‘I do not know how to be on my own, Aidan. I have always answered to someone else’s demands on my time.’
‘Then you need to set things to be done on your own time. Your errands and chores are yours to command.’ She studied him silently and he could have believed she agreed with him, save for her doubting expression. ‘If you would like, you can hire someone to help you. There is coin enough for that.’
‘I have nothing to fill my days now and you would have me pay someone to work for me?’ she scoffed.
They were so different from one another. Their lives were so different. He’d grown up with servants and teachers and soldiers who lived to serve him and to fulfill his every need. She’d worked from dawn to dusk, serving her family and then her husband. It would take more than a few days for her to accustom herself to having her own house and money to support herself, if she could at all. He’d seen those who rose from poverty and adversity to new wealth and somehow their thrifty ways followed them through life.
‘‘Did you go to my cousin’s?’ he asked. ‘Surely that will fill some of your days?’
‘I did. I tried not to embarrass you with my efforts,’ she said. She leaned over and smoothed the bedcovers, tempting him in so many ways that he forgot to breathe.
‘What did Ciara say? About your efforts?’ he said against the rush of heated blood through his veins. Aidan moved away from her and the bed as the chamber grew hotter each moment.
‘If you promise not to laugh, I will show you.’
She went into the other room and he followed, waiting to see what she thought would make him laugh. Her hips swayed enticingly and her hair swung around her like a curtain moving in the breeze. Would it always be this way between them? He was completely lost in every move she made, every word she spoke, every expression that shone from her eyes?
Cat opened the drawer in the cabinet in the cooking area and lifted something out. Turning, she held it out before him. He must not laugh, no matter what it was. A small piece of flat slate with something scrawled on it with chalk. Aidan reached out and turned the slate so he could read it and saw clusters of numbers written on its surface.
Her first attempts to learn and write. His heart swelled with pride as he said the numbers and she pointed to them.
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven...’ He paused and turned the slate a bit. The next one did not look like any number. But it mattered not for she had tried...for him. ‘Eight. Nine. Ten.’
‘Two small circles should not be difficult to draw, but I struggled with them,’ she admitted. ‘Ciara gave me this...’ she held out a small piece of parchment ‘...as a guide so I can practise.’
‘I brought you something that could help you as well,’ he said. Her gaze moved to the table and the book that lay there. ‘From my mother’s books.’
‘I could never,’ she protested. ‘Even if my skills improve, ’tis too costly for me to touch.’
‘We can read it together. I will begin it and, as you learn, you can say the words. Or the numbers, for it contains both.’
She looked on him with an expression of such adoration then that Aidan knew he must get out or he would touch her. She would be safest from his lust if they were outside, where people would see them and he could not throw her on the table, toss up her skirts and have her...many times...to slake his hunger for her. The randy lad approved of that second plan.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked, taking her elbow and guiding her towards the door. ‘’Tis a beautiful day and we should not waste it.’ He knew he was speaking nonsense. Her questioning gaze confirmed it. ‘I sat with my father to hear disputes this morn. You sat with Ciara, hard at work on those. Come, let us walk a bit.’
Chapter Fourteen
Cat kept glancing at Aidan as he took her by the hand and led her outside. He guided her along the path that led to the centre of the village.
When she’d returned from Ciara’s and from hours of intense concentration, determined to learn her numbers, her head had ached. Her body reminded her of their more exquisite exertions of the night and her exhaustion pushed her to a short rest on the wonderful bed he’d bought. She never thought she would awaken to find him there, staring at her.
Unsure of his intentions, she’d dawdled there in the bedchamber, expecting—from the fierce desire that he ever wore in his eyes—to be tossed on the bed and tupped. Though she should have been too exhausted by his efforts of last night, all night, her body already warmed to the thought of joining with his.
When he did not, she decided to show him what she’d learned so far and he gifted her with the warmest smile over the curling, tilting, scrawled numbers there on the slate. She would practise for hours to see that expression again.
Now, they walked together, her hand in his, and, for the first time since becoming his leman in fact, they would be seen so. And she could not do it. As they approached others, she tugged her hand from his and walked a step behind him instead of by his side. He paused as though he thought she would speak to the two women and waited for her.
She let them pass with just a nod and waited for him to walk again. He did not.
‘Catriona? Is aught the matter?’ he said, holding out his hand to her once more.
‘I...cannot,’ she said, shaking her head at the proffered hand. He startled at first and then dropped his hand to his side.
‘Ah.’
Was he angry? Did he understand she could simply not proclaim their relationship to one and all, not now, not in the village where everyone saw and judged her?
‘Come, then,’ he said. ‘Walk with me.’
