Chapter 4
It stopped snowing sometime during her second night in Oliphant Castle, and Bonnie had never been so disappointed when she woke up to blue skies and realized this might be her last day with Lyon.
The day before—after Lyon had helped her prepare luncheon—they’d spent the afternoon in his study, working in what she imagined was companionable silence.
Since the cook had never returned, they helped Keith make dinner as well, then the three of them ate in the cozy little room by the kitchens.
Most of the conversation was between her and Keith of course, but every once in a while, Lyon would chime in with a piece of Oliphant history.
And she was completely intrigued. Not only was he a walking, talking source for her book, but she loved hearing his opinion on things. It was clear the man—the future Laird Oliphant—was proud of his heritage, and that made her smile.
Of course, a lot of the things he did made her smile.
To her surprise, he joined her and Keith for breakfast that clear morning, and the first thing he announced upon entering the cozy little room was, “There’s too much snow out there. Sander willnae be able to come fetch ye today either.”
And the joy which bloomed in her chest was nothing compared to the realization he didn’t want her to leave right away either.
So it was with a light step that she hurried to settle herself in at her little desk in Lyon’s study. She pulled out one of the source books she’d discovered the day before, and was smiling as she leafed through it to find the chapter she wanted.
And when he stomped into the room, scowling at nothing in particular, and threw himself behind his desk? Well, her heart gave a contented little sigh. As if…as if they were both where they belonged.
His pen scratched across the paper, working on designs for things she didn’t recognize, and Bonnie felt herself slipping into a contented sort of meditation. Unfortunately, this meant that the fire had burned low by the time she’d realized she’d been reading aloud.
It wasn’t intentional.
It never was, when she found something particularly delightful; the words simply began to spill from her lips before her brain caught up with her manners.
She’d done it as a child, driving her mother to distraction, and she’d done it at Lysander’s dining table often enough that Tiffany had taken to kicking her under it.
But there was no Tiffany here to kick her, and so she read on, barely aware she was doing it.
“The women of the household were not merely decorative,” she murmured, tracing her finger along the faded print.
“They managed the stores, the medicines, the correspondence, the care of the sick and dying, and in times of siege, the defense of the walls themselves. That their names do not appear in the histories is not evidence of their absence, but of the historian’s limitations. ”
She paused, delighted, and looked up.
Lyon was watching her.
Not his schematics, not the ledger he’d been frowning at earlier, but her.
He was leaning back slightly in his chair, his pen set aside, his arms folded, and he was watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read; something between arrested and cautious, as if she were a bird that had landed unexpectedly on his windowsill and he didn’t want to startle her into flight.
Heat crept up her neck. “Forgive me,” she said. “I often read aloud when I find something I like. It is a terrible habit.”
“Dinnae apologize,” he said, so immediately that she blinked.
“I—” She stopped, then started again. “My mother used to say it was the height of self-indulgence.”
“Yer mother,” he said, in a flat tone which made his opinion of that woman perfectly clear, “was wrong.”
Bonnie stared at him. In her experience, people tolerated her eccentricities.
Oh, her sisters loved her for them, of course. But no one had ever simply, flatly, told her that the people who found her too much were wrong. It was such a small thing, and it settled in the center of her chest like a coal.
“Read it again,” he said gruffly, dropping his gaze as though embarrassed to have said it. He picked up his pen and bent over his work, as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes when he commanded, “From the beginning of that bit.”
So she did.
She read slowly this time, savoring it, watching him from beneath her lashes.
His pen scratched across the paper, and she couldn’t see what he was working on, but she could tell he was listening.
Listening with focused, frowning attention, as if he agreed that the history of nameless medieval women deserved to be taken seriously.
When was the last time someone had listened to her like that?
She reached the end of the passage and hesitated, wondering if she should continue.
He made her decision for her.
“There are three more volumes,” Lyon announced abruptly. He jerked his chin toward the far shelf. “The second one has more on the siege business. A woman held Dunnottar Castle for months against an English garrison.”
“You know this,” she said, and she heard the wonder in her own voice before she could contain it.
