Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Lachlan lingered in the doorway longer than he knew he should. By all the saints, he knew that he should have been with his men, doing something, anything other than watching Innes as she slept.
But he could not find it in him to retreat to his chambers again, not after what had happened last night.
The shock of panic and fear he had felt when he’d seen her sprawled on the floor like that—it had been illuminating, to say the least. In that moment, he’d have done anything in his power to bring her back, to hear her voice again.
He might have loathed the Andersons and all the turmoil they had caused him, but that did not mean he intended for her to suffer more than she already had.
She slept now, as peaceful as a babe, the light picking up glints of dark gold in her hair. He had thought about waking her again to make sure she was alright, but he could still hear the healer’s words in his ear, warning him that she needed her rest.
They had been lucky, really, that nothing worse had come of it.
If she’d had much more of that tea, the healer had told him later that night, she might not have woken up at all.
Which posed all kinds of problems of its own, like who had been the one to send the herbs and who exactly they had been intended for?
Surely, her own kin would not have tried to poison her, would they?
It must have been for him, perhaps a plan they had put together to make certain she could get out of the marriage that he had so cruelly trapped her in. But then…
But then, she would never have drunk from it herself.
It didn’t make sense. She had seemed genuinely frightened when she had come to in his arms, and he had hated to see how fearful she was of his very presence.
There was still much she didn’t know about him, much she didn’t trust, and he could hardly blame her.
Taking her to bed that night, she had looked so vulnerable, so fearful, it was all he could do to give her something to keep her mind off the matter.
And she had responded to him without a second thought, her tongue in his mouth, his fingers inside of her, her body yielding to him as if it was what she had been waiting for all along.
She had fallen asleep not long after, as he had sat next to her and watched her rest, listening for any irregularity in her breathing that might have pointed in the direction of more trouble.
He had eventually dozed off on the chair in front of the fire, which had now waned to nothingness in the hearth.
He cast his eyes around the room, searching for some reason to justify staying there longer, and he spotted a book that had been cast aside on the floor next to the trunk; the pages were splayed, as though it had recently been thumbed through.
He stooped down to pick it up, and, as he opened it, he could not help but smile.
A note at the front announced that this was her journal, and, inside, there were sketches of plants and flowers and herbs. All of them carefully annotated with details of where they could be found and what they could be used for.
This must have taken her months, years, even.
She must have been exceptionally observant, not to mention meticulous.
A mind that observes was one worth keeping around.
He traced his finger over one of the drawings, imagining her hunched over the paper working hard on it, when he was interrupted by the sound of a voice.
“Spying on me, husband?”
He looked up, snapping the book shut and placing it back down on the seat. Innes was sitting up in bed, observing him from where she sat. How long had she been watching him like that? He wished he could ask, but he would rather not seem like he had anything to hide from her.
“Just seeing what else I need to get rid of,” he replied.
He had already had the trunk removed, not wanting to risk her spending any more time around it and determined to get the rest of the herbs inspected for poison.
“Perhaps I could take my journal to yer gardens,” she suggested. “Make some notes about what would go well with what’s already growing.”
“That willnae be necessary.”
Her playful smile faded just as swiftly as it had risen on her face. “Oh.”
“I have business to attend to,” he added, turning to the door.
“And what business is so important that it should interrupt a morning with yer wife?” she asked him, her voice piercing the veil of his thoughts.
“Unless ye’re just looking for a reason to avoid me.”
He did not reply, but he could not keep the smirk from his face. She was incisive. More so than he had been prepared for. Perhaps he should have known that a woman of her standing would have a sharpness to her, an ability to see beyond the surface that he should have been ready for.
But, as it was, he was glad to have a chance to clear his head, because every moment in her presence seemed to have him on the brink of saying something foolish.
Like admitting she was right.
Innes stood at the archway that overlooked the Keep’s gardens, her hands planted on her hips.
“Well,” she remarked. “This is going to need plenty of work.”
She adjusted the basket hanging over one arm, in which her journal and some charcoal were waiting for her. She had managed to convince Annabelle to bring her out to the walled gardens she had seen at the back of the Keep.
Nobody had tended to them in years, the maid had said, and they would need to get the gardeners in to cut through the weeds and tangled roots that had overgrown it. But Innes was insistent. She wanted to see just how wild this place was and just what the soil here might have made a good home for.
Equipped with her journal, she intended to make a few notes of the flowers and other plants that had survived without any attention.
They might not have been what a classic garden was made up of, but she would, at least, have a better idea of what the ground could support.
If she was going to be stuck in this place, she supposed, the least she could do was make something of it.
Annabelle was close at her side as they made their way down the stone steps that led to the gardens, clearly worried that her lady might take a tumble only for her to get the blame.
“Careful, there, m’Lady,” she warned her, pointing downward. “The moss on the steps, you dinnae want to fall.”
“I’m fine,” Innes assured her gently.
