Chapter Eighteen
Clara had alwaystalked through her problems. At first, she’d spoken to her dolls. Later, she worked on paper using steps and arrows as she thought through whatever annoyed her. The amount of coin spent on paper for her was the truest sign that her parents had loved her. Of course, she had tried to talk to people about her thoughts, but Aaron had little time or patience for her tortured ramblings, and her parents had even less. So she had learned to mumble to herself or write it all out.
Until Liam had said he was listening. While they cleaned the kitchen together, she talked through what she’d discovered. He said little at first, but soon he added to the conversation. And his thoughts were on point, which made him the rarest of creatures—one who listened and could think. It made sense. He’d grown up here and knew the general workings of his castle home. The people had changed over the years, but the systems by which everyone functioned remained the same.
Or so he said. Rhona and Diedre agreed when they returned to help clean. And before long, Clara had a good idea of how each day passed in a general sense. She guessed it would take several weeks more to understand the details, but the basics were clear. She hoped.
By the time the kitchen was clean and the last loaves of bread set out to cool, she ached from head to toe. She desperately wanted a bath, but would never require anyone to fill a tub for her. Which meant—
“I can take you to a place to bathe,” Liam said. “The water is cool, but it’s a warm night. And you’ll be safe with me.”
“Bathe in a stream? Outside?” Certainly, she had done such a thing before the masquerade, but that had been at Beitidh’s rough insistence. Plus, Clara had been fuzzy with drink. Now Liam was suggesting it as if it were appropriate. “Are you sure it is proper?” Such a thing was never done in London. And though others had done it in the countryside where she grew up, she had never been allowed. Her nanny had told her to stop imagining such a thing, much less try it. And her mother had been so scandalized by the thought that she had constantly cited Clara’s desire as the purest example of why Clara would never be a true lady. “I expect you still want to bathe in the stream like a heathen,” was a common refrain. So to discuss it now felt very daring indeed.
“It’s a secluded place,” Liam coaxed. “No one will go there but us.”
Us. As in Liam and herself in the water. Naked. The thought revived her aching body enough that she pulled off her apron, but she still couldn’t believe it was proper. Especially since Rhona and Deirdre kept their eyes downcast when Liam continued to coax her.
“I used to do it all the time as a boy,” he said.
“But you want me to act as a lady, and I doubt—”
“Do you want to get clean, Clara? This is the best way.”
She did. She’d worked hard this day. She glanced at the two girls. “How scandalous is this?”
The girls exchanged awkward glances. “No one will know, my lady,” said Rhona.
“Them that would find out are all gone with the laird. And any others will be sleeping now,” added Deirdre.
“That won’t be true when they return,” Liam said as he held out his hand. “Tonight’s the night.”
Whatever she thought of his words, it was the gleam in his eye that convinced her. She knew what he was thinking, indeed what she was thinking. They could do all sorts of illicit things together in the water and under the stars. She had just discovered how he made her body feel, and she could not resist the temptation of experiencing it again.
She clasped his fingers with the tips of hers, and allowed him to reel her in. Soon he was escorting her though the dark, stepping around rocks and physically lifting her over obstacles that she could not see. The night was lit with a three-quarter moon. Enough that the world seemed limed in silver. But the shadows were still thick except for the whites of his eyes and his Cheshire cat smile.
“How do you know the way? I can barely see.”
“Growing up, I spent more time outside the castle than inside. I know every inch of my home.”
Obviously true since he walked with confidence beneath trees and around outbuildings. “Was it a happy childhood here?” she asked.
He frowned as if that were a strange question. “As the son of a laird, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with no one to gainsay me except my father. And my mother, of course, while she lived.”
He tugged her close, slipping his arm behind her back as he supported her onto a fallen tree trunk. She walked along the top of it with him scrambling beside her on rougher terrain, and she wondered at the image of it. How often did he manage difficult things just so another could have a smooth way?
She slowed her steps as he leaped across a muddy patch. “How did you become like this?” she asked, unable to express her thoughts clearly. “Helping everyone else? Making plans for your people?” Marrying her for their benefit?
“What else would the son of a laird do?”
They made it to the far side of the muddy creek—what she had walked safely across on the tree trunk—and so she jumped down to face him on level ground. She did not mince her words. They were too unformed for her to find them delicately.
“Your father is a boor.” Surely he knew that. “In my experience, sons emulate their fathers. So how are you so different from him?”
He did not shy away from the question, but neither did he speak quickly. He held her gaze and spoke with weight as if her reaction to what he was about to say meant a great deal to him. “The MacCleals were collaborators. We did not fight in Culloden. We were too small a clan to have fierce warriors or great pride. When all our neighbors were being slaughtered, my grandmother hid in a cave with a handful of others. And when the English came, my grandmother claimed this land and the title for herself and the Englishman who wanted her. My father was raised fiercely Scottish by his mother, and yet damns himself for his English blood. He wed a Scotswoman from a dead clan and birthed me. Every day I heard that only the living can revive Scotland. A dead man might be honored, but he is useless to getting the day’s food. And so I grew to value staying alive.”
“There is a great deal of difference between living and thriving. You…” She couldn’t shape her thoughts, but he had obviously thought hard about this.
“I plan to thrive,” he explained. “My father sees no more than the food in his belly and the woman plowed by his cock. That will never be enough for me.”
