“I'm so sorry,” he murmured.
Ava opened an eye to look at him curiously.
“Why?”
“Because I hurt you. Because I didn't intend to—”
“Tell me something. What would you have done differently if I were a virgin? If I hadn't lost a little bit of blood and had a little bit of pain that was no worse than barking my shin?”
Nicholas hesitated. The right answer would have been to say that he wouldn't have taken her at all. He was always a man who tried to be truthful with himself, however, and he knew that was a lie.
“I would have been slower. Been gentler with you.”
Ava smiled a little, and Nicholas felt something inside himself uncoil with relief. Had he truly thought that she would never smile at him again? Why had that frightened him so?
“But you would have done it anyway.”
“Yes. Unless you had told me to stop.”
“Then it's all the same, isn't it?” Ava pushed his hand away, sitting up and reaching for her clothes again.
Nicholas scowled.
“It isn't. Ava, what we've done... Surely, you know that it's not right. When you marry...”
She pulled her tunic over her head, and her blue eyes were stormy.
“I steal cattle for a man who sits up in the mountain and laughs at the people drowning in the valley. Right and wrong don't mean the same thing to me that they do to you, Englishman. And what makes right and wrong to me isn't even the same as what it is for other women in the Highlands. I don't need you to get worried and fretful about what you did to me! You didn't do anything to me; we did something together.”
She turned away to put on her trews, and Nicholas was struck by her bare nape, so white against her dark hair. He acted on instinct, coming up to wrap his arms around her, pressing his lips to that skin. He thought that she might try to fight him, but after a moment where she stood stock still, she relaxed against him.
“You can tell me that you are sorry we did what we did. I expected it, really.”
“Why in the blazes would I be sorry, Ava?” Nicholas growled, and he felt her laugh run through her body.
“You sound sorry.”
“I'm not. I'm angry with myself. I'm... worried about you, and how what we've done might affect your future, and—”
She broke away from him with ease, leaving him holding nothing as she reached for her shoes. It was as if a wall had come down between them. She was close, so close, and somehow as untouchable as if there was a thick layer of perfectly clear ice between them. He thought that if he reached over to touch her, his fingers would have come back bitten with frost.
“Save it for some girl who does what you expect her to do after you ravish her, Englishman.”
“Ava...”
“I'm serious. Did you truly expect to come back and find me in shock at what a horrible thing you did to me? Did you expect me to need to be fawned over and comforted? We did a thing that we both wanted, at least, we wanted it last night. Today, I'm fine, and obviously, you are having second thoughts. That is not something that concerns me.”
“It's not second thoughts!”
“No? That's what it sounds like.” Ava's mouth twisted into a harsh line, and she glared at him.
“Did you expect me to cry, Nicholas? Would that have pleased you more?”
“No!”
She shook her head, a slight smile on her face. There was nothing humorous in it, however. It looked like it hurt.
“You're worried about my future? Well, stop. Because this? What you've seen here today, and yesterday, and tomorrow? This is what I have. There's nothing else.”
“Ava.”
“No.” The look she gave him froze him in his tracks, took the words out of his mouth, and left a gaping hole where his heart should have been.
“No,” Ava repeated. “Don't worry about my future. As far as anyone is concerned? I haven't got one.”
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chapter 15
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The sun never came out, something that suited Ava's mood. The sky was a deep and leaden gray, and the heavy and threatening clouds felt like they would fall upon their heads at any moment. Once in a while, splatters of water struck them, never enough to warrant more cover, always enough to be just a little uncomfortable.
After their confrontation that morning, Ava kept Cobie between herself and Nicholas, and when he tried to speak with her, especially when it looked like he was going to try to apologize for this or that, she only answered him with a single word at most.
So, I've finally become the whore they already thought I was. So what?
She could have told Nicholas that it would hardly destroy her. As far as anyone who cared about such things went, she had been ruined since the age of fifteen, when she decided to do what she was good at rather than sitting at home to be one more artifact in her father's keep up in the mountain. Some would say she had been ruined well before that, by being a Blair.
Nicholas seemed stricken with some sort of idea that she was a delicate flower of the kind she had heard abounded in England, where women were kept close to the home and not even allowed to work when it might have saved their families.
The thought that Nicholas thought her fragile and frail was infuriating, but at the same time, something about it made her feel more uneasy than she would have expected to. No one thought she was frail or fragile. No one had touched her with as much tenderness as Nicholas had, even when they had been lost to the throes of passion. And then this morning...
On the other side of the wall that was Cobie, Ava shook her head as if that might get the memory of this morning out of her head. That wasn't how memories worked, however. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel him laying her back down on their pallet, opening her, tending to her as carefully as he might... Well...
As though she were someone he cared about.
If she thought about that too long, if she lingered over the thought, it ached. It made her think of being six and prodding at a sore tooth until it finally came loose. Poking at a loose tooth had a kind of grim fascination to it. After her tooth had come loose, old Agatha, who had died not long after, had showed her how to make a wishing charm from her teeth and some black pebbles tied with mountain herbs.