Everyone seemed to be treating her with kid gloves since the herbs and the tea the night before, but she was feeling virtually unfettered by it. At least physically. Mentally, she could not shake the thought that someone had intended that tea to be deadly, whether for her or for someone else.
Could it have been an accident? She prayed it was.
Because, if not, she would…
Her eye was caught by a handful of daffodils that had sprouted out from between a cluster of dock leaves and tangled milkweed. Stooping down, she tucked her fingers carefully behind the bright yellow petals and smiled.
“See? This is a good sign,” she told Annabelle. “It means that there’s good, fertile land here. If these daffodils can get by without anyone to tend them, then we’re off to a good start.”
“Aye, whatever you say, m’Lady,” Annabelle complied, sounding slightly incredulous.
Innes didn’t let it bother her. She wouldn’t have been the first to find it rather strange that a lady in her position would bother herself with something as lowly as the garden.
However, it had always fascinated her, ever since she was a little girl, wandering through the gardens at the Anderson Keep.
Though the gardens here were a far cry from the carefully manicured grounds that her brother kept.
No, these looked forgotten for at least a generation, the trees so overgrown that they had stooped over in exhaustion, the flowers sprouting from between knots of weeds seemingly at random.
And yet, despite that, it had something to it, this place—a sense of pride almost, surviving against the odds had made it what it was.
She pulled out her journal to jot down a few notes, and, as she went to pluck one of the daffodils to press it between the pages of her book, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.
Looking around, her heart sank when she saw that Keith was standing a few yards away, observing the pair, doing his best to make it look as if he were just passing through.
She planted her hands on her hips and called out to him.
“Did Lachlan send you?”
Keith met her stare, not replying for a moment—clearly trying to decide whether he wanted to speak the truth or just brush her off and make her feel mad for asking. But, instead, he lowered his head in concession.
“He didnae want you exploring the gardens without oversight.”
“I have Annabelle here.”
“Aye, and she doesnae know this place any better than most of us, if you dinnae mind me saying, lass,” he remarked, nodding to Annabelle in apology, though she seemed to take little offense. “He wanted me to make sure you didnae take a fall or the like while you were here.”
“Well, you can go back and tell him that I’m perfectly capable of keeping my two feet under me,” she dismissed, waving a hand. “I just wanted to see what plants you had growing here, that’s all.”
She leaned down again, pointedly ignoring Keith.
She had only seen him briefly before, in the fiasco with her trunk when it had arrived the evening prior, and she did not feel very warmly towards him.
But, she supposed, he was likely only doing what he thought best for the Keep, and she would do well to remember it.
“Ye’re close with the Laird, is that it?” she asked as she scribbled something down in her journal, her hands already dark with charcoal.
Keith nodded. “Aye, m’Lady, you could say that.”
“So, tell me,” she remarked, lifting her eyes to his once more. “Has he always been so maudlin?”
He laughed, the sound seeming to surprise even him. “Aye, I think he’s been that way since the cradle,” he conceded. “Though yer brother’s marriage to that woman didnae help things.”
Innes’ heart dropped. She had been doing her best not to think about the fact that the man who she was now married to had been set entirely on someone else till so recently.
He had clearly been sincerely taken with Isobel if he had intended to marry her, and she could not help but feel that slight sting at the thought.
“Yes, well, she seems to have that effect on men,” she remarked, keeping her voice as light as she could.
Keith hesitated for a moment, scratching his jaw. Annabelle busied herself with re-lacing the ties of her dress, clearly doing her best to keep herself out of the conversation.
“He liked her well enough,” Keith admitted, after a long silence, a longer one than she knew what to do with. “But make no mistake, it was a convenient marriage fer him, no’ one of the heart.”
Innes’ ears pricked up. “Is that so?”
“Dinnae mistake all he has done since for heartbreak,” Keith continued, furrowing his brow. “His pride bled, no’ his heart. It would have been a good match. Her coin for his clan. Nothing more to it than that.”
She fiddled with the flower in her hand, staring down at the buds. “And now?”
She barely dared to breathe those words out loud, not sure she wanted to hear the answer to them.
“And now, what?”
“And now, he’s married to me,” she replied, practically daring him to defy her again. “Do you think… do you think that is a matter of the heart?”
Keith smirked slightly. “You truly want to ken what I think?”
She nodded. This man clearly knew the Laird well, and if anyone was going to give her insight on to what was going on inside his head, it would surely be Keith.
“I think that he is standing close to the fire wi’ you, closer than he even knows,” he admitted, shaking his head. “And he has yet to decide whether he’ll step back from it, or whether he’ll put his hand into the flames.”
And, with that, he nodded in Annabelle’s direction and made his way back into the Keep. Perhaps he was worried that he had said too much. But, as far as Innes was concerned, there were still a million more questions to be answered.
Even if she had no idea where she would begin in sifting through them.