* * *
In the hall, she pulled the table closer to the window and spread out two strips of fabric, cutting each to the size she had measured with her fingers. Then she picked up a chip of steel from a broken sword and stitched fabric around it, until it was hidden and padded between two pieces of wool.
Carefully, stitch by stitch, piece by piece, she hid the tiny bits of armour between padded cloth. One at a time. Little leftovers. A chip of bone. A scrap of broken armour. Nothing pretty. Nothing whole. Just bits and pieces, carried home, buried and hidden as an animal would collect what he needed to survive.
That was how she had survived. Building her armour piece by piece, day by day, word by word. Hiding the fear.
There are ways for men and women to be happy.
Was that still true for her? Was it still possible for her to be like other women?
What will you do when he is dead?
When he was dead, everything would be different. But when she tried to picture how, she could imagine no life other than the one she lived. Could not picture joy at joining.
Desire had flared when she kissed John, something she thought never to feel again. What if she could feel that without fear? Perhaps she ought to start finding out now.
She pushed the thought away, but it kept creeping back as her fingers moved, silently selecting and stitching each piece into his vest.
She had trained the others, trained them so well that none dared approach her. But though John said she was not like other women, he still imagined her as a woman who could be touched and kissed...
And more.
She said he was like other men, but that was not true. She wasn’t sure, exactly, who this man was, stubborn as a Brunson born, but gentle with her. Gentle but with insistent eyes and tender hands and compelling lips.
And when he had kissed her by the stream, for just a moment, before the fear returned, there had been only John and Cate and joy. Was life truly like that for other women?
If she let herself... If she let him kiss her again, she might discover whether she had healed at all. Or whether she could.
And if not, she could be Braw Cate still, for no matter what she discovered, he would be gone back to the court and its women, not here to remind her of her failure or press his success.
The realisation was not as reassuring as she had hoped.
* * *
Cate found him on the parapet that night, taking the first watch. Behind the fog, the moon was creeping back to its light, but the night was cool and damp, as if winter were testing its time.
She hugged her plaide tighter. ‘A good night for the seat,’ she said.
He rose from the watchman’s seat, tucked against the chimney so his back was warmed, and smiled. ‘Stirling Castle boasts no such luxury.’
Lantern light flickered over his smile. In a life in which smiles had been scarce, it was part of him she cherished most.
‘Does your arm heal?’
He waved it, as if to brush off the question. ‘It will.’
She looked out over the parapet, not knowing what to say next. Fog hugged the hills, hiding anyone who dared ride that night. But it also seemed a shield, hiding them.
There are ways to be happy. Could she learn them?
‘You apologised today,’ she began. ‘For...’ How hard it was, to speak of it when he was close, warm, solid beside her. ‘For kissing me.’
‘Yes.’ The word was wary, as if he expected her to demand further penance.
She lifted her head, trying to see his eyes in the dark. ‘You gave me your word and I release you from it.’
‘You mean I may touch you?’
‘Yes.’ She held out her hand.
He hesitated, but then enfolded it in his. ‘Like this.’
She nodded. ‘And you may...kiss me.’ She tried to force her coiled muscles to relax, in case he chose to kiss her immediately.
He nodded, slowly, but didn’t move. ‘I see. And what has changed since this morning that I might touch you and keep my manhood intact?’
Either he was laughing at her or he was suspicious. Well, she had given him reason for both. But she squeezed the hand that held hers, warm. ‘You said men and women could be happy.’
‘Aye, yes, hinny,’ he said, in a voice as warm as his hand. ‘The loving moments a man and woman spend in bed can make the rest of life worthwhile.’
It was a foreign language, the very idea. ‘I do not want that.’ Not yet, her mind yelled back. ‘But another kiss, yes, perhaps.’
‘And you’d like it now?’
He was laughing at her. Yet he made no move, waiting for permission.
She hesitated. Was she ready? What if...?
No. No more hesitation. ‘Yes. Now.’
He put an arm around her waist, gently, and stroked the hair away from her forehead with his fingertips. ‘These things must not be rushed.’
His touch was light, a whisper, as if he knew not to grab and thrust. His very slowness allowed her feelings to stir to life.
He did not take her lips, but pressed his to her forehead, down her temple, nibbling around her ear, slow, soft, yet relentless. Inside something shifted, like ice breaking on the river, exposing the running stream, still flowing beneath it.
Somehow, his hands moved, too, up and down her back, stroking her sleeves, warming her skin until it tingled.
Her lips parted, expecting to meet his, but he worked his way around her face, her cheek, down her throat and she shivered. Then he came up the other side until she was impatient, reaching for his cheek to force his lips to hers.
But he escaped her touch and bypassed her lips again, ending on her forehead where he began. Then he let her go.
Immediately, she missed him.
His smile wobbled. ‘We had best begin slowly.’
‘But...’ She was eager now. His forbearance was her frustration. He had taken her mouth before, touched her. She had already done more, already wanted more. ‘I wanted a kiss. Like the one you gave me before.’
‘You did not want it...before.’
Yes, she had pulled away from him at the stream, but not until she’d glimpsed that happiness he had promised. She wanted it again.
