“Would you like something to eat? It’s way past lunchtime. In fact, it’s closer to dinner.” Instead of returning to the area with the couch and a pair of large chairs filled with pillows, she stepped around a stack of boxes and entered a space that reminded him of an apothecary or the clan healer’s herbal room. The cluttered counters held all manner of shiny things he’d never seen before. Shiny things that, sadly, he had no idea what they were called.
“Are you hungry?” She pulled open the door of a white box that was lit from within and pointed at containers sitting on a wire shelf inside it. “I’ve got roast beef, cheese, and roast turkey. Tomatoes, pickles, mayo, or mustard. Sorry, no ketchup. Would you like a sandwich?”
“What the devil is a sandwich?” Dubh asked.
“I dinna ken,” he muttered.
Calia paused in pulling containers out of the lit box and looked at him. “Pardon?”
“Whatever ye wish to prepare, lass.” Then he wondered if she needed him to start a fire in her stove—if there was a stove to be found. He had yet to see one. “How might I help ye?”
For the first time since she’d accepted his story that Mairwen had sent him to do chores, she gave him a genuine smile, causing him to shudder with the need to stop this ridiculous game of speaking of things that didn’t matter. She pointed at a wall of shelves on the other side of the room. “You can get a couple of plates, the bread, and chips…I mean…crisps. Isn’t that what you call chips over here?”
He had no feckin’ idea, but decided to risk going along with it. “Aye.” Gathering the items that were his best guess at what she wanted, he brought them to her and placed them on the counter.
“Do you want mayo or mustard?” she asked.
“Mustard.” He knew that word. The other one was foreign.
Without looking up from the food she had piled into layers on the plate, she nodded. “Mustard, it is.” She placed a handful of light-brown curls out of the bag with a picture of potatoes painted on it onto each of the plates. “Excuse my hands. They’re clean. I promise. I’m afraid I don’t have room for a dining room table. Do you mind eating with your plate in your lap?”
“Why would I mind?”
She gave a soft laugh. “You’d be surprised how picky some folks can be.” She returned to the tall box that was so bright inside, it had to have either a candle or a lantern burning within it. “Would you like another glass of sweet tea or a soda?”
Unsure what a soda was, he decided on the strangeness of her tea with the ice floating in it. It hadn’t tasted all that bad. “Another glass of tea would be fine, thank ye.”
She handed him both plates of food and nodded at the couch. “You carry these, and I’ll bring the drinks.”
As he set the plates on the low table in front of the sofa, she called out to him, “Watch Otto. Sometimes he steals food. He can’t seem to help himself.”
Mathison looked at the dog and emitted a low warning growl; he knew the beastie would understand.
Otto immediately sat back and claimed disinterest in whatever the plates held.
“Did you just growl at him?” Calia set their glasses of tea beside their plates.
“Aye, sometimes a growl sends a clearer message.”
“Hmm…I’ll have to try that sometime.”
She could growl at him any time she wished. Mathison selected one of the thin curls that had come from the potato bag and sniffed it. It smelled like a potato. After risking a taste, he decided it wasn’t all that bad. Then he tried the sandwich creation after subtly observing how Calia ate hers. That didn’t taste poorly either. “This is verra good. Thank ye again.”
Just as she started to speak, lightning flashed, and deafening thunder exploded again. “Dang it!” She stared at the rain sluicing down the glass doors, making it impossible to see out into the garden. “Does it storm like this often?”
“No, lass. This is rare.” He wasn’t about to share his suspicions about Mairwen using the storm to force them to spend more time together—closer together inside the cottage. “Did ye ever have storms like this where ye used to live?”
“Sometimes. During tornado season.”
He nodded as if he understood, even though he’d never heard of a tornado. “What caused ye to come to Scotland?”
She stared at him mid-bite of her sandwich as if startled by the question. “I needed a change of scenery.”
The curtain between them had returned. Even though Mairwen had refused to tell him any specific details about Calia’s past, she had admitted that the woman had suffered, and it was plain to see the shadows of that suffering in Calia’s lovely hazel eyes.
“Pain is difficult to escape,” he said softly.
The way she eyed him, watching him like an animal waiting for a predator to attack it, made him wish he could pull back the words. But then she gave him a thoughtful nod while tracing a fingertip through the ring of moisture left on the table by her tea glass. “Actually, pain can’t be escaped because it takes root inside you and never lets go. It’s a stain that can never be erased or bleached away.”
