“Well, I remember one thing.” He chuckled, his gaze looking to someplace faraway. “She’d call it her Whim-Wham Pudding. I adored it. Lord, how sweet it was, made with sugar and wee currants. But ’twas filling too—thick, like a meal.”
The sound of her father’s shouts brought them back to the moment. Her heart thudded to the floor. All she wanted was to sit there forever, listening to Aidan, knowing him.
He must’ve read something in her expression, because when their eyes connected, she fantasized that his carried a message. She read an apology, for her situation, and a question too.
Aidan’s real question, when voiced, was unexpected. “What does he do all day?”
She stood upright, resuming her kneading. “Who? Da?”
“I’m here, and I see you doing woman’s work,” he said, with a nod to her bread dough. “Yet I see you doing man’s work too, minding the accounts, tending the animals.”
She wiped a sleeve across her brow, then continued with the bread. “I’m cannier with numbers. And he’s too old to be mucking about in the pasture.”
“So?”
She could no longer meet his eyes. “So?”
“So, what does he do?” He reached across the table and stilled her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “Much more of that kneading, luvvie, and you’ll be serving hardtack not biscuits for dinner.”
She pulled her hands free, smudging the excess dough from her fingers. “There are just the two of us,” she said, bristling. But even as she said it, she wondered why she defended her father so unquestioningly. Trying to convince herself as much as Aidan, she explained, “I’ve had to be responsible for things a woman generally isn’t. But he does things a woman could never do.”
“Like?”
“Like traveling to Aberdeen. He does a fair bit of that, setting up the new business. He visits neighboring farms, arranging trade.”
But the seeds of doubt had been planted. Did he really need to spend that much time on these so-called business relationships? It wasn’t as though his efforts bore great fruit.
“I’ve fashed you,” Aidan said, misunderstanding her frown. “And I’m sorry for it.”
She tuned into her father’s voice, growing closer and louder, singing in the way he did after a good mug or three of ale. It’d been just the two of them for so long, it wasn’t until she’d seen their relationship through Aidan’s eyes that she felt there was anything wanting.
And though she knew her da loved her, she’d never felt truly taken care of. She’d been the one who always cared for him. She’d done all the fretting and the tending, as though their roles were reversed and she were the parent and he the child.
“Your mind is elsewhere, and I’ve overstayed.” Aidan stood. He hesitated for a moment, and then giving her a gentle smile, he reached across the table to sweep his thumb across her cheekbone. “Next time, put more flour in your bread, and less on your pretty self, aye?”
She watched his back as he walked to her door, feeling as though her heart had been skewered through. Because somehow, since she’d met Aidan, she’d begun to feel worthy of someone else’s tending. With a single smudge of his thumb on her cheek, she felt cared for.
Aidan left as her father entered, and the two men exchanged polite but chilly nods.
Her father strode to the fire, stoking it to life. Glancing at the dough, he asked, “Are we finally to have bread with dinner?”
“No, Da.” Elspeth smiled to herself, making a decision. Wiping off her hands, she walked to the cupboard, retrieving a small packet of dried currants. “Bread pudding.”
She held the spoon, and he took it into his mouth, shutting his eyes with a moan. “How did you know I longed for pudding?”
It was a perfect mouth, his full lips framed by a strong jaw. Putting the spoon down, she used her fingertip to dab a bit of pudding from the corner. “I just knew,” she said, her sultry tone implying so much more.
His eyes met hers, energy snapping between them. And then, turning his face into her hand, he sucked her finger between those perfect lips.
“Oh dear,” she murmured, her hip collapsing against the table.
“What?” Her father came over to peer at her workspace. “Don’t tell me you used all the flour again.”
“No, Da, not that.” She bit her lip, feeling wicked. “It’s simply gotten warm here by the fire.”
Uninterested in domestic activities, her father found an excuse to leave, and Elspeth welcomed the opportunity to work the rest of the day by herself. By late afternoon, she had a supper plate set for him, and was out the door and on her way to Dunnottar, carrying a bowl of pudding, still warm from the oven.
By the time she arrived at the old guardhouse Aidan called home, the sky was slate gray with coming twilight. A faint halo of golden light shone in his window, speaking to a lone candle flickering inside. Her arms were tired from holding the awkward delivery during so long a walk, and Elspeth carefully balanced the bowl on her hip to knock.