‘I won’t resist. Not this time.’ She clenched her fists. No matter what.
‘Put your hands behind your back,’ he said.
She did, slowly, immediately feeling vulnerable, then saw him do the same.
‘Now I’ll kiss you.’ He leaned towards her, taking her lips without taking her in his arms. So all she would have to do was lean back if she wanted to escape.
She did not want to escape.
His mouth caressed hers, soft, warm, and then he tasted her with his tongue and she felt that touch in parts of her body far distant from her lips. His mouth did not move from hers and she wanted to be closer, wanted the strength of those arms so cruelly denied her. Wanted the rest of his body pressing against hers.
She unclasped her hands and threaded them under his, around his waist, pulling him to her, expecting his arms to follow. They did not. But both of them breathed harder, his tongue explored her as she wanted his hands to do—
Then he broke her hold and stood straight. ‘We’ll continue...another time.’ His words were breathless.
She clenched her fist and raised it, not to fight him off. To pummel his arm in frustration.
She dropped her hand and looked up, absorbing his face. The lopsided smile, the eyes, grey-blue like a stone, but softer.
Had they seen directly into her? Yet no judgement touched his gaze. He stroked her hair again with the same tenderness as when he started. His kiss had been fervent, not brutal. And it had been pleasant. More than pleasant. So wonderful that she forgot...
Somehow, he had known how to make her forget. And when to stop so that she would not remember.
She cleared her throat. ‘I can see how that might make a body...happy. Thank you.’
And she couldn’t even tell him al
l the reasons.
Chapter Eleven
Cate had no nightmares that night. And her first thought on waking was how bright the late-September sun shone.
‘That’s a pretty tune you’re humming,’ Bessie said as she rose and pulled on an extra petycote.
‘Was I?’ She had not thought of humming at all. Was this what Johnnie had done for her?
She reached for her comb and pulled it through her hair. It had grown two inches below her ears now, long enough that she should cut it again, but she looked at Bessie’s thick, red locks, tumbling halfway down her back, and paused.
‘Bessie, do you think I’m pretty?’
Bessie smoothed down her skirts with a great sigh. ‘It’s not me you should be asking.’
Cate turned away, feeling her face flush, and put down the comb. It did not matter how she looked, if she did not want to be noticed. ‘It was a foolish question.’
‘He looks at you as if you are.’
He. So even Bessie could follow thoughts Cate could not recognise as her own.
For two years, she had been sure that she would never be a woman again.
Now Johnnie had given her hope.
She did not know how to add this small spark of happiness to the mix of fear and anger that fuelled her. It perched uneasily in her breast, as out of place as the sun at midnight. It burned not like the hot, destructive rage that had driven her, but more like the warm glow of a fire on a cold winter’s night, offering sanctuary from the harshness of life.
Offering the happiness Johnnie spoke of.
For those few moments in his arms, there had been nothing but her and him and the kiss. Pain, vengeance, all the things that had filled her very body for two years were pushed aside. Past pain, future worry, all gone.
But for how long?
Yes, he had shown her a small piece of pleasure, like a sunny day or a good stew. But the sun would set. A sated stomach would be hungry again.
Pleasure did not last.
She had learned that when she had used those brief moments to pull herself out of despair. They didn’t last, but they served as rungs on the ladder that helped her escape the pit. Could this do the same?
She followed Bessie downstairs, trying to put him out of her mind. But she had promised him the vest, so she bent over the garment that would protect his back, shelter his shoulders and shield his heart.
With Belde at her feet, she worked in the hall, where the sole fire burned, as the household came and went throughout the day. She knew without looking when he entered the hall. She glanced over, trying not to turn her head, not wanting him to know she watched him, but he caught her eye and she turned away, embarrassed to be caught staring at him.
Her fear of him had ebbed in one way, yet today, she feared something new.
Johnnie Brunson was a man who knew too much about women. For the last two years, she had held her armour strong against the rest of the world. He was chipping away at it, piece by piece, making her want, even making her believe she might find happiness with a man.
With him.
And now, instead of being brave, she was glancing at him beneath her lashes, hoping to see some yearning in his eyes, acting as if she were an ordinary woman who might some day enjoy the ordinary happiness Johnnie spoke of so temptingly.
Scolding herself, she turned her back on him and looked down at the vest. His vest. His fault to remind her of what she could never have and would never be. She had been content before he came, with one purpose in life and that was revenge.
Now he had upset it all.
She had wondered whether she might ever enjoy a kiss again. Now she knew. She could, when he did not hold her in his arms.
It seemed her body would resist men for ever, even if her mind, even if her heart, did not.
Nothing was going to change that. Not even Johnnie Brunson.
* * *
John watched Cate for days, trying to understand this strange, maddening woman. The first time they had met, she had threatened him, swearing no man would ever touch her. And from everything he could tell, no man did. She had the temperament of a warrior and the habits of a nun.
But gradually, they had made a truce. She had shared none of her secrets, but he had come to care for her. To wish for her happiness.
And now, she had come to him, asking for a little of that pleasure he had promised. Asking him for something she’d taken from no other man.
For something that made him feel as if he belonged.