He looked faintly defensive. “I’ve read the books in my own study.”
“Of course you have.” She smiled at him, helpless to stop it. “Of course you have.”
He picked up his pen again. She picked up her book. But neither of them, she noticed, was entirely paying attention to what was in front of them.
It was perhaps an hour later that Keith appeared at the door, bare-knuckled and bright-eyed, his pugilist’s wrapping cloths already in hand.
“Ready?” he asked Lyon, with the easy confidence of a man who knew he’d be welcomed by an Earl’s son, once more making Bonnie wonder who this butler really was.
Lyon didn’t look up from—she squinted—the sketch he had been fiddling with for the last forty minutes. “Nay.”
Keith blinked. “Nay?”
“Ye heard me.”
The younger man’s gaze traveled, with great interest, across the room to where Bonnie sat. She immediately looked back at her book. The thing could have been upside down, for all the attention she was giving the words.
“Ye’re sure?” Keith asked.
“I’m content where I am,” Lyon growled.
There was a pause.
Bonnie pretended great interest in her book, but she couldn’t help raising it enough to block the way her gaze darted to Keith, to Lyon, and back to Keith. The two men were glaring at each other. When Lyon eventually dropped his scowl back to his work, Keith’s speculative gaze darted to her.
Ducking her head back over her book, Bonnie’s cheeks warmed at the way the butler-turned-boxing-partner’s lips had curled into a delighted smile before he backed out of the room.
She did not look up.
She was almost certain that if she looked up, Lyon would see everything on her face.
I’m content where I am.
His simple announcement had rearranged something in her chest, because she understood, without anyone having to explain it, that Lyon Oliphant was not a man who said such things.
That Keith’s stunned silence had confirmed it.
That the slight shift in Lyon’s posture now, the faint tension that told her he was aware he’d revealed something, confirmed it further.
She turned a page she hadn’t read.
He said nothing.
She was still composing herself when he stood, and she heard his footsteps cross the room toward her shelves.
She didn’t look up—she was making a very dedicated study of a sentence about grain stores—until his arm appeared beside her head, reaching past her to the shelf she’d been working through, and the world contracted to the few inches between his chest and her shoulder.
He smelled of woodsmoke and the same soap she’d been using these past evenings.
Her sharp inhale kept her breath in her chest, savoring his scent—savoring him being so close.
Lyon was very still for a moment, and she had the sudden, dizzying sense that he was as aware of the distance between them as she was. That he could feel her stillness. That the question hanging in the air was not about books at all.
If he turned his head just slightly, if she stretched just slightly…they would be touching. Skin to skin. Lips to lips.
In that moment, Bonnie knew: I want that. She wanted that touch, that kiss.
Wanted it with this man.
The man everyone else called a beast, but whom she was coming to realize hid his heart deep beneath layers of scars and surliness.
Then Lyon drew back, and something was placed gently in her hands.
She looked down. A slim volume, older than the one she’d been reading, the spine soft with handling.
“Here.” His voice was slightly rougher than usual. “Ye might enjoy this one more.”
She turned it over and her breath caught in disbelief and delight.
The Household Management of Lady Elspeth Mackay, 1612. A primary source, a woman’s own words, written in her own hand and somehow, miraculously, preserved and printed.
She looked up at Lyon. He was already moving back toward his desk, his shoulders set, his footsteps heavy.
But he’d known. Without her asking, without her explaining what she was looking for or why it mattered, he had simply known.
“Thank you, Lyon,” she said softly.
He picked up his pen. “Dinnae read it aloud,” he said. “Or I’ll never get any work done.”
She pressed her lips together very hard, and failed entirely to hide her smile.
The rest of that day passed in quiet coziness; cooking, researching, occasionally finding something so perfectly wonderful she had to read it out loud, while Lyon listened indulgently.
That afternoon, Bonnie pulled out one of Mrs. Oliphant’s cookbooks and tried her hand at making cookies, which both men declared were really quite good.
Their compliments made her glow with accomplishment, but she was grateful when, the following day, the cook herself finally managed to return to the castle, wading through the thick snow.