He grunted, lapsing back into silence. She peeked at him. The boy she remembered had possessed the same mane of dark hair, the same strong jaw and aquiline nose. But in those days, Aaron had been lithe and lean. It was as though the acquisition of a bull’s body had given him a bull’s temperament.
She looked away as he glanced in her direction, not wanting him to catch her staring. Though she wasn't sure why it mattered—he clearly thought so little of her that staring would hardly register as an offense.
Still. The boy she'd known would have filled this silence with stories, terrible jokes, observations about the constellations. This man seemed content to let the quiet stretch like a blade between them.
The boy I knew, the sweet boy, has matured into a hard man. Like a sapling becoming an oak with a skin like iron. Impervious.
Yet for all his distance, he had saved her. When despair had overcome her, he had put his body between her and harm’s way. Thathadto count for something.
“Understand this,” he said into the silence, “I do not do this out of lack of sympathy. I am not a monster. But my life is saturated, and I have no room for complications. It would only put my goals at risk.”
“You do not have to justify yourself to me, Your Grace,” Catherine whispered, disguising the pain his words caused her.
“Honor demands that I do.”
“Honor?” She felt a stab of annoyance, which she tried to contain as she had been trained to over the last few years at Haventon.
Defiance brings punishment. Disobedience brings punishment. Only meek compliance is permitted.
“Yes?” he pressed as though daring her to gainsay him.
“I understand, of course,” she replied meekly.
He growled in his throat and looked away, only to look back a few seconds later.
“If you wish to berate me for my choices, then do so. If you wish to strike me for being a beast, then do so.”
Catherine gaped at him. “I can no more do that than you can fly, Your Grace.”
“Aaron! My name isAaron. According to yourself, it is the name you used when we were children, though the memories are closer to you than I.”
“Why does that make you angry?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“Because…” he floundered, raking a hand through his hair, exasperated, “becausenothing. It does not matter. Merely this bump on the head addling my thoughts. Ignore me.”
She wished she could, wished it were that simple. His presence so close beside her was as impossible to ignore as a wolf wouldhave been. Each bump and sway of the carriage upon its leather straps pressed her shoulder to his or his thigh against hers.
The grazes set her blood afire, and she felt her cheeks heating. She glanced away, reaching for the window to cool herself.
“Leave it for devil’s sake!” he barked.
“I am hot!” she snapped back before she could catch herself.
For a moment, she gaped at him in horror as reason restored itself.
“I… I am sorry… I should not have…” she stammered.
He grinned. She had never seen that smile on his face before. It was the kind of grin that must have been worn on the faces of Vikings looking from the dark waves of the sea towards the wealth of England.Savage.
“So you do have some backbone then,” he muttered.
Catherine let her hand fall, face scarlet as she felt a thrill at the praise. Aaron leaned across her again and raised the window, latching it in place.
“There,” he said at last, “we shall endure the stink for the sake of cooler air.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, appalled at her own daring.
She could not get the image of the Viking from her mind. The notion of being an object of attention for such a savage. She pressed her thighs together to make herself smaller. It sent a pleasant, warm feeling through her, which only amplified as she squeezed harder. It had her breathless.