A frightening thought. There was nothing for him here. Nothing but to serve the king and leave.
But his duty had faded for the moment. All he could think of was Cate.
Why should a simple kiss affect him so? He’d kissed women aplenty. It was, as he told her, pleasant. A moment of happiness.
Why did it feel like more with her?
Because there was still something, some missing piece he did not understand. Something that lay behind her devotion to family and her quest for revenge. Something that meant he could not hold her too close or too tight.
But he had promised not to touch her and he had kept his word, for the most part, until she came to him. Until she asked him to. But now that she had, he wanted to kiss her again.
Wanted more than that.
And now, she sat, day after day, remaking a vest for him that he did not want and did not need. Working for hours as if she cared for his safety, but barely glancing up when he found an excuse to wander into the hall.
He was a man who prided himself on understanding women, but this one confounded everything he thought he knew.
* * *
When John walked into the hall late the next day, she rose, finally looking at him again.
‘Here,’ she said, holding the vest up to his chest, eyeing it as if wondering whether she had measured correctly. It was so heavy, it took both her hands. ‘Try it on.’
He reached for it and slung it over his shoulders, shrugging it into proper position, amazed that, despite the weight, it was supple, moulding to his torso, more comfortable than armour would ever be.
She smiled and nodded at her handiwork, plucking and fussing with threads he could not see, pinching and tugging at the fabric to see whether she must do more work before it fitted him properly. ‘I put new pieces down the side to hide them.’
The new material ran like a stripe from armpit to waist. Beside the rest, stained with sweat, snow and blood, it looked clean as a babe’s bottom. ‘I am new to this.’ He sighed. ‘No sleight of hand will hide that.’
She reached for the ties, tucking the ends of the bows beneath the vest, her fingers flickering on his chest. He cleared his throat, forcing his arms to remain at his side.
‘Whose was it?’ he asked to distract himself. The previous owner must have been a long-waisted man, though narrower in the chest than John.
Silent, she finished the last tie, patted his chest and looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time. ‘Red
Geordie Brunson’s.’
His father’s vest seemed to sear his back. ‘I can’t wear this.’
‘Why not?’
He fumbled at the ties, trying to free himself. ‘It doesn’t belong to me.’
She wrestled the strips of fabric away from his awkward fingers and tied them again, in knots this time. ‘Red Geordie’s got no more use for it. You do.’
‘Rob would not approve.’ You’re no longer a Brunson.
‘It’s been hung in the armoury. That means it’s there for the next man who needs it. That man is you.’
Everything tangled together, tight as the knots she tied. The raid, the feeling of belonging that had swept over him as he rode beside his brother, the man he’d killed. And then, there was Cate. No. First there was Cate. Cate was the reason he had ridden with them. Cate was the reason he had killed the man.
‘I have not earned the right to wear this,’ he said. He was no Brunson. Rob had made that clear. Donning his father’s vest would not c
hange it.
She shook her head. ‘You do not have to earn it.’ She finished the knot and stood back. ‘You were born to it.’
He shook his head. ‘Not me. Not this.’ He turned away, without a word of thanks, leaving her alone in the hall.
But he still wore the vest.
* * *
Her nightmare came again that night, days after the raid was over and she was safe behind the tower walls.
Cate woke, eyes wide in the darkness, recognising the feel of her bed, the look of the ceiling and the sound of Bessie breathing beside her.
She had screamed only in her dream, then. Bessie still slept.
Cate did not rise to wander this time, but turned on her side and reached for Belde, reassured by the feel of his fur against her palm. She stroked his back, shook his ears and let him nudge her hand with his cold nose.
It had been two years. She counted herself cured. But in those dreams, Braw Cate disappeared and only worthless, shivering fear remained.
‘Are you going to tell him?’
Bessie’s voice from the other side of the bed was calm and steady. Not asleep then.
‘Tell him?’ Caught unawares, Cate’s cheeks burned and her heart pounded in her ears. ‘Tell him what?’ She did not need to ask tell who. ‘He knows I have bad dreams.’
‘I don’t mean the dreams. Does he know what causes them?’
Cate lay in endless silence, eyes open, hand over her mouth, staring into darkness and realising that all this time, the secret she had gripped so tightly had been no secret at all.
‘How did you know?’ she asked finally.
Neither of them had moved. They lay, back to back, speaking softly in the darkness as if all would be ignored on the morrow, just as it had been until now.
She felt a shrug of Bessie’s shoulders.
‘Did I... In my sleep...?’
A movement against the pillow as Bessie shook her head. ‘But I’m a woman.’
‘Who else knows?’ Panic now. ‘The men, too?’ She could not bear it if every man of them had looked at her, knowing, thinking, wondering...
‘I’ve said nothing.’ Bessie turned over on her back. ‘And they would never expect it. Not from a Border man.’
Cate had a vision, suddenly, of Black Annie, silent, beside her husband. Bessie’s mother had barely said a private word to Cate in the year she had been with them before the woman’s death. But when Cate stood before Red Geordie, it was Black Annie who had lifted her gaze to her husband and nodded just before he said yes. Had Black Annie seen what Cate had thought hidden? Had she told her husband?
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