She climbed into bed and pulled the covers up and lay on her back and looked at the amber ceiling. Behind her she heard him settle into the chair, shifting once, then going still.
The room was warm. The candles burned in every corner.
"Ye can look if ye want," he said, from the chair.
She stared at the ceiling. "I beg yer pardon."
"Ye've been very carefully nae looking since I took me tunic off. Ye dinnae have tae be careful about it."
"I wasnae looking."
"Aye, I ken.” A pause, and she could hear the restraint in it, the space he was leaving deliberately. "That's what I'm sayin'. Ye can."
"I dinnae want tae."
"Aye ye dae."
She pulled the covers up to her chin and stared at the ceiling. She was absolutely furious about how accurate that was.
Her face was doing something she was profoundly grateful he couldn't see from the chair. She could feel the heat across her cheeks and down her neck, and she stared at the ceiling and said nothing.
She had looked. For only one second, and she'd seen enough exactly why she should not look again. She was absolutely not thinking about the firelight moving across the plane of his chest, or the way his shoulders held their breadth even at rest, or the line of muscle along his forearm where it braced against his knee.
She was not thinking about the tautness of him, the economy of a body that had never carried anything unnecessary. She was certainly not thinking about the way his hair had fallen forward slightly when he'd bent to set the taper down, or the strip of skin at his collar where the candlelight caught and held.
She was not thinking about any of it.
"Ye are," she said, to the ceiling, with great dignity, "the most insufferable man I have ever encountered in me entire life."
"And yet," he said, "here we are."
She said nothing. She closed her eyes. From the chair, she could hear, faint and quickly swallowed, him trying not to laugh.
Matilda's face was burning. "I looked fer exactly one second, Laird Gunnarsson. Dinnae let it go tae yer head."
"One second is a start," he murmured, not hiding his amusement. Then added, "Good night, Matilda."
"Good night," she muttered through clenched teeth.
The fire crackled, and the candles continued their slow burn.
She did not sleep immediately.
She lay in the warmth and looked at the amber ceiling and thought about a door barred from the inside. About a hand that had waited one beat before it touched her face. About a man moving through a room, lighting candles in the dark without being asked, and not making anything of it.
Two weeks, and after that, I have tae consummate.
Damn ye, Ivar. I looked fer longer than one second.
The chair creaked once as he shifted and went still. She listened to his steady breathing and just watched the candles burn.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Her eyes snapped open, her pulse giving a small, sharp jump against her throat before she realized where she was.
She woke just before the light, the change that happened behind the eyelids before the room showed it. She lay frozen for a heartbeat, her muscles coiled with a reflex she couldn't quite dampen.
She lay still for a moment and listened. The silence of the keep was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic pop of the hearth.