Thirteen

Sophia hadn’t been expecting the kiss, not consciously, yet from the first brush of Cathal’s lips against hers, it had felt inevitable. There was momentum here, borne from weeks of awareness. It rose within her body and mind alike, blissful heat even in the midst of winter. When Cathal’s tongue slid past her lips, she sighed into his mouth. When his hand splayed out against her back, his fingers brushing the upper swell of her buttocks, she yielded to the gentle pressure and tilted her hips forward.

He was being gentle. Even through his urgency, Sophia could tell that much. This was a man used to sword and armor, capable of deadly strength even in human form, but the arms around her, though firm, didn’t crush her, and neither the hand at her back nor the one cupping her head pressed too hard. His touch was a suggestion, an urging, but there was no force in it, and he kissed her slowly and surely, lips and tongue coaxing her response.

It didn’t take much. Sensation spread out from his hands and mouth, delicious ripples in a pond, and an overpowering wave at the front of her body, where she arched against him with only their clothing in the way. His chest was just as broad and solid as it’d looked, and every breath they took together rubbed her breasts against it, until her nipples were stiff and pushing at her gown. If not for her cloak, she realized, Cathal could have seen them clearly. The thought sent a dizzy wave through her body, even as she blushed. She wanted him to see—to know the effect he was having, even if she suspected she was making it obvious already, panting and clinging to him as she was.

His own response was obvious: the ridge that nudged at her stomach, hard against her even through their layers of clothing. The cloth concealed size and shape to a degree, and Sophia’s reading had only revealed so much. Now a certain curiosity mingled with her desire—not one she could gratify, though even approaching the thought sent that giddy feeling through her stomach again and made her sex pulse.

Settling for a more minor experiment, she ran her fingertips up the back of Cathal’s neck, tracing the line of his backbone up under his hair, then around to the spot behind his ear. Confirmation came in the involuntary flex of his arms around her, the clenching of his hands, and a sudden depth and hunger to his kiss, catching her by surprise but raising no objections. She couldn’t imagine objecting to anything. She couldn’t imagine anything but wanting.

“Sophia!”

The voice, usually welcome, fell on her ears like the yowl of a starving cat.

Sophia had time to step back, even if she nearly tripped over her gown in the process, and time to spot Alice, coming around from behind a tree with a small collection of plants in her hands. She even had a moment to pat at her wimple, as if that would help matters, and to answer in a voice that sounded vaguely normal. “Right here… Are you well?”

“Of course. But I found these, and I didn’t know whether they were the sort of thing you were looking for.” Approaching, Alice held out a selection of short branches, their leaves shiny and green despite the cold. “You should have brought a book for me. With illustrations.”

“There were plenty of books back home with illustrations, or where do you think I learned from?” Sophia headed quickly to her friend, putting distance between herself and Cathal without looking back. It was a relief to have the excuse and to have a reason for a flippant response.

Even so, Alice didn’t speak for a moment. Sophia felt those sharp blue eyes on her face, where she suspected her cheeks were still flushed, and where her lips still felt the memory of Cathal’s. Her eyes might have yet been glassy with desire too, so she kept her gaze carefully on the plants that Alice was holding out. She might have frozen to death, had she stood there naked, but she was certain she wouldn’t have felt more exposed.

Just at the moment, the cold was itself welcome. The heat in her body was subsiding, flame returning to embers, but it was still very much present. Sophia took a long breath of chilly air.

“Well?”

She blinked at Alice. “Um…”

Alice shook the handful of stems. “Are these useful, or do we leave them for…well, not wolves, I’d imagine. Deer?”

“I don’t know.” Scholarship, like the cold, was a handy path back to calm, a return to the world she knew. Sophia took the plants and was glad that her hands didn’t tremble. “These are unfamiliar to me as well, and yet I think worth at least bringing them back. I can consult my books or ask Donnag, and in any case, a thing that retains life in adversity is almost certain to be of use in our current matter.”

“If you say so,” Alice said and took the plants back. “Not that I’ll say anything against tenacity. It’s served us well so far.”

“Endurance,” said Cathal, and his voice sent a shiver through Sophia’s body. “Patience. My father would approve.”

“Well, and as he was the man we came to see,” Alice said, “that’s an excellent recommendation. I’m sure those qualities come much more easily to him—and to you—than they do to us, for all I was praising them earlier.”

“To him, perhaps. You both strike me as ladies of strong will,” said Cathal.

Sophia busied herself arranging what she’d picked, still not trusting herself to look into his face. He was the opposite of a gorgon, and she a very odd Perseus, and yet the effect was the same. She did see Alice tilt her head, though, before she replied.

“For humans, perhaps,” her friend said, polite and not openly unfriendly. “But to creatures like your family, I’m sure we’re very impulsive. And very…brief.”

“I think,” Sophia said, raising her head at last because she couldn’t kick Alice in the ankle without being obvious about it, “that perhaps we should go back. We have what we came for.”

“We do indeed,” said Alice. “And it doesn’t do to exhaust ourselves.”

* * *

“Was that completely necessary?”

