Chapter 8
He woke to a crick in his neck and a shoulder that felt like it had been worked over with a mallet.
Damn that lass.
He leaned forward, pressed the heel of his hand into the muscle above his shoulder blade until he felt relief, and then reached for the basin.
He had slept in his study. Again. There had been no good reason for it except that the thought of walking back into that chamber after what had passed between them had not appealed to him.
He was still sitting with that when the door opened.
Angela did not knock.
She had only been back at the castle for a year, but she moved through it as if it were as much her inheritance as it was his.
She stepped inside and paused. Her eyes shifted to the basin and ewer on the side table, then to the folded shirt beside them, and finally to the chair he was sitting in. She took her time observing each one.
She looked at him.
“Edward.”
He already knew what was coming and had mastered how to deflect it. “I have work,” he responded flatly, his eyes going back to the stack of parchments on the desk.
“Ye have a wife ye are neglectin’.”
His eyes met hers across the large study. “I am givin’ her space to settle. Me bein’ there would nae help her.”
Angela stared at him, her expression saying she was genuinely having difficulty believing him. “Ye left a woman alone in a strange castle in a strange bed in a country she daenae ken, with nay relatives, and ye think the problem is too much of yer company.”
“What she needs is—”
“I ken what ye think she needs.” She crossed the room, reached past him, and picked up the folded shirt from beside the basin. She held it up. “Ye slept in yer study.”
“I had documents to—”
“Edward.” She set the shirt down. “Ye are nae this foolish.”
His jaw tightened. “She is nae goin’ to shatter,” he snapped.
“Aye, she will nae,” Angela agreed. “But surely ye can see she is frightened and alone in this place she did nae choose with a man she daenae ken. And ye sittin’ in here tellin’ yerself ye are givin’ her room is nae kindness. It is cowardice.”
He pushed back from the desk so fast the chair tittered. “Watch yerself.”
She held his gaze without blinking. After a moment, she smiled, “Come, brother. I want to show ye somethin’.” She reached out and grabbed his palm in her two hands. “Come with me.”
“Angela. I told ye I am—”
“It will only take a moment from ye.”
She was pulling. Edward could have stopped her with one step. He was twice her size, and she knew it. But she pulled anyway, and he let himself be moved because the alternative was to shake off his own sister.
She marched him down the corridor, through the east passage, and out through the door that opened onto the inner courtyard.
He understood why she insisted right away. Chloe was already there.
She was lying on the grass in the far corner of the courtyard, her face turned up to the sky, and her eyes closed, with her hands open at her sides.
She had not heard them. Whatever she was thinking about had taken her somewhere far from this castle, and it showed in every line of her—her loose shoulders and the stillness of her hands.
He had not seen anyone who was not a child look that blissful before. He was already regretting interrupting her moment.
But clearly his sister had no such qualms. Angela released his arm.
“What a lovely afternoon,” she announced at a volume designed to carry. “I thought we might all take some air together.”
Chloe’s eyes snapped open, and she scrambled upright. She glanced at Angela and then at Edward standing next to her, and the brief expression that crossed her face was gone in less than a second, replaced by control. It was enough.
She had not known what Angela was doing either.
Angela looked back at him with the serene expression of someone who had crafted a mischievous plan and was watching it unfold perfectly.
“I will leave ye both to it,” she said, already turning. “The air is very good today. Very restorative. For everyone.”
“Angela.” The tone he put to her name had enough weight to stop most people. Not his sister.
She waved a hand over her shoulder without breaking her stride and walked back through the door, pulling it shut behind her.
The courtyard went quiet.
Edward stood where he was. Chloe was still on the grass, one hand braced behind her, looking at the closed door with the expression of a woman calculating whether she could reach it before he did.
He looked at the grass. At the wall. At the door Angela had disappeared through. Nowhere in the courtyard offered him anything useful. He had walked into this without seeing it coming, and now he was standing in a corner of his own castle with nothing to do about it.
Chloe leaned back on the grass, her face looking upward.
Edward watched her do it, his arms folded, and said nothing.
She settled herself with complete composure, tucked her skirts around her legs, and turned her face back up toward the sun as though he were not standing four feet away with nowhere to be and no idea what to do about it.
The silence between them stretched, thick with the remnants of her temper, until she finally cut through it.
“What do ye want, Edward?” she asked, her tone clipped but polite. The perfect shield of a woman trying to force herself to be composed.
Edward shifted his weight, his arms tightening across his chest. “I didnae realize I was hinderin’ ye.”
“Aye. Ye are blockin’ the light,” she murmured.
He shifted an inch, a muscle ticking in his jaw, but he did not leave.
Letting out a slow breath, Chloe let her head drop back fully, training her gaze back on the drifting clouds above.
“Do ye never just rest?” she asked, looking at the sky.
“I rest.”
She opened one eye and turned slightly in his direction. “When?”
“I make me own dram.” He said it before he’d decided to. “I brew me own. It takes time. Patience.”
She considered this. Something shifted at the corner of her mouth. “That is still work.”
“It is craft.”
“Mm.” She turned back, closing her eyes once again. She patted the grass beside her. “Lie down.”
He looked at the patch of ground she had indicated. Then at her. “I am nae lyin’ on the ground.”
“Just for a moment.”
“I am the Laird of—”
“Edward.” She said his name so directly that the sound startled him. “Lie down.”
He stood there for another moment, out of principle.
Then he crossed the grass and lowered himself beside her, keeping a careful distance between them.
He stared up at the sky, preparing his mind to endure the moment and escape as soon as possible.
He only stayed because he knew his sister.
If whatever she had planned here did not satisfy her, she would be up to mischief again before nightfall.
