"Ye can turn around," he said. His voice came out lower than he'd intended, roughened by the steam and the hour.
"I'm lookin' at the yard."
"The yard isnae interestin' at this hour."
"I find it very interestin'." A beat, and then, without turning: "How long have ye been back?"
The question surprised him slightly. Not the content of it, the steadiness of it. She was making conversation. Deliberately, carefully, the way a person made conversation when they needed another thirty seconds to finish deciding something.
"An hour," he said. "Maybe more."
"Did ye find anythin'?"
"Nay."
She was quiet for a moment. Her reflection was barely visible in the dark glass of the window, the suggestion of her face turned slightly toward the yard below.
"Good," she said. And then she turned around.
Her face was pink from the steam. Her eyes were dark and very steady, and she was looking at him directly. He felt it like a hand pressed flat to his chest.
He kept his hands where they were, loose on the edges of the tub.
She didn't fidget. Didn't reach for an excuse or a deflection.
The room was quiet, the fire the only sound.
"Come here," he said and she approached him slowly, her eyes doing all the speaking.
"The first night," he said. "I told ye that ye could touch me if ye wanted tae."
Her mouth moved. A small, careful breath.
"Aye." Very quiet. Her eyes dropped to his chest, then came back up to his.
"That offer isnae time-limited," he said, and held her gaze, and waited.
She looked at his face. Then at the scar along his ribs, catching the firelight.
He watched her reach out.
Her hand moved through the steam slowly, deliberately, and he stayed completely still while she traced the scar with one finger—light, unhurried, following the length of it the way you followed something you wanted to understand. He felt every part of it. The specific careful weight of her touch moved through him like heat, and he gripped the edges of the tub and kept his hands exactly where they were and breathed through his nose and said nothing.
"Daes it still hurt?" she said. Her voice was quiet, not soft but careful.
"Nay." He watched her finger follow the line of it. "It's been a long time."
"How long?"
"Fifteen years."
She looked up at him briefly, then back at the scar. "Ye were merely a lad."
His brother had called it a lesson. The training guards had called it a badge. They’d expected him to carry his battle scars as part of his armor.
But Matilda… Matilda called it what it was. Something that had happened to a boy.
"I was old enough tae ken better and young enough nae tae care." He paused. "It was a lesson."