Cat learns what matters

Catan heard the door open and her sister come back into to the bedroom.

“Did you forget something?” she mumbled in Gaelic, scarcely loud enough for Flann to hear.

The reply was no louder, but the voice was deep and low. “Pardon me?”

Cat leapt up and spun around to face him. She had recognized the voice, but the sight of him and the sound of him together were overwhelming. She stumbled back against the tall chest, and its handle stabbed into the small of her back. He could bruise her from all the way across the room.

“Don’t you knock?” she gasped.

“I was hoping to catch you alone,” Leofric smiled.

“You are – ” She cast about for an English word suitably vile.

“Too late?” he chuckled as he walked around the bed.

“No!” she growled.

“Ah! Just in time?”

“I thought you could tell, anyway! Liar!”

“Ordinarily, I can. However, lately your pretty face is flushed from the moment I enter the room. It does make me wonder what you’re thinking when you see me.”

Catan slid her back across the chest and on until it was pressed against the cool stone of the wall. “What are you doing back here at all?”

“I found a suitable excuse to give to my friend Egelric. The truth is that I came to see you.” He shrugged and sighed. “I tried, but a week without seeing you was as much as I could do. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

He leaned his head so close to hers that when next he spoke she felt his whisper hot against her cheek and mouth.

“Especially when I am alone.”

Cat grimaced and turned her face away.

He had poisoned that word for her. It nearly gagged her when she tried to pronounce it. It nauseated her when she heard it spoken. She could scarcely stand to be alone any longer. Now, when she was alone, she thought of him.

She had been thinking of him when he had come in, and now he was here, like a nightmare coming true. She could hear him, she could see him, she could smell him, and she could even taste him.

He had not yet touched her. She could feel the heat of his body through her dress, and she thought she could feel his legs brushing her skirt, but he had not touched her. From shoulder to toes there was not a part of her body that was more than a handbreadth away from the matching part of his, but there was no part of which she could say: “Here he has touched me.”

It was maddening, and it could only have been intentional. He was not standing straight but hovering over her, matching the curve of his tall body to the curve of hers as she leaned away from him.

She could bear it no longer. She squirmed away from him and slipped between his body and the chest. She scarcely noticed the handle scraping her side, for her shoulder struck his arm as she passed. She had touched him.

She turned back to him and stood with her fists clenched and her fingernails sunk into her palm. “I shall scream.”

“I am not here to do you violence. But your cousin Egelric is downstairs in the hall. Scream if you must. He will surely hear you, and he will be here to rescue you in no time at all.”

At this late hour of the afternoon, her west-​​facing window was streaming with sunlight, and all of it was behind him. He was only a broad-​​shouldered shadow without a face. She was little less than blind. Not seeing him was worse than seeing him.

She tried to squeeze past him again to get the sun behind her. However, she seemed to have broken some spell when she had bumped into him and touched him for the first time, for he caught her with an arm around her waist as she passed.

“We haven’t long now anyway,” he murmured. “I merely wanted to tell you to come to my room tonight.”

“I never shall.” Her whisper was not even borne on breath. The words merely moved over her lips.

“Shhh… I know you want to. I can tell.”

“Liar!”

But she was not certain he lied. Perhaps he could see things in her that even she could not. Perhaps she was blind to herself: in the dark or standing with some bright light in her eyes. Perhaps when she wondered about herself, he already knew.

She tried to pull away from him, but she only succeeded in turning herself around. His arm tightened around her waist and pulled her against him, her back against his chest.

“Let me stay a while here in your hair,” he whispered.

He wrapped his other arm about her, pinning her arms against her body, and pinning her body against his. His broad shoulders lay over hers like furled wings.

She could no longer see him, but it no longer mattered. Eyes were useful to sense across distances, but they were needless now. She could hear him, smell him, and taste him. She could have been blind, and it would not have mattered. Touch mattered more than anything. She had learned too late.