He stared again. This time, he saw that the sky was very blue. He did not know what to do with that.
Beside him, Chloe lifted her right hand and held it above her face, fingers spread. “Hold yer hand up,” she told him. “Like this. Now move yer fingers slowly.”
He looked at her hand. Then at her.
“I am nae here to play some children’s game with ye,” he growled. But nothing was intimidating Chloe at the moment. She did not even pretend to hear him.
“Just try it,” she murmured.
He sighed, raised his hand, and held it above his face. He spread his fingers and moved them slowly through the light, the same way she had done it.
The sunlight came through the gaps between his fingers in thin, warm lines, shifting as his fingers moved, breaking apart and reforming. Warm and gold and strangely satisfying.
“I used to do this for hours as a child,” Chloe said quietly. Beside him, her own hand was still raised, her fingers moving slowly. “When everythin’ else became too loud.”
“Is everythin’ too loud now?”
“If anythin’, it’s too quiet here.”
He said nothing. But he remembered his sister’s words about how lonely she was. He moved his fingers again and watched the light shift through them.
They remained in companionable silence, playing the game a few more times. Then all at once, laughter came out of him before he could stop it.
Chloe lowered her hand and turned to look at him.
He did not know how long the silence lasted. Long enough for the sounds of the castle around them to fade and then vanish completely. Long enough for him to realize the distance between them on the grass, and at the same time, to recognize how little of it there actually was.
She was looking at him with those brown eyes. Totally unaware that the sunlight was catching the copper in her hair and the freckles across her nose in ways that were doing things to him.
Something shifted in the air.
He felt it the same moment she did. He saw it in the way her breathing changed, the slight stillness that moved through her, the way her lips parted just enough that it registered.
He lowered his hand, and in the process, his fingers brushed hers in the grass. The contact was brief. The side of his hand against the side of hers, light and entirely accidental, the kind of thing that happened when two people lay close enough on the same patch of ground.
Neither of them moved away.
“Ye said everythin’ was too quiet here,” he said, after a moment.
“Aye.”
“What was it like before? Where ye were.”
She turned her head slightly toward him. “Loud. Jenny’s house was always loud. Someone was always comin’ or goin’, always somethin’ was happenin’ in the hall or the kitchens.” A pause. “I didnae ken how much I liked the noise until it stopped.”
“Ye miss it.”
“I miss kennin’ where I stood.”
He was quiet for a moment. “And here? Do ye nae ken where ye stand?”
She gave him a sideways look. “Ye are nae exactly an open book, Edward.”
“Most men are nae.”
“Most men have nae dragged me across the country and married me in a dirty kirk,” she said pleasantly.
The sound that came out of him surprised them both. Low and reluctant, almost a laugh. “It was nae that dirty.”
“The candles were half-burned.”
“They were lit.”
“There was a draught.”
“There is always a draught. It is a kirk.”
She turned her head and looked at him fully then, and the smile she was fighting lost. It broke across her face, warm and entirely unguarded, the first real one he had seen from her that was not braced against something. He found he could not look away from it.
“Tell me somethin’ true,” she said quietly. “Somethin’ ye would nae say in yer study.”
He held her gaze. “Ye are nae what I expected.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I havenae decided yet.”
She studied his face for a moment, the smile fading into something softer and more uncertain. The sunlight caught the copper in her hair and the freckles across her nose in ways that were doing things to him she clearly had no idea about.
Something shifted in the air.
He felt it the same moment she did. He saw it in the way her breathing changed, the slight stillness that moved through her, the way her lips parted just enough that it registered.
He moved too fast to think about it. His hand closed around her wrist, and he turned toward her.
Then she was beneath him, the grass at her back, and his weight braced above her.
His mouth was on hers before the rational part of him had raised a single objection.
He kissed her hungrily and without apology, his free hand sliding into her hair.
She gasped against his mouth, leaning into him.
He felt her hands come to his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt, and took it for what it was. He pressed closer, his hand moving from her hair to the curve of her hip, then lower, finding the hem of her skirts and sliding beneath their fall, his palm against the softness of her thigh.
“Edward.” She tore her mouth from his. His name came out half breath, half whisper, her eyes wide and her face flushed dark. She looked at the courtyard around them. At the open windows above. At the door through which anyone could walk at any moment. “Here?”
He looked down at her. Her hair had come loose at one side, spread across the grass. Her lips were swollen, and her chest was rising and falling wildly. Raw desire flickered hot and dangerous in his chest, but he quickly shuttered it, terrified of how much of himself he would be giving away.
Duty is what this is. Only duty.
“Ye are me wife,” he muttered, his voice rough against her throat. “Is me duty. Yer duty.” His hand moved higher beneath her skirts. “Obey me wherever I tell ye.”
He pressed his lips to her neck while she remained perfectly still underneath him. He sensed it before consciously recognizing it: her stillness was not surrender. He then lifted his head.
Her face had changed.
Something flared behind her eyes, unrelated to what was there a moment ago. He saw her jaw tighten, her breath sharp and quick through her nose, then both her palms pressed against his chest as she pushed away.
He lifted himself off her and sat back.
She was upright immediately, one hand pressed to the grass to steady herself, the other smoothing her skirts down with short, controlled movements. Her breath was unsteady. Her eyes were not.
“If ye want me,” she said, her voice low and shaking, “then want me.” She held his gaze without blinking. “Do not speak as though I am some duty ye can summon, fulfill, and be done with.”
She stood. She smoothed her hair, then she walked away across the courtyard with her spine straight and her chin level without looking back.
Edward sat in the grass and watched her go and did not move until the door had closed behind her.
He needed a moment before he could decently stand up.
Damn this lass.