of a few of them nearest the hearth and recognizing they were done.
“My thanks,” Moira said. “I had not gotten to those yet.” The woman used her skirt over her hand to pull a large pot away from the fire as she spoke. “Can ye feel the change in the air? Snow will be here within a day or two.” Using the dipper, she filled two cups with a steaming brew and then offered it to her and Iain. “Here. This will warm ye.”
Robena inhaled the aroma before sipping the liquid. Not the usual flavor, she glanced over her cup at Moira.
“Not betony?”
“Nay, nay,” Moira said with an enigmatic smile. “Something different this time.” The healer leaned her hips back against the edge of the nearest table and nodded at them.
“Iain, ’tis good to see ye. How do ye fare?”
“I am well,” Iain said with a smile. God Almighty, but the man was handsome! And he was a puzzle to her even now, after five years of seeing to his needs.
As she watched, enjoying the hot tea and observing him, she was struck by the way he was so unperturbed, no matter to whom he spoke. Robena had seen him with Struan when other nobles were present, and she’d watched him here in the village over the years since he began visiting Rob, and not once had he seemed ill at ease. He laughed easily, often, and well, as Moira told him about her lasses and their antics.
What shocked her, though, was when he put his cup down, still in conversation with Moira, and lifted Robena’s cloak from her shoulders and tossed it on a bench. These small gestures, ones that existed between a man and a woman, threatened her control. She could almost believe . . .
