Chapter 9
Hannah felt as though she’d lain awake all night, staring at the wall with her back to the man sleeping on her floor.
Her mind kept replaying that moment in the inn, standing between his legs, his hands on her shoulders. Her lips and his so close they could have touched if either of them had so much as shifted a step, eyes locked, both holding their breath.
The way he’d warned her that he would either take her to her home or his. She was no wee lassie despite her inexperience. She knew what sort of thing he’d implied. His intention certainly hadn’t been to tuck her into a guest room with a cup of tea.
The way they’d been so close astride the horse. Despite his best efforts to keep space between them, she’d been unable to help relaxing against his chest as subtly as she could and enjoying the feel of his strength at her back.
He was so warm and sturdy. It had been rather nice having his arm around her.
Her face heated slightly at the memory of letting herself snuggle up against his chest just a little while he’d been dozing behind her.
If he hadn’t suddenly tightened his arm enough that it began to hurt, she wouldn’t have said anything to make him distance himself again.
The way he was currently sprawled on her bedroom floor as if it were equally as comfortable as the straw mattress she currently lay on.
She yawned and rolled over, curious to see if he still looked as content as he had in his plaid when she’d last peered at him through the darkness, and froze. Where there was meant to be a laird, there was empty space.
She frowned and pushed herself up, rubbing the heel of her hands against her eyes.
She was almost certain she hadn’t slept.
Still, she should have heard the massive man getting up and leaving the room, even if he’d been trying not to be too obvious.
It wasn’t physically possible for him to have moved that much bulk and opened the door to her bedroom silently.
Now that she was paying attention, she saw that the door was cracked wider, the flickering hearth light allowing her the dim but clear view of her confirmed empty floor.
Now fully aware of her surroundings, instead of lost in her own head, Hannah realized she could hear sounds coming from the main room beyond.
Curiosity pulled her from the warmth of her bed, and she reached for the shawl she kept folded atop her trunk, wrapping it around herself and slipping through the panel door that separated her room from the main hearth, eyes still heavy with the sleep she wasn’t certain she had or had not partaken of.
The sight beyond made her pause in the doorway and clutch the shawl around her shoulders even more tightly, her heart racing.
Violet sat at the table, a bowl of porridge in front of her that she was mostly just stirring but occasionally taking a nibble from.
In fact, as Hannah watched, her sister attempted a proper bite.
She felt a grain sack of weight fall from her shoulders when her sister’s body didn’t immediately convulse and just chewed, swallowed, and kept talking.
Easy as could be. As if she’d been doing just that for the last several months without trouble.
Aiden stood by the hearth nearby, spurtle in hand, stirring the porridge with his right hand in the proper direction.
The way any sensible person stirred their oats.
Before his feet, the fire flickered, carefully built up for the day and keeping the porridge simmering.
A cast-iron pan was resting on the coals he had raked forward from the fire, and she could smell butter.
“And they say after that ye tried to wrest the lairdship for yerself,” Violet was saying.
“I ken,” Aiden replied seriously. “They say wrong.”
Violet took another nibble of her porridge and leaned a little more over the bowl. She still looked like she had one leg planted and was ready to bolt if the massive man so much as sneezed unexpectedly, but she also had a gleam of youthful curiosity in her eyes.
A gleam of any sort had been gone from those blue eyes for far longer than Hannah cared to admit. Though she would have preferred her sister had regained that gleam slightly less at the expense of their guest’s peace.
“And some say ye secretly killed the Laird.”
Hannah pressed a hand to her forehead and wondered if she could hit her sister with a boot from the door to her room if she threw it hard enough.
“God’s teeth, lassie,” Aiden scoffed aloud and glanced at Violet as he cracked an egg into a bowl with a single hand. He dropped the shell on a plate on the hearthstone and cracked another egg.
The movements were almost comically gentle, given his massive hands and the comparatively tiny eggs, as if he shouldn’t be dexterous enough not to shatter the little things as opposed to neatly cracking them one by one.
“I would give me left—” He hesitated and glanced toward Violet. “Arm for that to be true,” he finished lamely.
Hannah finally stepped away from the door and approached the pair.
Violet saw her immediately and smiled. “Good morning. There’s more porridge.” She added in a stage whisper, “He forgot to stir the cream back into the milk, so it’s extra creamy.”
“Forgot? I meant it that way!” Aiden protested, glancing toward Hannah without turning from the hearth as he cracked a fourth egg.
Putting the bowl down, he picked up another and spooned a generous helping of cooked oats into it after pulling the pot crane from the flames, mixing to blend it with the milk and honey she assumed had already been waiting in the bowl.
“Here, lass.” He held it out.
After another moment of trying to process the sight of the man who had to keep his head bent so as not to smack it against the beams of the ceiling offering her breakfast, Hannah approached and took the bowl from his hand with both of hers. “Thank ye.”
“Aye.”
He turned back to his bowl of eggs, and she watched him add a splash of milk, a generous pinch of salt, and break the yolks with the wooden spoon in his hand with practiced ease.
He gave them a quick stir and then crouched at the hearth and poured them into the waiting buttered cast-iron pan.
They sputtered and hissed instantly, dismayed by the searing heat.
Aiden ignored their plight and began to stir.