Ava didn't know what would come loose if she prodded at that memory too much. It made her chest feel too tight, and it made the back of her throat and her eyes ache.
He's only guilty about what he's done. The English see their women as property, and he's likely worried about reducing my value, as if I were a horse he had ridden lame.
Ava tried to hang on to that thought tightly. It made her square her shoulders against the pain that was so strange and puzzling to her. It wasn't as if people had never said crueler things to her in the past or implied she had done worse.
I will admit that sleeping with an Englishman wasn't on the list of likely crimes I would commit...
The thought made her sneak a look at Nicholas, who was watching her with a thoughtful look in his eyes.
“What?” she said, her voice coming out more snappish than she thought it would.
Nicholas didn't draw away from her or make some ridiculous comment about how she didn't have to snap at him for no reason.
“Nothing at all. I like looking at you.”
What struck her at that moment was how he didn't say it. It wasn't a flowery compliment that was meant to woo her, and it wasn't some kind of joke at her expense. He said it as calmly as he might have said that the sky was blue or that the mountain was tall. He liked looking at her, and for some reason, that brought a flush of heat to her face.
She jerked her gaze back to the road in front of them, and though she might have given a great deal for Nicholas to shut up, he pulled Cobie to a halt, coming around the calm gelding's nose to look at Ava.
“What we did last night... you know that one of the reasons we did it was be
cause I think you're beautiful. Do you understand that?”
Ava glared at Nicholas, willing herself to meet his eyes. She wasn't going to let one night turn her into some kind of blushing and simpering creature unable to function just because a man said he thought she was pretty.
“This isn't a conversation that I really care to be having right now.”
She tried to push around him, but to her surprise, Nicholas caught her in his arms. He was strong and fast, pinning her against him so she couldn't struggle. After the first moment or so, she forgot her urge to kick him. Instead, her body was flooded with a rush of remembered sensation. She could remember what he felt like giving her that tide of pleasure, how she had shouted his name until the cave echoed with it.
Nicholas used her distraction to his advantage, reaching up to touch her face with a sort of aching gentleness.
“Ava... You do know that, don't you?”
Ava shook her head hard.
“You forget that I have been roaming the North with a pack of brigands since I was old enough to defend myself,” she spat. “I know how men talk when there is no one they consider a woman around. I know how they share their conquests and disappointments, and what draws them to a bed. Most of the time, all that matters to them is that a girl is halfway willing and doesn't have a male relative who will come after his head.”
Nicholas flinched, but he did not let her go.
“I have known men like that,” he admitted. “Too many. Is that who you think I am?”
Ava's jaw tightened. For a moment, the snake-meanness that sometimes lived right under her skin made her want to say yes. At the same time, however, she knew that would have been untrue and unfair.
She would have said that truth and fairness were never things that she spent much time worrying about, but she still didn't want to say it.
“No. I don't think that.”
“Thank Heaven for that. And I am telling the truth. I would never have done what I did with you if I did not think you were beautiful. If I did not have some regard for you.”
Ava lifted her chin, refusing to give in to the mysterious urge to hold him tighter. She was suddenly afraid of what might happen if he kept holding on to her. What might she do or say?
“Perhaps you should have asked if I felt the same way.”
Nicholas scowled.
“What are you talking about?”
“I may have been a virgin, Englishman, but I'm no innocent. I allowed what we did because I wanted to know what all this business was that my men kept calling the reason for living. And you weren't going to carry tales to the people who matter or think less of me when I say we need to go west for the raiding rather than east. You smell a little better, too.”
Nicholas looked at her blankly. His grip on her tightened for a moment, and then he let her go entirely. She was surprised by how open he was to her, how clearly she could read the doubt and hurt in his face.
“You're saying I was... something new to try?”
“I'm saying that if I was going to try what we did last night, you were the safest person I could have picked.”
Ava forced herself to grin. It seemed like just a little while ago, she had been as devil-may-care as the wind, nothing more in her head but the next raid, the next rise over the hill. Somehow, Nicholas had changed all that, and it was never harder to smile at him.
Nicholas swallowed, pulling back a little.
“I am pleased that I have been of service,” he said, his English accent never more apparent.
He went back to the opposite side of Cobie, and they continued on their way.
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chapter 16
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The rain started sometime around midday, but Nicholas didn't feel like stopping to find shelter. It seemed like Ava was no more inclined to do so, and the two of them walked forward through the drizzle.
The rain suited Nicholas's mood, drumming down on him, slowly soaking through his hair and his skin. He told himself he didn't believe what Ava had said, but when he thought about it, he wasn't sure. Was he just something she wanted to try? Had what they had done together meant so very little to her?
