“I’ll need a hammock in here,” Angus said abruptly.

“A hammock?” the young officer asked.

“Aye… Yes. That is what the men sleep in, don’t they?” There was one narrow wooden bed at the end of the room. “That’s too short for me,” Angus said.

“But the captain had it made for him and he’s-” the young man began.

“My husband is being kind,” Edilean said. “It’s because of me. I am, well… with child, and he fears for my health so he needs his own bed.”

“Ah, I see,” the young man said, smiling. “I’ll see what I can do. And here is your breakfast. Enjoy the fruit, as it won’t last long.”

A sailor brought in a platter of bread and boiled eggs and cherries, plus big mugs of ale, and set it on the round table by the glassed-in window.

When they were alone, both Angus and Edilean went to the table and nearly attacked the food. “With child,” Angus said. “That was fast.”

“Not as fast as you and those women prisoners,” she said as she peeled an egg. “What possessed you to stare at them like that?”

“I was thinking how close that was to being me. If things had turned out differently, I could have been in that hold.”

“But not with those women,” Edilean said.

“No, not with those women.” He was smiling at her. “So what will we do on this trip? It’ll take three weeks, maybe even six if the weather is bad. How will you occupy yourself?”

“Reading, I suppose. I wonder if the captain has any books he could lend us? Mayhap you could read to me.”

He arched an eyebrow as he took the peeled egg she handed him.

“And what is that look for?”

“When would I have gone to school to learn reading and writing?”

Edilean paused with a cherry in her mouth, her hand on the stem. She chewed a bit, and removed the pit. “Then I will be your teacher.”

“I do not need you to be my teacher,” he said, his face contorted into a scowl.

“Isn’t it interesting how your humor completely leaves you when you are not in charge? Why does the idea that I-worthless, good-for-nothing me-could teach great, glorious you something infuriate you?”

Angus bent his head closer to his plate, but she could see that the scowl was gone. “Glorious, am I?”

“In your own eyes, you seem to be,” she said. “Wait! You can’t take the last of that fruit!”

“Do you think not?” he said as he grabbed a handful of cherries and turned away from her.

“You pig!” She ran around the little table to reach for them.

Angus held them aloft and she grabbed his wrist-just as he transferred them to his other hand.

“You selfish… Scotsman!” she said, reaching for the cherries.

He was laughing. “Is that the worst you can think to call me? Did you learn nothing in that rich school you went to?”

“Not anything that I’d tell a man,” she said, then made a lunge at him that landed them chest to chest as she reached up to his hand to get the cherries.

His face was less than an inch from hers and she could smell the lather she’d used to shave him. And there was another smell about him, that of Man.

“Are you asking for more than you can handle?” he asked softly, then he moved a bit as though he meant to kiss her.

Edilean turned her head, as though she were going to accept his kiss, but then she grabbed the cherries and sprinted away from him. “These are sweeter,” she said as she put a cherry in her mouth.

“How do you know what a fruit that you haven’t tried is like?”

“Great imagination.” She finished the cherries. “Mmmm, so delicious.”

Angus started to go after her, but he stopped himself. Instead, he sat there looking at her with serious eyes.

“I’m so happy to be away from all of it that I feel that I could… I could almost fly.” For a moment she put her arms out and danced about the small room. “I’m not married to any of those awful men and I’m going to a whole new country.” Stopping, she looked at him and saw that he was frowning.

“Nay,” he said, “this canna be.”

She sat down on the chair across from him. “What can’t be?”

“This,” he said softly. “This teasing, this… this playing and grappling, and touching.”

“You don’t like it?” she asked, smiling at him through her lashes.

“I like it too much.”

“Well, then, what could be the problem?”

“Stop it!”

“Stop what?” she asked, looking at him.

“I am not one of your dandies who you can flirt and tease to your heart’s content. For all that you have me dressed as a popinjay, I’m still Angus McTern, a man who’s spent more time outdoors than I have inside a house. And I’ve never spent any time in the fancy houses that you’ve lived in.”

“So now I’m a snob?” she said. “Shall we add that to the list of things you’ve found wrong with me? According to you, I can do nothing, have no talents that are of any use to anyone, and now you tell me you think I’m a snob.”

“Please don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” he said, leaning toward her, his face serious. “It was your idea that I travel with you as your husband, and I agreed because there was no time to do anything else.”

“And you needed to get out of Scotland,” she said.

“Aye, I needed to get out of Scotland, but if I’d gone on a ship by myself I would have traveled in the bowels with the sailors, not here, in this.” He motioned to the beautiful windows in the room.

With a sigh, Edilean leaned back in the chair. “What is it that you’re trying to say to me?”

“That I don’t come from your world, and that I don’t know these games you people play. I don’t-”

“What does that mean? ‘You people.’ How am I different from you?”

He took his time in answering her. “I’ll stay with you in this room on one condition, and that’s that you don’t continue playing the temptress.”

“The what?” she asked, already offended by what he was saying.

“A temptress, a woman who entices a man into doing what he shouldn’t do. An Eve with her apple held out to him, tempting him into sin.”

“Why you…” she began, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I do apologize for trying to make you sin. Tell me, Mr. McTern, what can I do to keep you sin-free and pure?”

“It is you I am trying to keep pure,” he said in a low voice. “You’re a beautiful young woman and just looking at you is enough to drive a man mad with desire. I don’t know how I’m going to stand being in this room with you day after day and not… not disrobe you. I’m saying that if I’m to stay so close to you, you must treat me as… as your brother. And I must try to think of you as my sister, although that will be nearly impossible. Am I making myself clear?”

“I, uh…” Edilean began but could think of nothing else to say. Flirting was something she was good at, something that was much done at the houses of the girlfriends where she stayed. In fact, at school she’d often given lessons to her less fortunate classmates on how to flirt. She couldn’t be angry at him for saying what she knew to be true. She had been flirting. And, besides, it was impossible to be angry at a man who was telling her that he thought she was so beautiful he was having trouble controlling himself.

“If you don’t do this, I’ll go below and sleep in a hammock. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. If he’d been any of the other men she’d met in her life, she would have batted her lashes at him and asked if this order meant there were not even to be any kisses. But when she looked at Angus’s handsome face, she didn’t dare. It occurred to her that she was now dealing with a man, while they had been boys.

“I’ll make it as easy for you as I can,” she said. “I’ll behave myself. No laughter, no teasing, no wrestling. Is that what you want me to say?”

“I want you to say…” He looked at her across the table. He felt bad that his words had taken her from wanting to fly because of such sublime happiness to now being so serious. “I’m sorry for my Scots gruffness, lass, but I’m a man and I canna bear being so close to you.”