Chapter 24
Violet tried to glare at him from the bed and failed miserably.
Connor saw the attempt. Her chin lifted first, proud as ever, then her eyelids lowered before she could finish whatever argument she had armed herself with. The blanket had slipped from one shoulder again. She caught it, frowned at it as if it had betrayed her, and opened her mouth.
No words came.
The candle on the table had burned low beside the teacup, and the bathwater near the fireplace had gone still and dark.
Below, the tavern had fallen quiet to a few heavy steps and the occasional sound of doors opening and closing.
His man remained outside the door. Connor had checked twice, though he had done it with his eyes rather than his feet.
Violet blinked slowly, then forced her eyes wider with sheer will.
“Sleep,” Connor urged.
“We arenae finished,” she insisted.
“Aye, we are.”
“I have more points to make.”
“Save them for tomorrow.”
Her eyebrows drew together. She looked offended by the suggestion, or tried to anyway, and the effort made her sway a little against the pillow.
Connor moved before she asked for help, then stopped himself from reaching too quickly.
He pulled the blanket over her shoulders instead, precise as he would have been with a cloak before riding into bad weather.
She watched his hand. “Ye keep doing that.”
“Keeping ye covered?”
“Behaving like a kind man. It is quite strange of ye.”
“Daenae spread the tale. It would damage me reputation.”
Her mouth curved despite her exhaustion. The smile barely lasted, and it struck him harder because she had not sharpened it into mischief first.
“Go to sleep, lassie,” he said. “We can argue more tomorrow.”
A small laugh escaped her lips. It was only a breath, tired and quiet, but he still looked at her as if she had drawn steel.
Violet had laughed at him before, bright and wicked, often at moments when a wiser woman would have stepped back. This was different. She had no strength for performance.
Connor had stood through anger with ease. Anger gave him rules. It showed him where to place his feet and when to strike back. That weary sound gave him nothing to fight.
“Tomorrow,” she murmured, as if testing whether the word would hold.
“Aye.”
She should have pulled away then. He even waited for it. He had learned the pattern of her behavior and moods since she had broken into his castle in borrowed clothes and fury. Want, then retreat. Softness, then adhering to rules.
Her hand moved, and he thought it would push against his chest. Instead, her fingers curled loosely into his shirt.
He did not breathe for several seconds.
Violet shifted closer with the slow care of someone nearly asleep.
Her cheek came to rest against him, and her body melted into his, as if she had chosen a place and had no strength left to deny it.
Cold water still clung to her hair, and beneath the sharp tea, he could smell clean linen and the scent of her skin.
His hand hovered above her back. If she woke and found him holding her too closely, she might make it into another rule by morning. She might blush, call him impossible, and place some arguments between herself and what she had done in her sleep.
Connor almost dropped his hand. But then she drew in a shaky breath and pressed her fingers deeper into his shirt.
He set his palm carefully between her shoulder blades. She did not wake. Her breathing slowed, and the lines at the corners of her mouth softened. One damp strand of hair clung to her temple, and he wanted to brush it away. He did not.
She was asleep and unaware. He would not steal even a gentle touch from her while she could not choose it. So he remained still.
Desire had been simpler. He understood hunger in the blood and the discipline required to put his hands where he chose, to stop when he chose, to deny his body because it was the reasonable thing to do.
Her sleeping against him, however, offered no battlefield he knew.
She had given him her weight, her unguarded throat near his shoulder, her hand in his shirt.
She trusted him to keep watch.
Connor looked toward the locked door. He listened until he caught the faint shuffle of his guard’s boots outside. No one had come too close. No one had lingered where they might hear. The tavern keeper had obeyed, the room was closed, and the fire burned low with Violet warm under the blanket.
Those were useful facts. He held onto them first. Then his gaze returned to the table.
The tea sat half-finished. She would drink more in the morning, whether she liked it or not. The herbs would return with them to the castle. He would send for the healer. If Violet refused, he would make the healer wait in the hall until her stubbornness faltered.
The thought of her anger in the morning should have pleased him like it usually did. But for some reason, it did not.
