Chapter 7 #2
Chloe looked at him. She made herself hold the words still for a moment because she needed to be certain she had understood him correctly.
“That is why I am here,” she repeated. “Nae as yer wife. As a mother for a bairn ye didnae think to tell me existed.” She pressed on before he could speak.
“Ye brought me into this house to fill a role I never agreed to, and nae one person, nae ye, nor me father, nae anyone, thought to ask me a single thing before decidin’ what me life would look like.
” She stopped. Her voice had dropped without her meaning it to.
“I will nae be managed like that. Nae from ye or anyone again.”
Edward rose from his chair. The movement was controlled and unhurried. It filled the room in a way that had nothing to do with his size and everything to do with the fact that he had clearly never had to think twice about what happened when he stood up in a room.
The room changed when he stood up.
Not his expression. Not his voice. He had not spoken yet.
It was something in the quality of the air, the way the space between them rearranged itself around his stillness.
Chloe had grown up reading rooms. She had learned, before she could name it, what it meant when a person in authority decided to use it.
Every nerve in her body told her to step back.
She did not move.
He approached the desk, taking one step toward her, then stopped.
She watched his hands curl at his sides, the knuckles going pale, the tendons pulling taut across the back of each fist.
Then, slowly, deliberately, finger by finger, he opened them.
“Ye are me wife,” he snarled. The sound was low and rough, like something dragged up from the floor of him. He closed the distance between them by half and stopped. “Ye are new to this household. And ye will learn respect. Ye will learn how things are done under me rule.”
Her throat pulled tight. The back of her neck prickled.
Everything in her that had learned, over years and hard lessons, how to read the temperature of a room told her to drop her eyes.
To soften. To give him something small that looked like yielding, so that whatever had brought out this reaction from him could pass.
She raised her chin instead.
“Respect is nae demanded.” Her voice came out steady. She did not know how. “It is earned.”
She expected anger. And it arrived. Hot and immediate, it clenched his jaw before it reached his eyes. Chloe braced herself for what would come next, but then something briefly cracked open beneath it—almost like surprise.
The study went absolutely silent.
He stepped into her space, closing the distance so quickly she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. Chloe gasped for breath, her gaze dropping to the firm line of his mouth, then to the pulse pounding fiercely in his throat.
For a dizzying, terrifying second, the anger between them shifted, thickening into something heavy, suffocating, and far too close.
He tilted his head, his dark eyes burning into hers as if he meant to consume her right there against the oak panels.
Then, just as abruptly, he snapped the tension. He turned away sharply, putting his back to her and both hands flat on the desk.
“The bairn is yer duty.” He bit it out at the wall. “Yer first duty, even before the care of this castle. That is the only reason I agreed to that absurd idea of yer faither’s.” A pause, short and hard. “Now leave.”
Chloe took a step forward. She was close enough to feel the heat coming off him, close enough to catch the faint smell of woodsmoke and dram that she was already, without meaning to, beginning to associate with him.
His hands remained flat on the desk. She avoided looking at his face.
She did not trust what she might see there or what he might see in hers.
She opened her mouth to reply, but one look from him made her shut it again.
Clenching her fists, she turned and walked away.
She had never in her life felt anger this intense. It had no clear edges. It filled her chest and pressed against her ribs, with nowhere to go. The problem was she could not tell when the anger ended, and something else entirely began.
At the door, she held the handle to shut it.
No slamming it. But as she began to pull the door, she realized that would not serve her purpose.
Slamming it would reveal exactly how badly he had gotten to her, and she would not give him that satisfaction.
She turned back, gripped the edge of the door, and pushed it open as far as it would go.
It hit the wall with a dull, hollow thud that did nothing to satisfy her anger.
Ye can get up and close yer own door.
She went straight to the chamber. Did not ring for Melodie. Did not take off her dress. She pulled the blanket back, got in, and dragged it up over her head. This way, she would not need to speak to him if he came back.
The dark beneath it was warm, close, and entirely hers. She lay in it, pressed her eyes shut, and breathed through the anger until it stopped feeling like it might split her open.
Thankfully, she did not cry. She lay there until everything calmed, and sleep finally, slowly, quietly took her.