"Better?"he asked.
"Aye, thank ye," she admitted.
He pulled the low stool to the side of the tub, sat, rolled up his sleeves, and reached for the soap.
"I can bathe myself," Una said.
"But I want to touch ye, wife.I'll wash yer hair.I promise I'll do nothing more."
Una considered arguing.Her reluctance lasted four seconds before his fingers moved against her scalp and dissolved it entirely.She closed her eyes and let him.
Cormac was careful with her.He washed her hair and rinsed it, then massaged her shoulders and lower back with slow, unhurried hands, and she sat in the steam and felt the soreness ease.
When his hands moved a little too close to her sensitive areas, she slapped them away.Cormac chuckled and kissed her shoulder.
"I owe ye an apology, wife," he said, after a while.
"For last night?"
"Aye, for not having enough control around ye when ye were new to it all."
Una saw the amusement in his expression and just shook her head.
"Well, I cannot put all the blame on ye.And despite the slight ache," she said, "I have no other complaints, husband."
His hands stilled a moment on her shoulder.Then resumed."I'll take that," he replied.
She turned her head to look at him."Ye're not really sorry, are ye?"
"That ye're sore, aye, I am sorry, and I'll have a care to take better care, even when ye're begging me to give ye more pleasure.But for the rest of our wedding night ...not at all."
Una replied, "Well, if ye weren't so good at it, once would've been enough."
Cormac chuckled."I'll try to underperform next time.Would that help?"
To that he got a wet cloth slapped across his face, which only made him laugh harder.
***
The Journey to Edinburgh
AN HOUR LATER THEYwere dressed, saddled, and ready.
Cormac was waiting in the yard when Una came downstairs.Her travel bag was already loaded in the back of a cart alongside Bella's boist packed with everything she might need, and a second bag holding the garments Cormac had provided along the road, including the dress she had been wearing the morning she was taken.That dress had been washed, mended, and folded with the rest.She had not remarked on it, and neither had he.
He handed her up into the cart, then produced a small, wrapped parcel from his coat and set it in her lap.
She unwrapped it.A compact sewing kit: bone-handled needle case, scissors on a ribbon, a paper of pins, two spools of thread.
"I spoke to Maisie," he said."She had most of it.The needles came from a peddler."
"Ye went out and found a peddler this morning."
"He was not difficult to find."He checked the cart horse's traces without looking at her."Ye'll need something to do with yer hands on the road."
Una looked down at the kit and felt something press warm against her ribs.
"Thank ye," she said quietly.
