His brows swooped. “Of me?”
“Of everything.” Her palms were damp inside the gloves. She took the gloves off, the caress of the wind and Elias’s stealthy gaze over her bare fingers providing instant relief.
“I was afraid to tell you that I love you. And I didn’t tell you about my artifact scheme—it was for your protection, of course, but it also would have told you more than words ever could.”
He gestured, seemingly at a loss. “What did you think would happen?”
Something diffuse but terrible. “That you might propose in earnest. That you might want a dozen children, that you’d resent me for my aspirations, and ask me to leave my father and all my friends forever and I’d be trapped in a marriage where I could never leave, nor remain myself . . . that one day, I would lose you.”
Elias had paled under his tan. “A dozen children?”
“Or three, or four—I don’t know, too many for someone like me.”
He sucked in a breath. “Catriona. My grandmother was a midwife.”
“I recall.”
“We don’t work the land, why would we need so many sons?” His eyebrows were still touching his hairline. “I’ve heard enough to know that a man who loves his wife wouldn’t do that to her.”
“I thought you would decide we didn’t suit at all, and that you would leave me, forever.”
He blinked. “So you said nothing—which made me leave.”
“Quite.”
“Ya salame.” He massaged his forehead, looking incredulous even with his eyes closed.
“Is it the number of children?” he asked after a pause. “Or do you want none at all? You don’t want them on principle?”
The look on his face was serious, bone-deep apprehension.
A curly head, leaned against his shoulder, a small starfish hand on his chest.
She scoffed with mild self-deprecation. “It’s become clear to me rather recently that I wouldn’t mind one. I don’t object on principle. I object to this notion that it would be my highest purpose, or my only purpose. Because I don’t think it is. I think that I . . . I matter. A woman matters, married or not, children or no children. I matter, just as I am, right now. I’m a whole human being.”
He smiled; relieved but bemused. “Of course you matter.”
Her heart was heated and drumming too quickly, like pistons in an out-of-control machine. The words had poured out; outrageous, frightful words, and yet here he was, smiling.
“I still need my brain for thinking coherent thoughts, at least until I have made a proper name for myself,” she said. “I don’t want my mind crammed with worries over someone else’s teething. I don’t want to feel guilt-ridden, either, if I don’t worry about their teeth as much as we are told we should.”
“Who,” he asked, spinning his hand, “who is telling you that?”
She opened her mouth, then she frowned. “Everyone?”
“Twelve babies.” He was laughing, very softly. “You know, I thought, perhaps you ran away from us because we are from different families, different cultures.”
“What?”
He nodded.
“Goodness. I don’t care about that,” she said with a dismissive grimace. “Society will, for a bit, but I’m rarely out in society anyway.”
He tsked. “Then why do you care about the other things they say?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“I tell you why, habibti, it’s because you are very soft inside. You are caring, always doing things for your friends, for other women, even for strangers who show up at your castle. It’s easy to make you give too much.”
He sighed and put his hand over his nape. A sleek, small gull swooped past, and he watched the bird, followed it as it balanced in the air with its yellow feet neatly tucked back against its belly.
“It appears we have much to discuss,” he finally said. “Can you ride astride?”
She shook herself out of her little daze. “Aye, though I haven’t in a while.”
“We ride slowly. I’d like you to come on an excursion with me. We leave tomorrow morning.”
“All right?”
“Good. Where is your shawl? The old one?”
She raised her shoulders, reflexively searching for the weight of the protective covering.
“I forgot it at home; I packed rather hastily.”
He made to take off his scarf, loosely slung, airy cotton with white and blue stripes.