Page 38 of Connal

He regarded her and loosened his grip. “I wish you let go of me for a few moments.”

“Really?” When he nodded she took her hand from his. “By the way, if you pass out, you’re so big I don’t think I can drag you back down to– Connal.”

Staggering into her, he closed his eyes, so sickened he thought he might boak right there. The moment her hands touched his face the world ceased spinning and tilting.

“No, stay,” he said when she started to draw back. “’Tis you, my lady, truly. I grow sick when you dinnae touch me.”

“You still look terrible,” she said. “We should go back to Dun Ard now.”

“I’ve hardly left the stronghold this past year.” He nodded at the stony outcropping across from the hill where they stood. “Walk with me there, and then we may return.”

Valerie looked for a moment as if she might argue, and then she took a firm grip on his hand. “All right, but if this happens again, I’m taking you home.”

As they walked down the hill to a small valley with grazed grasses and bright clusters of red blooms, Connal’s head cleared entirely. The soft warmth of her hand in his didn’t just reassure him, it seemed to be bracing him in some fashion. He wondered if that had more to do with her than his weakness.

“The bairns you teach, do they favor you greatly?” he asked her.

“They’re not really bairns. They’d be grown men and women in this time,” Valerie said, smiling a little. “I don’t worry about being popular with my students, but only a few have complained about my methods.”

He could easily see her commanding the attention of a roomful of such youths. “’Tis some future manner in which you teach?”

“I have only three rules,” she said. “My students must sit and listen without talking while I teach, turn in their assignments on time, and be respectful to me and each other. If they can go through the entire semester without breaking my rules, they don’t have to take the final exam for my class. For many kids that’s a powerful incentive.”

“What do you when they break your rules?” Connal asked.

“Each time they do it’s a strike––a term from a game in my time that means a failure.” Valerie smiled. “They get a warning on the first strike, and classroom cleaning duty on the second strike. Anyone who gets a third strike serves special detention.”

He grew startled by that. “You imprison them?”

“No, but it’s almost as bad,” she admitted. “I send them to work with the school’s janitor for a week cleaning the entire school. That usually solves the problem, but they also know that they’re not allowed any more strikes after that.”

“’Tis much like Fletcher sending the men who err to scrub out the cisterns,” Connal said. “Yet what do you should they break your rules a fourth time?”

“I meet with their parents and have them transferred to another class.” She wrinkled her nose. “That didn’t made me very popular with the school administration, but I’ve only had to do it twice. To tolerate rule breakers would be disrespectful to the rest of my well-behaved students.”

She fell silent after that until they reached the stone outcropping.

“Still okay?” Valerie asked.

He shrugged. “As long as I hold your hand, I’m well. ’Twas no’ so bad before, only some dizziness.”

“Some dizziness?” She found a patch of grass near the stone shelf and tugged him down beside her. “I can read minds, remember? Your brain was hanging from a rollercoaster upside down while it hurtles off the tracks. I know, you don’t know what that is, but it’s a very bad thing,” she added when he frowned. “Just rest for a little while.”

“’Twould seem you’ve two boons.” A pleasant tiredness came over him, and he lay back and stared up at the sky. “And more wisdom than most. I wish I might see into your thoughts.”

“Here’s the gist: this was a really stupid idea, because we’re probably three miles from the castle, and no one knows where we are.” She stretched out beside him. “Are you really okay with just me holding your hand?”

Connal wondered if he’d ever experienced such contentment. “Aye.”

She turned onto her side. “I won’t peek at your thoughts if you’ll tell me the truth. Whose idea was it to take me on this walk? Fletcher doesn’t like you leaving. Duncan…I don’t know very well. Probably Shaw, then.”

“’Twas my notion,” he told her, and then, because he wanted her to know, he added, “I watched you with Nyall in the ward.”

“Ah.” Valerie made the sound stretch out. “That was awkward. I couldn’t tell before because I haven’t talked much to him, but he’s really intense. I know he doesn’t actually want to get involved with me, and I definitely don’t need a lover, so turning him down was easy. I only hope I didn’t hurt his pride.”

What she said came from her natural kindness; she even worried about harming a man she doubtless disliked. Yet Connal knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“After I lost my wife, my men thought I needed a lover,” he said. “Fletcher took to sending willing young maids to my bed chamber. Shaw convinced our seamstress to offer herself to me when she brought some trews she’d mended. Even Nyall suggested a widow he said wished naught more than comfort me.”