He looked at the faint shadows beneath her eyes. He thought of her leaving Moore Castle before dawn, dressed plainly, slipping past the guards like a thief in her own home.
She had gone alone because she knew what she needed and feared what others would do with that knowledge. She had hidden it from Moira and him. She had risked a public market rather than let anyone stand close enough to worry.
It was clearer than anything that she hid because she feared what her danger would do to anyone who loved her and because John was part of it. Connor saw that now with a clarity that irritated him for arriving late.
Violet held the baby as if love were work she had sworn herself to complete. She read to him, argued over his christening clothes, and smiled at every small sound he made. Her refusal to have children had never been cold indifference. She just feared a child loving her back.
Connor lowered his eyes to her sleeping hand in his shirt, and Lachlan’s letter came to mind, unwelcome.
Be gentler.
His brother had always known where old wounds lay, though he often mistook cruelty for insight. Violet had pressed the same bruise tonight.
Connor looked down at her and adjusted the blanket on her shoulder.
Gentleness had never saved his family. Yet Violet had looked at him with fever-red cheeks and accused him of becoming a wall. And now she slept with her hand in his shirt, as though that same wall had become shelter.
Near dawn, she stirred, and her lips brushed the edge of his shirt as she murmured, “Connor.”
Connor went rigid.
Her eyes stayed closed. She would never have called his name while awake. She would have swallowed the words, sharpened them into a joke, or denied them outright. In her sleep, she gave them to him without defense.
He gently drew her closer, careful not to wake her.
Only warmth, he told himself. Only keeping me wife safe until the morning.
But then, a bad lie had poor legs.
He had not moved from the bed. His back ached from his half-seated position, and his arm had gone stiff beneath her shoulders. The door remained locked, and outside it, his guard coughed once into a fist. Connor listened until the man shifted again, then looked back at Violet.
He should have slept while he could. Instead, he measured the hours until dawn and thought through the road home.
They would leave before the village woke fully.
Violet would eat first, even if he had to stand over her with the bread in hand.
She would ride slowly, wrapped against the morning chill, and he would keep one man ahead on the road and one behind.
If she swayed once in the saddle, he would put her before him on his horse and endure whatever sharp little protest she found strength for.
The corner of his mouth curved at that thought.
Then his gaze fell on the table, and the almost-smile vanished.
She had known exactly what to buy, and she had known how to ask for it. This had happened before. Violet had refused that answer with her mouth, then given it to him with every motion since.
Aiden’s warning returned to him with more weight now.
“Violet smiles when she ought to ask for help.”
Connor had thought he understood it at the wedding, but he had not. He had understood a clever woman who hid her pain because she disliked fuss. He had missed the deeper thing.
John would be waking soon at the castle. Moira would lift him, feed him, perhaps wonder why Violet had not come in with some ridiculous book or a ribbon she insisted the baby favored.
Violet would ask about him the moment she opened her eyes. She would pretend to ask calmly, but she would fail.
Connor shifted the blanket higher over her shoulder. She did not wake.
He closed his eyes for one breath, then opened them and looked at her sleeping face for a long moment.
Her brow creased suddenly. Her fingers twisted in his shirt, and her breath caught as if some dream had pulled her back toward the sickroom she refused to name.
Connor steadied her with one hand on her back.
“Violet,” he whispered.
She shifted closer. Her lips brushed the edge of his collar.
“Yer arms,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep. “They’re quite safe.”
Connor froze.
No sound from below mattered anymore. He looked at her hand curled in his shirt, at her cheek, at the woman who would sooner fight him half-conscious than ask for comfort while awake.
His arm tightened around her carefully. He lowered his chin, stopping before his mouth touched her hair.
He had made his decision—Violet would not leave his walls unguarded again.
By the time gray light edged the shutters, he had not slept at all. His arm had gone stiff beneath her, but he did not move it.
Violet slept as if she trusted him to keep watch, and he lay awake beneath the weight of being trusted. By morning, he knew two things clearly: Violet was hiding something that could take her from him, and he was no longer willing to pretend he would let her go.
Not now.
Not ever.