Then he reached up and unclasped his raven brooch, set it on the table, and pulled his tunic over his head.
Matilda turned around.
The wall in front of her was very interesting. Stone, mostly. Some mortar.
"What," she said, "are ye daein'?"
"Gettin' comfortable. It's me chamber."
"It's me chamber as well now."
"Aye. Which means ye can dae the same if ye like."
She pressed her lips together.
Behind her, she could hear him moving. The buckle of a belt, the soft drop of something onto the chair, and she kept her eyes on the wall and her breathing very deliberate and told herself this was entirely normal. People changed clothes. It was a normal thing that people did.
It was the sound of it. That was the problem. The specific domestic sounds of a man she'd known for two days, making himself at home six feet behind her.
"Ye can turn around," he said. "I'm decent."
She turned around.
He was in the chair by the hearth in his breeches and nothing else.
She looked at him for exactly one second and wished she had not, because once she did, she could not help seeing too much. The way the firelight caught across his shoulders, the bare line of his collarbone, the quiet strength of his forearms braced on his knees, and the particular stillness of a man entirely at ease in his own skin, which was, she was discovering, its own specific problem. She looked at the middle distance instead.
"The bed is yers," he said, not looking at her. He said it the way he said things he meant completely, no room around the edges of it.
"Ye're nae sharin' it with me?"
"The chair is fine." He looked up then. "The bed is yers, Matilda. I'll stay here."
She looked at him. At the fire on his face and his hands loose between his knees, and the complete absence of anything she needed to brace against.
She'd spent the walk up the stairs trying to think about it plainly. Two weeks. He'd said it in front of his entire clan, and of course he'd meant it. That she was nearly certain of. What she was less certain of was what she wanted him to mean. That was the part she hadn't expected. She'd prepared herself for dread. She had not prepared herself for the absence of it.
He said two weeks and he means it. And if he didn't, what would ye dae?
She hadn't found an answer.
"Ye'll be uncomfortable," she said out loud instead.
"I've slept in worse."
"That isnae the reassurance ye think it is."
The corner of his mouth moved.
"Get intae bed," he said. "Ye're exhausted."
She was exhausted.
She'd been awake since before the bannocks and the day had been the kind of long that had nothing to do with hours. She looked at the bed. She looked at him. She thought about the kiss. The beat it had lasted, the second beat after that, his hand warm against her jaw, and looked back at the bed.
As though lighting every candle in a room for a woman he'd known for two days was simply the next thing that needed doing. She looked at the floor because she didn't trust what her face was doing, and stayed there until she heard him set the taper down.
There were things she wanted to say but she didn't trust her voice with everything she was feeling.