“And ye?” she asked. “Ye could have any woman in the Highlands.”
“I daenae want any woman.”
The words left him before he had decided to say them, and he felt their weight the moment they landed, surprised at himself for having uttered them so bluntly.
Edith tilted her head slightly, something flickering across her face that he could not immediately read.
“That seems to be a common thing of late,” she said lightly.
His frown deepened. “What do ye mean?”
She hesitated, glancing briefly toward Violet before explaining, “Martin has the same preference. And poor Violet?—”
“He fancied her?” The words came out sharper than Aaron had intended.
Edith blinked at the interruption.
If the healer had eyes for the maid as well, then Aaron would truly have to skin him alive. Him and Caelan.
“Nay,” Edith said. “Shefancied him. Violet, I mean.” A small smile tugged at her mouth. “But I couldnae bear to see her hurt.”
She glanced toward Caelan and Violet again, her smile widening.
“Thank the saints, Caelan swept her off her feet instead.” She laughed softly, the sound warm and entirely unguarded. “I worried for nothing.”
So there is nothing between her and the healer?
The relief that washed over him was immediate and entirely disproportionate to anything he had a right to feel. He hated it.
Daenae ask her.
He fought against himself for clarity.
It shouldnae matter.
“Nothin’ between ye and the healer, then?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Edith looked at him, her expression soft. “Nay,” she said simply.
Something in his chest eased unexpectedly and completely in a way for which he had not braced himself.
He looked at her properly then, really looked, the way he rarely allowed himself to anymore, as though looking too long might reveal something he had spent weeks trying to keep contained.
The firelight from the nearby torches caught her face, the warmth in her eyes, the faint scatter of freckles across her nosethat he had memorized despite every effort not to. Her lips were slightly parted, as though she meant to say something further and had decided against it.
For a brief moment, he considered telling her that he was nothing like the healer. That he had not meant the words he said, and that he indeed wanted a woman. That he only refused it because wanting things had always seemed far more dangerous than duty.
It doesnae matter. She will leave.
The harvest festival was near—a week, perhaps less now. The arrangement would conclude exactly as planned, and she would take her money and her freedom and the life she had built so carefully in her own mind far away from Hallow, far away from him.
“We should return,” he said, the words rougher than he had intended.
He half-expected her to argue the way she usually did, simply to prove that she could.
She did not.
“Aye,” she said quietly. “We should.”