After putting the bowl down, Hannah crossed to where the cordial sat in its bottle, poured a spoonful into a dram, and handed it to Violet.
Her sister sighed, but downed it without complaint.
They both knew full well it had helped, as evidenced by the fact that Violet felt well enough to harass Aiden and actually try to eat.
Just a spoonful three times a day had changed everything in the last week.
Satisfied, Hannah sat and watched Aiden stir his eggs as if it were the most normal thing in the world to cook porridge for a pair of near-strangers in their small cottage just past dawn.
As she took a bite of the oats, she glanced toward the shutters, able to see early light through them.
She trusted her apprentices were either awake or would be shortly when the rooster began to serenade them.
She was pleasantly surprised to discover the porridge was cooked to a good consistency with a pleasant tang of honey. She’d need to replenish her stores soon; honey seemed to be sneaking into everything lately.
Violet spoke up again, breaking the silence. “They say ye killed a man who spoke back to ye in front of others.”
“Do they?” Aiden didn’t look up.
Hannah shot her sister a stern look and mouthed Stop, but Violet absolutely ignored her.
“Ye filled a horn with his blood, and ye drank it.”
“Oh?” Aiden looked up for a moment and raised an eyebrow, pulling the hot pan from the coals and continuing to stir as he approached the table. “They finally got one right.”
Violet’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open.
Aiden spooned the eggs onto a waiting plate and then returned the pan to the hearth, using it to push the coals back toward the main blaze and then setting it to the side to cool. He returned after making a third bowl of porridge and took a seat, grinning at her as he stirred his eggs.
“How do ye think I got so big, lassie?” He leaned forward a little. “Better than the finest whiskey yer sister can offer.” He snapped his teeth at her and then took a bite of eggs.
Hannah snorted into her porridge.
Violet quickly gathered her bowl and pushed to her feet. “I think I hear the cow lowing. Best make sure the boys milk her before ye fill their day. I’ll let them ken breakfast is ready.” She shot Aiden another wide-eyed look and then hustled out of the cottage, clinging to her bowl for dear life.
The two sat in silence for a moment, before Aiden let out a chuckle and took another bite of his eggs.
“Ye shouldnae tease her like that!” Hannah chided him in a tone as stern as she could manage, fighting to suppress her own smile.
“Tease her about what? It was delicious,” Aiden replied with a solemn face, which only served to coax her laughter.
He smirked at the sound of it and shrugged his shoulders.
“The lassie hadnae let up on me since she heard me moving around and came to see what I was up to. Ye came in at the very end of it. Did ye ken I also apparently raise taxes out of spite, demand infant sacrifice, set the blight on the MacEnty wheat, and kill the entire families of merchants who overcharge me? For one thing, I daenae have that amount of free time.”
Hannah choked on her porridge and coughed a few times, looking up at him in horror. “She didnae say that.”
“Aye, she did. I’m honestly unsure how many of the rumors she told me were actual rumors and how many she just wanted to see me respond to.” Aiden grinned at her, mercifully seeming more entertained than irate at her sister’s loose tongue.
His smile lifted more on the right than the left, more a wry smirk.
However, when he widened it, her breath caught, and she busied herself very quickly with stirring her porridge to make sure there were absolutely no lumps whatsoever.
This was suddenly a very important and critical task upon which she needed to focus her entire attention lest the heat that had suddenly crept up her face be visible to him.
Hannah couldn’t help wishing that Violet’s sudden interest in conversation had waited another few days to return to life.
Though she hadn’t had the energy or interest in being a menace in so long, Hannah had begun to worry her little sister would never regain her spirit.
Still, it would have been nice if she had delayed regaining it by another night or two.
“The MacEnty wheat suffered blight before ye became Laird,” she finally informed her breakfast helpfully.
She waited a few more beats to be sure the flush had left her cheeks before looking up and continuing, “I’m going to the farrier after breakfast to see about retrieving me pony if he’s shod and ready.
Ye said ye wanted to see the village, so if ye’re keen… ”
“Aye.” Aiden rapped his fork against the table. “I’ll be ready to escort ye.”
Suddenly, there was a clatter at the door, and the two apprentices elbowed each other to get through the door first, the older and taller of the two winning by sheer virtue of reach. Both froze in place at the sight of the immense man and his plate of eggs.
Aiden greeted them as if he’d fully expected them and had planned on them eating as well, gesturing to the porridge. The milk and honey still sat on the table by the hearth, though he hadn’t prepared bowls for them the way he had her, so she suspected he was simply very good at hiding his surprise.
When the apprentices had filled their bowls, added their honey and milk, and raced back out of the main room with thanks called over their shoulders, Aiden put his fork down and eyed Hannah with a far more serious expression.
“I’ll be keen to see what it is I’ve missed, and how I can set it to rights.”
Hannah nodded in response, forcing herself to smile at him encouragingly. She couldn’t say she was as optimistic as he seemed to be that things would be so easy to make right.
The village had a lot of angry, tired, sick people who had been simmering with resentment for the last year, if not longer.
They weren’t likely to be talked out of their anger.
At the same time, she hoped he would see enough to understand why they were upset and to do something to help them.
His very presence was heartening to her.
She hoped it would be the same for the others in her village.
“We’ll start with a walk, then.”