Reason leaked through a chink in his infuriated urgency to see his mission complete. “What I do is none of yer concern.”
“None of my concern? How can ye say that?”
Nay, he could not be swayed. Not after all this time. He raked her with a harsh look. “When ye’re ready to explain yerself, lass, then ye can question me.”
“Ye want to talk? Fine, let’s talk.”
She shrugged off her coat and grabbed the greying hair on top of her head, pulling it back until it peeled away in a gruesome manner. Her fingers curled into the flesh below her eyes and ripped her entire face away. Like a mask. It was a bloody mask?Och, she had his attention now for sure. Questions ricocheted through his mind. How? Why?
Bits of it stuck to her face around the edges, her lashes and eyes painted to match the florid skin of the guise she’d donned. Hair freed from a tight cap, it fell down her back in a thick rope. She didn’t stop there, shedding her waistcoat and shirt in frantic tugs to reveal a padded body beneath. Up and over her head it went while he marveled at the transformation to bare her upper body. Nay, not bare entirely. Two scraps of cloth covered her breasts, bound by straps around her ribs and over her shoulders.
“Aila, lass…”
“Nay, ye wanted the whole truth? Let’s bare everything, shall we?” Her flat stomach flexed as she unfastened her breeks, kicking them off along with her shoes and hose until she was naked below the waist as well but for a wee covering of her privates.
He’d never seen her so riled, nor so stunning. If it had been her intention to distract him, she had done so magnificently. With her pirouette, his diversion was absolute. A garden of tangled vines and vivid flowers bloomed on her bare hip and trailed down to mid-thigh. On the side of her ribs, a fox outlined in black and partially filled in with watercolors with the wordsStay Strongfollowing the curl of its tail. Below the binding around her ribs, a series of flourishing symbols followed the line of her spine. On her shoulder blade, a series of swallows in flight and three stark words:I am enoughin bold black lettering.
Finn sat back on his heels, simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the tattoos. For that’s what they were. He’d seen sailors with such marks upon them, though none so elaborate, colorful…or large. The sailors of the Orkneys couldn’t be so different from the rest, could they? Or somehow induce a lass descended from a long line of them to mark herself like this?
He didn’t know where to begin. “Ye’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
“Hello, pot! Ye seem to have a few yerself,” she shot back.
She pulled her shirt back over her head and he blinked away the image emblazoned on his mind. Aila regained her composure faster than he. When she spoke again, her voice was once again the light, throaty brogue he’d come to adore. “Let’s finish with mine first, if that’s what it’s going to take to get ye to listen to me. There’s a fair chance I’ll shock ye into a coma and we’ll no’ have to worry about this rash course ye’re set upon.”
“There’s more than this?”
“Oh, aye.” Aila went to his chest of drawers and removed the flask he kept in the top most. Taking a seat on the edge of his bed, she held it out to him. “Ye’ll need this.”
Rocking back to sit on the floor, Finn set his weapon aside and armed himself with the whisky. As he was still reeling from the sight of her body, an ominous foreboding suggested she might be right.
“Why would ye defile yerself like that?” He drank from the flask and gestured with it in her general direction.
“I prefer the term ‘body art’ to defilement. They’re an homage to things that are important to me,” she told him with a shrug as she bent one leg to hug her knee while the other swung free over the side of the bed. “I wisnae purposefully hiding them from ye. It would be more accurate to say, there was never an opportunity in our haste to show them to ye. Do they…? Are ye…? Nay, I dinnae want to ken yet. At any rate, that’s no’ what I meant when I said there was more to tell ye. I wanted to tell ye the truth about me and why I’m here.”
Body art? Her explanation made no sense. “Ye said ye were here because ye were looking for something new to give ye purpose,” he recalled. “If I recollect that moment correctly, ye claimed it was the truth. Are ye saying it wisnae?”
Aila lowered her head and shook it. Fine strands of hair fell from her plait to catch the faint light from the window. “I love that ye actually listen when I say something. Ye have nae idea how rare that is. Nay, that wisnae a lie. There’s more to it, though. I want ye to ken the whole truth, yet once ye do, ye may no’…”
The words drifted away. Seeing her like this, so soft and troubled, it was difficult for Finn to even remember why they were here, beyond the magnitude of the visual reveal of her body. Beyond the inexplicable disguise and the reasons for it. Even past Etteridge’s arrival at the castle. His bold, brash lass was gone. Drawn inward. She seemed almost defeated. The last of his ire seeped away. He longed to pull her into his arms and comfort her.
“Ye can trust me with the truth, lass.” The words brought back a memory from the night before Effie had taken ill. To the last time he’d said those words and knew Aila was hiding something. There was an unknown truth there that had been gnawing at him. “Why no’ start with yer former suitor. Did ye love him?”
Blue eyes met his, round and wide. “Och, Finn, there are far more important things I want to tell ye.”
“Yet this is the one that has troubled me.” He hadn’t realized how much until this moment. Suddenly he had to know that truth above all others. At least those he dared to ask. “Let’s start there. Did ye love him?”
She shook her head again. “I thought for a while that I did, but nay, no’ like…. Nay.”
The admission was gratifying. “Ye broke it off with him for that reason? Or was there another?”
“Finn!” Her shoulders lifted with a heavy sigh. “It willnae make any sense to ye until I get to the rest of it. And no’ even then.”
“Tell me anyway,” he insisted.
“My relationship with him was a waste of time.” She flicked its significance aside with a dismissive gesture. “It ended because I dinnae dust the blades on the ceiling fan. There are multiple reasons I dinnae do it, most of which he was well aware. See that makes nae sense to ye, so let it lie.”
“Dusting?” He snorted with a burst of comprehension. “Aye, I ken how ye dinnae like to be relegated to womanly tasks.”