The door opened abruptly, and Aidan studied her for a moment, looking baffled. As he fully registered her appearance, his puzzlement turned to concern. “Are you all right?” Stiffening, he asked in a louder voice, “Did he do something to you?”
“He?” She shifted the bowl to her other hand, giving a quick shake to her arm. “Oh, Da? Losh, no. He’d never hurt me.” Smiling, she proffered the bowl. “I made you something.”
“You made me something?” His anxiety flashed into anger. Placing a hand on the doorjamb, he leaned out over her shoulder, scanning the grounds behind her as though she might have been followed by a mob of angry criminals.
His eyes flew back to her. “What are you thinking, coming here alone? And for this?” He gave her bowl a disparaging glance. “It’s growing dark. You could’ve fallen on the road. Or worse.”
She felt a queer churning in her belly as her heart fell and her gorge rose. Summoning a pride she didn’t feel, she said, “I am my own person, Aidan MacAlpin. I went where I would before I met you, and shall go where I will long after you’re gone.”
He stared at her, his expression hard. He still didn’t move to take the pudding, so she bent and put it on the ground outside his door.
Swallowing against the ache in her throat, she turned to go. “It’s bread pudding,” she said from over her shoulder.
“Wait,” he called, after she’d gone a few paces.
Though she stopped, she felt a tear running hot down her cheek, and the shame of it prevented her from turning back to face him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
What could he have possibly meant by that? There might’ve been an apology in the words, but she was uncertain. She risked a quick scrub of her cheeks with her hand, dreading the thought he might realize she’d let a few tears spill.
She heard him step closer. “And though it may be true that you once gadded about the countryside with no one to say otherwise, the fact is, I am here now, and I’d ask that you cease your gadding, particularly after dark.” She sensed movement at her back, then felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “Puts a man on edge,” he added, with humor in his voice.
She sniffled, protesting with a weak laugh, “It’s not dark.”
“But it soon will be. I’ll put on my boots and walk you home.”
Her shoulders slumped. He was going to send her home. “Oh,” she said, in a small voice.
“No need to fret. I promise you’ll be safe from me in the dark.”
She raised her head, meeting his gaze to tell him he’d misunderstood, but his eyes held a playful gleam. Her inner heroine wanted to respond, Not too safe, I hope.
He snatched up the bowl, casting a longing look at its contents. “I’ve not had pudding in… as long as I can remember.”
“I know.” She remembered her last fantasy of him and nearly choked. Clearing her throat, she said, “Are you certain you won’t …”
“Have a bite?” He stirred it with the spoon she’d brought. “I suppose there’s no harm in having just a bite before we leave.”
Relaxing at last, she gave him a warm smile.
He pinched her chin. “Wee Beth. Always with a thought for others before yourself, aren’t you?”
“I just thought you might like it.”
“You thought correctly.” He went back inside and plopped onto the room’s only stool. When she glanced around nervously, he gestured to the edge of the bed. “No need to cling to manners here. Sit yourself down.” His anger was gone now, and he nodded enthusiastically at the bowl in his hands. “I can tell by the feel, this will take me but a moment to dispatch.”
She frowned. “Should I have brought more?”
“Aye, you should have.” He dug in for his first bite and sighed. “Delicious,” he said, swallowing a mouthful. “A man can never have enough pudding.” He grew silent then, polishing the bowl off as quickly as he’d promised.
She watched his lips, mesmerized, as he savored each bite. He seemed to revel in it, offering an occasional nod or moan, his reaction better than anything she could’ve conjured in her own mind.
She was more certain than ever that she wanted to kiss that mouth.
He was at home in his room, paying attention to nothing but that bowl of pudding, and she drank in his every detail. How he casually leaned against the wall, and the way the stones at his back tugged his shirt tight against his body.
She’d stroke her fingers along his neck, down to the triangle of skin that peeked through the V of his collar. It would be smooth and tanned.
She’d slip off his shirt. Her arms would wrap around him in an embrace. He’d tense when her fingers touched the scars on his back, but she’d tell him she loved him, and kiss him, and blot those scars from his memory.
He liked her food, a simple fact that gave her a delight she’d never known before. She’d cook for him all the time. And as she watched him now, it seemed he might let her. More than that, it seemed he might enjoy it. Just the notion had her feeling more confident, and less the stammering, whey-faced ninny she’d thought herself when first they’d met.