Everything in his heart and his soul said no. They had shared something in the cave that he had never encountered before. He had tumbled his share of women, but there was nothing in the world that even compared to how hot he had burned with Ava.
When she looked up at him with that wonder in her eyes, it was as if something inside him flew into her. It would never be his again. There would always be a part of him that belonged to her, and such was her hold on him that he didn't even want it back.
So what did it mean if she thought of him as something interesting to pass the time and nothing else?
Ava was someone entirely unlike anyone he had ever known. She had more in common with the young knights he had trained in the past, reckless, bright, brave to a fault and with a kind of callousness that came from a sense of their own invincibility. She was far from the maids he had slept with or even the odd noblewoman.
No, that still wasn't right. She was like no one but herself, and that was what had drawn him to her in the first place. He had never met someone like Ava Fitzpatrick before, and somewhere deep in his heart, he knew that he never would again. She was perfectly unique, perfectly herself, and at the end of it all, he didn't even want to.
And she thought he was a momentary pleasure. A distraction.
The rain came down harder, and Nicholas knew that at some point, they would have to stop to find shelter. Setting a camp would be miserable in the rain, and he couldn't hope that they would find another convenient cave.
He opened his mouth to say so to Ava, but then with a boom like a war drum, a fork of white bright lightning flashed across the sky. The boom was enough to deafen Nicholas for a moment, the lightning almost blinding, and then Cobie trumpeted like a war stallion and rose up on his hind legs, lashing out with a strength and speed that seemed unnatural in so large and slow an animal.
For one terrible moment, Nicholas thought that one of the gelding's heavy hooves had struck out at Ava, catching her hard on the temple, but then he saw that somehow, she was between the horse's hooves, reaching for the bridle.
“Ava! Get away!”
Of course, if she had listened to a word he said, she wouldn't be Ava Fitzpatrick, and that was as terrifying as it was frustrating. Cobie tossed his head, refusing to let her get a grip on his bridle, and then with a turn Nicholas would scarcely credit to the beast, he dashed for the tree line.
Nicholas stared after the horse as the rain seemed to come down even harder, but Ava was after him in a flash, turning her head to call back to Nicholas,
“There are too many cliffs and ravines here! If we don't catch him, he'll break a leg!”
Nicholas followed Ava, because he knew she was right. Losing Cobie meant that their speed would be slowed, it would make them vulnerable to people on the road who saw those walking as easy bait, and he had tools and gear on the horse that he could ill-afford to lose.
Underneath the trees, it was dark, made even worse by the leaden sky above. Nicholas was suddenly grateful that Cobie was what he was. There were slender horses that could twist through the trees like deer, and no matter how fast their riders were, they might never be caught.
Cobie on the other hand, was built like a battering ram, and it was simple to follow the path he had crashed through the underbrush. Nicholas prayed that the horse would slow and stop before he came to a ravine or bashed his brains out on some trunk that was heavier and stronger than he was.
Ava was half a step in front of him still when they both heard Cobie's furious scream. Nicholas came around the corner and stared, swearing, and Ava only stared.
In his fury, the big gelding had crashed to the center of a bramble thicket. In this part of the world, brambles could grow to be almost as thick around as the hilt of a sword, lined with thi
ck stinging thorns. They were as tough as leather, and even in the more civilized climes of England, he had seen things that had been caught in the brambles, trapped until they died there.
The brambles that Cobie had crashed into looked acres wide, creeping along the ground and grown almost to waist-height. From where he stood, he could see that there was already one thick vine wrapped around Cobie's raised leg, and the horse screamed again.
Nicholas had a horrified moment of imagining the gelding trapped until he died, but then Ava was lunging forward.
“Ava! For the love of Heaven, don't!”
“I can get him out!” Ava called back. “I can— Oh!”
She swore as one of the thinner whippy wands swung back against her hand. Even from his vantage point, Nicholas could see a deep scratch across the back of her hand, welling up with blood immediately.
“I can get him!” Ava repeated. “I just need to be careful!”
Swearing, Nicholas wrapped his cloak as closely around him as he could and waded into the brambles as well. He was too big to move as quickly as Ava could. He was barely properly entered into the mess before she was right underneath Cobie again. He could hear Ava coaxing the big horse with her hand held out, speaking as calmly as she could, trying to bring him out of the rage of fear that had captured him.
Nicholas was ready to lunge forward, skin and eyes be damned, if it looked like the gelding was going to lash out at her again. Instead, Cobie slowly settled like a boulder coming to rest, and when he reached down to nuzzle Ava's hand, Nicholas let out a breath that he wasn't aware that he had been holding.
“All right. That's a good boy. That's my good boy,” Ava crooned.
She managed to grab the horse's reins, and now she was careful, working her way through the brambles, holding the worst of them aside so that Cobie could make his way through them without injury. It got even easier when they came to Nicholas, and now all three of them were clearing the way back to safety.
The Highlander’s Promise (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book) Page 8
