That sent her reeling back a step. The last thing she’d expected from him. “Aye. So?”
“A beautiful woman. Ye cannot expect me to persuade your da to let ye go and die.”
Suddenly he was right there on top of her, his hands coming up to capture her elbows. He touched her but rarely in training, and then mostly by accident. Oh, he might adjust her grip or lift an arm to a better angle. None of that meant anything.
Now hetouchedher, his hands warm against her skin. His tawny gaze grew intent with a look she’d never received from him before. Not just appeal.
“Ye be beautiful,” he repeated, and bent his head.
His lips—twice as warm as his hands—had time to slip across hers, mainly because she was not expecting it. In the next moment, she stepped back from him, tearing away.
“What—”
They stared at each other. She knewwhat. He did not have to say.
His lips curled ruefully between the wings of his mustache. The mustache she had just felt so very intimately.
“Forgive me.”
She did not know if she could. Not the kiss or even the desire for it, but the violation of the trust she had found in him.
She said, speaking to herself as much as him, “We are friends.”
“And is it forbidden for a man to feel desire for a lass who is his friend?”
“Nay. No’ truly.” Most of the clan’s young people knew each other from birth. Those who grew up as friends or even while annoying each other might suddenly begin to see with new eyes and then to love.
“Ye cannot blame me,” he said, using a touch of that humor he usually kept under wraps. “I am but a man. And ye are”—he inspected her from head to toe—“desirable.”
Was she? Rarely in her life had she felt so. And it took a strapping Gallowglass warrior to tell her.
“I am flattered. Truly. But I am no’—”
“Interested? Most wise o’ ye, mistress. I am no’ the sort o’ man upon whom a young woman should center her interest. As ye have so clearly stated, I go off to fight. Maybe to die.”
A sudden pain, nearly overwhelming, gripped Katrin’s heart. She did not want this man to die. An old, old worry that seemed on some level to continually haunt her.
“Ye be a warrior,” she stated softly, again almost to herself.
“A path I have chosen knowing full well where it leads.” He did not attempt to touch her now, having also backed off a few steps. “As a youth in Ireland, I was not good for much. I had nay aptitude for letters, for learning. But I grew as ye see me, and I did ha’ an aptitude for warfare. A lad turned man does as he must.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Difficult to imagine him as a youngboy struggling to learn aught. He seemed to have appeared as a warrior fully defined. Foolishness, to be sure. Did they not all struggle toward what they must be?
“I am sorry,” she said, not quite sure why. Was she sorry about his past? For the choices he had made? For what his future held?
For telling him she did not desire him.
Well, that was not quite true.
Part of her did feel a pull toward all that this man was. Strong and unflinching, relentless in his word given—for he was that. Hired or not, his sword would belong where he promised it, to the end.
Once, as a girl, she might have swooned at the feet of such a man. Leaned into his kiss rather than pulled away. That was before the fear had grown in her.
She said it aloud. “What is loved may be lost.”
He blinked at her. Backed off another step and sat on a stump, there in the yard. “That is so. Indeed, everything loved will be lost one way or another.”
A stark, cold truth. One they shared?
