"That's nae a recommendation. That's a medical incident."
The corner of his mouth moved. "These are better than that."
"That is the lowest possible bar."
"Aye, but ye cleared it." He set the second cake down and looked at her across the table. The kitchen women had gone entirely quiet. "Why are ye in me kitchen making oatcakes at dawn?"
She met his eyes. "Ye like them."
He went still like he usually did when something surprised him and he was deciding what to do with the surprise. She watched the gears turn behind those dark eyes.
"I'll give the rest tae Torvald," she said, her voice jumping a register because the quiet had weight in it that she wasn't sure she was ready to carry. "As punishment."
"Torvald's stomach is less discriminatin' than mine."
"Ye just told me yer stomach survived a medical incident off Tiree."
"Torvald's survived worse. He ate a seabird raw once. On a dare."
"That's revoltin'."
"He won the dare."
She laughed.
It came out before she could organize it into something more composed. A real, bright laugh that filled the warm kitchen air and made the last of the tightness in her chest come loose.
Ivar was watching her with an expression she didn't have a name for yet.
She picked up the small wooden cup she'd used for measuring, which still had a dusting of flour in it, and flicked it across the table at him.
The flour settled across the front of his dark tunic and the line of his jaw in a small, white cloud. The kitchen went deathly quiet.
Ivar looked down at himself. He looked up at her. He looked at the flour on his tunic.
"That," he said, "was a tactical error."
"Was it?"
"Aye."
He moved around the end of the table without hurry, which was somehow worse than if he'd moved quickly, because it gave her time to decide whether to retreat.
She stood her ground. Then he was in front of her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him. His hand cameup and brushed the flour from her cheek in a single, slow pass that started at her cheekbone and ended somewhere near the line of her jaw and stayed there.
His thumb was still. His eyes were locked on hers. All the kitchen sounds, the crackle of the fire, the distant movement of the household, the quiet industry of the women who had become deeply fascinated by the stone wall, all of it receded to the edge of the world.
"I was frightened, Ivar."
She said it plainly, because it was true and he had told her things in the firelight the previous night that had cost him considerably more. She owed him the same plainness in return.
His hand was still at her jaw. She felt his thumb move once, slow and deliberate, the same way it had moved across her wrist in Oswin’s room.
"Matilda," he said.
"Dinnae tell me there was naethin' tae be frightened of."
"I wasnae going tae." He said it simply, his voice dropping into that rough, private register. "I was going tae say thank ye."