Sophia had to walk back, making polite conversation the whole time, and then pull Alice into the corner beside the fireplace before she could actually ask. After so much time, a lesser woman might have found the question confusing. A different woman might have pretended to.

“If I hadn’t thought so, do you think I’d have said it?” Alice replied unflinchingly and almost immediately.

“I know what you thought. I asked in the hope that you’d think twice, vain though that hope may be.”

“Ah, well, if we’re on the subject of thinking twice…or even once…”

Heat swept over Sophia’s face, completely unrelated to the fire near at hand. She couldn’t even protest that Alice was unjust. She hadn’t thought very much when she’d been in Cathal’s arms, and certainly not of anything beyond the two of them. In truth, that had been part of the allure. “I know,” she interrupted. “And nothing happened, not truly.”

Had she been younger, or Christian, or heaven forbid, a lady, that might not have been true, even out in this near-wilderness. Looked at from a distance, what had passed between her and Cathal had been only a kiss, such as any lord might steal from a dairymaid or a farmer’s daughter—not quite the best of behavior, but easy enough to let slip past. She had no high relations to take offense, and she doubted he had enough chivalry to feel he had to make any gestures, but thought he did have enough to keep from trying for anything more.

If she let herself feel disappointed about that, Alice would certainly have a few words on the subject.

As it was, her friend sighed and shook her head. “I’d say you should have been more thoughtless at home—or at least in France—rather than spending so much time in your books. Not that you should have been truly improper, mind, but…at least you’d have a few callouses built up, yes? Useful around men like Sir Cathal.”

“You sound like I’m thirteen or fresh from a convent. You know that isn’t so.”

“I know that smiling at a few boys down the street and then going back to your studies doesn’t count for much.” Alice put a hand on Sophia’s arm. “I know that you’ve got freedom out here, and time to use it. And I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be tempted either, if I were in your shoes. But I also know that he’s not human. If he were human, he’d still be Sir Cathal MacAlasdair, and you’d be Sophia Metzger, and you know very well what I’m getting at.”

“I know.” Sophia wrapped her arms around herself, but managed a smile and a little laugh. “Alice, it’s not as though I think I’m going to marry the man. I don’t dwell in books all the time.”

“No,” said Alice slowly, “no, I don’t think that. You neglect yourself, but you’ve never been sentimental before.”

“And I have no intention of starting now, or with him.”

“I believe you. Does he know that?”

“I…” Sophia considered the question as best she could, though it came with disconcerting memories of the look on Cathal’s face just before he kissed her, and of being warm and wanted in his arms. Sophia shook her head quickly. “I very much doubt he thinks I’m mad,” she said acerbically, “and I’m certain he knows I’d have to be to imagine that there’d ever be anything…significant between us.”

Alice nodded. “Just as long as he considers what’s…significant”—her arched eyebrows and pursed mouth gave the word an unmistakable meaning—“to you. He’s a man, remember?”

“You think we’d be here if that had slipped my mind?”

“And he doesn’t seem the forceful sort, I’ll give him that…not that they always do.” Memory thinned Alice’s lips and drew a sympathetic noise from Sophia. Being unmarried, she hadn’t heard as much of the gossip back home, but she knew enough. Alice went on. “But he’s lord of this place—in fact right now, if not in title—and he’s got plenty of opportunities to be persuasive…and he might not really think anything of the risks you’d be taking. I thought it was worth reminding him. I still do.”

“Not so many risks,” Sophia said, her voice falling as she looked into the fire. She’d made her choices long ago. Few men wanted a scholarly wife, and her studies had left little time for courtship. In the right frame of mind, she counted herself lucky that she’d had the choice to make, that with one daughter married and two sons, her family had been both able and inclined to allow for an unwed scholar. But on some nights, and on a certain sort of gray afternoon, she couldn’t keep her mind from wondering about the untrodden path. “It isn’t as though the rabbi will have a list of men for my father when I go back, is it? And at my age, it’s hardly likely that—”

The hand on her forearm gave it a gentle slap. “‘Hardly likely’ is still possible, and you know it almost as well as I do. Remember Madame Laurent? Forty-five and twins.”

“I remember,” said Sophia, who’d gone in with salves and potions to help the midwife. It had been a long night, but the yelling of healthy babes—and the look on Madame Laurent’s face—had been reward enough.

“So. And you never know—if you were at home, you might change your mind. You’re not a hag, you know, and this isn’t so scandalous that a man might not overlook it…maybe a widower, one who had his own life too.”

“The world does contain many things,” said Sophia, the nearest she could come to equaling her friend’s probably forced optimism and the closest she would get to admitting, either to Alice or herself, how little the prospect appealed to her.

“Well, then.”

“You don’t have to try to convince me. I’m not going to go throwing myself at the lord of the castle out of…of despair or recklessness. It was a moment. I don’t plan to repeat it, and I don’t think I’ll even have the chance.” Sophia managed another smile. “But it is good of you to worry.”

“No, it’s just worried of me to worry.” Alice slipped an arm around her friend’s shoulders.

This time, smiling was easier, and Sophia leaned into the embrace easily. Concern was good, and perhaps the reminder had been necessary. Her own resistance was evidence enough of that.