Chapter 5
The inn was just about as unappealing inside as it looked from the outside; the floor was sticky despite a scattering of old straw that was beginning to rot.
The small parlor was still warm from the embers of a dying fire, the old carrot-top scent of some kind of stew in the air, but it appeared that they were the only guests that the place had had in quite some time.
Certainly, they were the only guests there now, the parlor entirely empty, not a sound to be heard.
What if this is one of those places where brigands and highwaymen meet?
The fire burned lower in the hearth as she subconsciously pulled herself closer to Arran, shivering at the empty, uncomfortable feeling of the place.
“Are ye hungry?” he asked, ushering her onto a bench beside a long, stained table.
She shrugged. “I hardly know. Yes… probably. My stomach is still recovering from the shock of being thrown over your shoulder.”
“Ye look like ye should eat something,” he said decisively. “Ye’re too pale, too thin. Did that bastard starve ye?”
Victoria said nothing, letting her silence speak for her.
It took a good few minutes for anyone to come and tend to them, and when someone did—a rotund man with a ruddy face—he did not look too pleased about it.
“Do ye have rooms?” Arran asked.
“Not enough for all of you,” the man replied, with a nod toward the stables outside.
“Me men will sleep in the stables, if that’s all right by ye.”
The man shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, so long as they don’t make any mess. So, it’s just the one room?”
Victoria drifted out of the conversation, her attention drawn by an enormous spiderweb dangling from the rafters overhead.
Spine crawling at the thought of the spider it belonged to, her gaze wandered the rest of the inn, wondering if they had any books hidden away somewhere. Something to read to calm herself.
At the word ‘honeymoon,’ however, her attention snapped right back to the conversation between Arran and, presumably, the innkeeper.
She was about to protest that she was the very furthest thing from married…
but then she realized how it must look. Was it better to be a lone woman being accompanied by a man who was not related or known to her, or to lie a little?
The ingrained sense of propriety with which she had been raised was starting to take over.
“My congratulations,” the older man said with a touch more friendliness.
Victoria smiled weakly in response. She should have protested that she was being held here against her will…
or just outright asked for help in getting to Emma’s residence to meet up with her sister, but there was something about the way that the man’s gaze lingered on her wedding gown that she did not care for.
Perhaps that was part of the reason that Arran’s voice suddenly turned brusque as he said, “We’ll take dinner in our room. Show us upstairs. Me wife is tired.”
“Of course, sir,” the innkeeper replied with one last look at Victoria’s gown, before he shouted for someone else to come and take care of the “newlyweds.”.
A woman who Victoria presumed was the man’s wife headed upstairs ahead of them, leading them through a low-lit door and into what must have been their only guest room. “I will have water sent up so that you can have a bath before such an important night, my lady.”
The woman looked sinister from the outside, her face in a permanent frown, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and full of warmth. She seemed rather reluctant to look Arran in the eye for reasons that Victoria could guess at.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Victoria muttered, not wanting to have the attention on herself.
She waited for the woman to leave the room after pointing out the clean bath linens and where more blankets could be found, and when she did, Victoria waited for Arran to leave the room as well.
But instead of following the woman out of the room to join his men in the stables, he merely closed the door behind her and started to unpin the tartan that he wore.
“What do you think you are doing?” Victoria gasped, quickly turning around before he could disrobe any further.
“Readyin’ meself for the night. Unless ye still wanted to threaten to strangle me in me sleep?” Arran chuckled.
“As if I could wrap my hands around your thick neck!” Victoria spoke without thinking.
“Ye are welcome to bathe first, of course,” Arran continued as if she had not spoken in the first place.
Victoria glanced down at the dress that she was wearing, the white hemline now stained green and brown from the grass, her slippers muddy and ruined.
The green sash was still in one piece, which she was somewhat disappointed in, as it was the only part that she had not liked about the dress in the first place.
She had nothing else to wear, and she was not going to be caught dead running around in her shift.
“I have one of the men finding a suitable traveling dress for ye, daenae worry about that, lass,” Arran said, as if reading her mind.
He untucked his white linen shirt from his kilt as he spoke, and she knew that she ought to avert her gaze, but some part of her could not seem to move.
“Or, if ye daenae wish to wait…” He continued as he pulled his shirt up and over his head before holding it out to her.
Victoria panicked and held her hands up in front of her face.
She started to protest quickly, and loudly…
but she caught a glimpse of his torso through her splayed, gloved fingers, and maybe she widened them a little more to get a better look.
From the defined ledge of his collarbone to the ridge of his hips, he was riddled with scars and mottled bruises in various stages of healing, an angry-looking cut slicing across the contoured muscle of his abdomen.
She had never seen anyone look so injured before.
She had never seen anyone so… unclothed before, though he still wore his kilt; he had just unpinned the part that draped like a sash across his broad chest and over his shoulder.
And yet, he seemed wholly and utterly unfazed by what looked like very painful injuries.
Her eyes widened, and whatever protest she might have said otherwise died on her lips as she headed over to see if any of the wounds needed attending to.
She was not trained in any of it, not in the slightest…
but she could not stand to see another person suffer if there was something that she might be able to do about it.
Nor could she suppress the impulse to touch him, to see if his skin was as warm as she suspected.
“What… how did you…” She glanced up at him for only a second, barely even registering his expression.
Clearly, he was a man who was accustomed to a brawl or two.
From looking at his battered body, it seemed like that was just about the only thing that he did with his time.
Unless perhaps he had recently returned from the wars on the Continent?
That would certainly explain it. She knew of many men who had been similarly dispatched, though a laird—if that was anything like the titles in England—he probably would not receive such orders.
She could not see anything actively bleeding, which was something of a blessing, but she could not understand how he was not wincing with every movement. “Are you not… hurt?”
This time, when she glanced up, he was looking at her with a very puzzled expression. “It’s just a little tender, lass, nothin’ to fuss about. “Most people would nae be up and fighting with this sort of injury.”
He smirked and shook his head. “Bet ye feel awful for hitting me all those times earlier now, daeye nae?”
Victoria’s jaw dropped. She had not even thought about that.
She lifted the back of her hand to her mouth in an attempt to cover her shock.
She did feel terrible. Her pushing and shoving had not seemed to affect him in the slightest, but she must have been doing more damage than she had originally assumed if she was irritating any of these wounds.
“I just… I did not… Well, you could have said something.”
This time, when he chuckled, it was an actual sound of amusement, and not something born out of sarcasm or something else at her expense.
“I am only teasing ye, lass. Ye can make it up to me by taking the shirt and going to enjoy yer bath,” he continued as he practically pushed the fabric into her hands.
If it were not somehow so much cleaner than her own dress, she might have protested. Slowly, she pulled the fabric toward her chest and started to turn to leave.
“Wait a moment,” he said, and stepped in front of her.
He lifted her arm, first the left, by sliding his hand up from her elbow to the edge of her glove, easing the satin down toward her wrist. It felt entirely too intimate to have him pulling her glove from her hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop him either.
She was frozen, transfixed, and staring as he teased the fabric over her marred skin, taking great care when it came time to remove it from the places where her own injuries wished to stick.
She winced, biting down on her bottom lip to keep from making noise at her discomfort.
If he could endure so many wounds without a flinch or a grimace, then so could she.
The shame, however, was harder to manage.
She could not have put into words why it was that his seeing her injuries was so embarrassing.
Clearly, he was not a stranger to blood or seeing wounds, for that matter.
She doubted that scars ever fazed him either…
and yet she knew that it was unsightly, and unsightly things in her world were supposed to stay hidden.
How can he be so gentle with such… strong hands?