So soon? She had hoped he might stay a while. Sleep closer.
She must have had a disappointed look on her face because her mother gestured after Teagan once he left. “Why not go sit with him, daughter?” She leaned her head back against the rock and pulled a blanket more securely around her. “I could use the quiet, and I think you could use the conversation.”
“Are you sure?” She looked at her mother with concern. “I could sit beside you and keep you warm.”
“Oh, I’m plenty warm, darling.” She looked from the direction Teagan went to Greer, blunt to a fault. “Besides, is there not another you would like to keep warm?”
“Mother,” she chastised, blushing.
“Well, ’tis true, yes?” Mother replied, sentimental if she were not mistaken. “And ’tis how it should be, Greer. How you should have felt about a man long before now.”
“It matters naught at this point,” she murmured, considering her mother, glad for the past few weeks together. For the chance to get closer again. “Might I ask you a question?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Were you and Father friends?” She tilted her head, curious. Desperate to know, actually. “And love…you felt it with him, yes? If so, how did you…know?”
“Your father was my closest friend, my dear,” her mother said, surprising her. “And yes, we loved one another very much. How did I know, though?” She thought about that. “I suppose there was no singular moment of discovery but a culmination of many. How he treated me, looked at me, made me feel. The respect he afforded me when most men did not.” She narrowed her eyes. “I think more than anything, it was how he encouraged me to be myself.”
“Strong, then,” Greer surmised. “Outspoken against your brother.”
“You mean my father,” Mother corrected. “My father made him that way.” She seemed reflective. “But yes, your father,” she seemed to struggle with actually voicing his name, “Phillip knew how difficult it was for me watching my mother cower, so he encouraged me to be different. To see myself as an equal despite my oppressive upbringing.”
“You were very lucky to have found him,” she replied softly. “’Tis a rare man that encourages such from a woman.”
“Not, as you well know now, as rare as one would think.” Her gaze again flickered from the direction Teagan went to Greer. “Go be with him, daughter. Go and find your way back to yourself like I once did.”
She nodded and was about to head that way when her mother spoke again.
“Just one more thing, darling,” she said softly. Her expression grew serious. “Something you must keep in mind.”
“What?” she asked.
“There’s no time limit on love,” her mother said, echoing what Margery would have voiced. “You might not feel it for weeks, months, or even years to come.” Wisdom lit her eyes. “Or you might already feel its stirrings without realizing it. For love is that swift sometimes.”
Though not as hard to imagine as it once was, she still wasn’t sure what she believed. If such was possible. So she nodded politely and finally searched out Teagan, only to find him waiting with a blanket. Moonlight trickled down through the foliage overhead, and white fog curled over the dark forest floor.
She smiled and sat beside him. “You knew I would join you?”
He put the blanket over her. “I had hoped.”
“What about you?” She frowned when he didn’t wrap up in the blanket, too. “Are you not chilled?”
“Nay.” He shook his head. “I’m used to colder weather than this, with less protection.”
“Right, because of your years at war,” she murmured, glad to be close to him. Resting against him. Breathing in his spicy scent. He’d told her about his time fighting for France, then alongside Scotland's King David II.
“Aye, the war.” As tended to happen when he spoke of that time, he sounded adrift. “I dinnae think I’ve shared so much about it with anyone.”
She knew. She could hear it in his voice. “I’m glad you have with me, then. But if it ever becomes too much, you do not have to.”
“Nay,” he agreed. “I dinnae have to but find myself wanting to.” Pain lit his eyes when he looked at her. “I dinnae know why, only that I do.”
Where some women, most in her circles, would find such talk offensive, she did not. If anything, it helped her in some small undefinable way. Perhaps not to face the past, because that felt impossible, but to navigate her way through darker times with someone who understood. Who had seen terrible things and hated every minute of it. A warrior who loathed the evil at the heart of warfare when she thought no such man existed.
Yet for all he shared, she knew he only told but a fraction of it
War haunted him every bit as much as it did her. He suppressed great pain and grief. Inner demons. They didn’t frighten her, though. Rather, they felt kindred. Something he might turn on others during his darkest hour, but never her.
“Well, I’m glad you share with me,” she reiterated. “That you speak as freely as you hope I will.”
“Aye.” His gaze lingered on her face. “As am I, lass. ’Tis…much welcomed.”
“Yes,” she whispered, suddenly unable to find her voice. Suddenly so aware of him, she could barely breathe. Barely think. “Because I’m here…to listen, that is.”
“I know.”
When his gaze dropped to her lips, she thought he might kiss her again. Prayed for it, actually. Wanted it so much all of a sudden that when he shook his head and muttered something about staying watchful of his surroundings, she took matters into her own hands.
She wasn’t sure why she did it, how she could be so bold, but when Teagan went to turn his face away, she cupped his cheek and kissed him. Though the storyteller in her would say she simply wanted her hero’s first kiss on her grand adventure, she knew better.
She wanted the kiss of the broken man he really was underneath.
Though she suspected the two were the same, she wanted the real man, not the made-up hero. The man as flawed and wounded as her.
He didn’t pull away from the kiss, but he didn’t exactly embrace it either.
Was she being too forward? Bold and brazen? Did he not want this?
Moments later, she got her answer.
Chapter Seventeen
Teagan tried to hold back, he really did, but a man could only be so strong.
“Och, ’tis not a good time, lass,” he whispered against Greer's plush lips, grappling with protecting those in his care and the quicksand of her sweet taste. An overwhelming need that, in the end, he was defenseless against. Cupping her cheeks, he tilted his mouth more firmly over hers and finally showed her exactly how a lass should be kissed.
How she should be kissed.
Though tentative at first, she blossomed readily enough under the coaxing of his lips and gentle seeking of his tongue. For if he was going to taste her, he would have all of her. The deep recesses of her soft mouth. The play of her tongue against his.
Something she took too far quicker than he anticipated.