Page 90 of Bane Bloom

“Why did you refuse her?”

His eyes narrowed, and his head tilted. “I wasn’t in love, lass.”

My heart lurched.

“It feels thin there,” he continued while I tried to recover. “I feel thin there. Like I could walk across the surface of the lake. Time doesn’t pass. No one grows older. There are old people there, and young, but they’ve always been so. Folk there are content, but for me it felt like living an echo of a real life. In this way I’m more like my mother than my father.”

“This is why you think you have nothing to give her.” His eyes came to my face. “The woman you wished to abduct. Because you can never leave here. This strange house on a threshold. A home that could be taken from you at any time.”

“Mmm.” Slowly he reached out and took hold of The Lady of the Lake—which I hadn’t realized I was clutching to my chest like a shield—and set it on the bedside table. “You have your answers. Now do as you’ve promised and tell me, why has my mother befriended you? What reason have I not already guessed?”

My hands, having nothing to do now, fumbled and fidgeted in my lap. My voice was unsteady as I replied, “You already know, in fact. She once put it in a letter. A letter I found in my room under her shawl.”

“One that said she would haunt me until she was sure that I’d not live my life alone.”

I gave a faint nod.

“Why are you here, Catherine?” I stared, unable to speak. “In this hut. In my bed. Why didn’t you lock yourself in the house as I asked you to?”

I looked down. “I didn’t wish to be there without you. I came here to . . .” Feel close to you. “Well, I came here so I’d know when you returned.”

He reached out and gently lifted my chin, searching my eyes. My heart leapt against the wall of my chest, and the weak-limbed feeling was back. “You weren’t frightened or repulsed by what you witnessed by the lake?”

I frowned. “Should I have been?”

“Perhaps you are now, after these new things you’ve learned.”

“In fact, no.”

He released my chin, but his hand came to my lap, closing lightly over my two hands, stilling them. “You said something to the queen that I did not expect.”

My breath hitched. “Did I?”

He bent closer. “You told her that you wanted me. What can have made you say such a thing?”

I swallowed dryly. “I wished her to know that I wasn’t after her house.”

Amusement lit his blue eyes. His thumb passed over the back of my hand, and I shivered. “I see. And now what of Hamish Graham? Has he made you an offer of marriage?”

Lifting an eyebrow, I said, “Certainly not. He hardly knows me, nor I him.”

“So I was mistaken. He was holding your hand because it was cold. And he does not wish to make you the new mistress of Graham Farm.”

“I . . . I didn’t say that.”

A smile broke through. If I wasn’t mistaken, the grumpy Viking gardener was toying with me. I couldn’t exactly say I hated it.

“But you have reached some understanding with him.”

His hand was very warm against mine. Now his thumb brushed the inside of my wrist.

I lifted my chin. “Untrue. He merely asked me to consider a courtship.”

“You told him no?”

“I attempted to.”

“But the Scot is stubborn.”