Chapter 9
He heard her before he saw her.
The corridor was narrow enough that two people had to turn sideways to pass. He rounded the corner instinctively, and she was there, already stepping aside and misjudging the wall. Her balance gave out. His hands caught her at the waist before he had even decided to move.
He grabbed her. She sucked in a breath, one hand flying to his forearm to steady herself.
"Ye might try walking with yer eyes open," she said, breathless, already too aware of how close his hands still were to her waist.
"Ye might try staying on yer own side of the corridor," he said back, and neither of them moved.
She was warm through the fabric, clean and faintly herbed, and the scent of her reached him in the narrow space between them. Her hands came up between them. He leaned in without meaning to. She did the same.
They were close enough that he could feel her breath. Her eyes dropped to his mouth.
He released her and stepped back. She held his gaze for one more second, then arranged her expression into something composed and unreachable, and walked away without a word.
He stood where he was until her footsteps were gone.
In his study an hour later, on his second cup of dram, he was still thinking about it.
Ye were meant to be simple.
A practical solution to a simple problem.
Someone to run the house and look after the bairn.
That was the total of what he had agreed to.
But she had walked into his kirk in mud-stained clothes, lit his fireplace with her bare hands, stormed into his study without knocking, and now she was leaning toward him in dark hallways without even realizing she was doing it.
His mother had once leaned toward his father. Had trusted him, built a life beside him, and it had killed her. Not in one moment but in a long accumulation of them, each small enough to dismiss until there was nothing left.
Edward had his father’s hands. He had proved what they were capable of at sixteen, and he had not allowed himself to forget it.
He flung his cup into the fire. The dram surged white up the chimney and settled.
“That is how it is,” he told the fire. His voice came out rough and low in the empty room. “Cruel as that and just as merciless. I am nae human enough for a woman.”
He would do his duty by her. She would have everything she needed in this house. Safety, warmth, and position. William to care for, and one of her own to love, when she was ready. He would give her all of it.
He would give her none of the rest.
He sat forward, elbows on his knees, and stared into the flames until they burned low. He had locked in his decision, and it was final.
She turned onto her left side. Then she fumbled under the quilt, wondering what the maids had done to the bed that had made it so uncomfortable.
She adjusted to her right. Then, on her back, staring at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides like a person lying out for burial.
She was not going to think about the garden or corridor. She turned onto her left side again.
The problem was not that he had kissed her. The problem was that she had kissed him back, and she had wanted to taste more of that sweet cinnamon taste on his tongue when they had met in the corridor.
She knew what she was doing and had not stopped, nor had she wanted to. She was a grown woman of five-and-twenty who had apparently lost the use of her common sense the moment a broad-shouldered man with pale eyes and a jaw like carved stone had given her as much as a glance.
She pressed her hands over her face.
He is yer her husband, is he nae?
That was the truth of it. There was nothing wrong with feeling attraction for one’s husband. Especially one as striking as Edward.
No man like Edward had ever looked at her. Not once. Not ever.
She pressed her mouth together.
A giggle escaped before she could contain it.
Silly lass. That is quite enough of that.
She sat up.
The problem was, he blew hot one breath, and frozen as ice the next. She never knew which version she would encounter when they met.
Enough.
She had too much time and not enough to do with it, and that was the real problem. A woman with idle hands had nothing to put between herself and her own thoughts. She needed actual work, the kind her hands already knew.
She dressed quickly and headed for the corridor.
It was still dark and quiet this early, but a faint smell reached her from somewhere below, warm and yeasty and entirely familiar.
Bread.
She followed it down.
The kitchen was bright and loud, smelling of everything good.
Three women worked at the main table, arms white to the elbow with flour. A boy of about twelve was stoking the fire with the focused effort of someone who had been told twice already to do it properly. Isla stood at the far counter with a wooden spoon in each hand, arguing with a pot.
Chloe stood in the doorway and felt her shoulders come down.
“Good mornin’, everyone.” The room went quiet.
She crossed to the main table, rolled her sleeves to the elbow, and reached for the nearest lump of dough.
One of the women looked at her hands, then at her face, and then at her hands again.
Isla turned around with the spoon still raised.
Chloe pressed the heel of her palm into the dough and pushed.
“So, are we goin’ to do some work or will ye all keep starin’ at me?”
“Right,” Isla said, to no one in particular. “Right, then.”
They all worked in silence for a while, and the kitchen slowly came back to life around her.
Cautiously at first and then fully, with the noise and heat and easy movement of people who knew their work.
She carried trays when they needed carrying.
She held the bowl while the youngest girl poured.
She moved through the space the way she had always moved through kitchens, without needing to be told where things were or what came next.
Isla appeared at her elbow.
“Me Lady,” she began, with the exaggerated gravity of someone enjoying themselves.
“Daenae,” Chloe said.
“I was only goin’ to say—”
“I ken what ye were goin’ to say.”
“Ye are kneadin’ that as if it owes ye coin,” Isla observed. “I have never seen a lady—”
“I told ye. Me mother taught me,” Chloe said, cutting across her pleasantly. “Me mother used to say that a woman who depends only on her face for her keep is a woman one bad winter away from disaster.” She pushed the dough again. “She believed in bein’ useful.”
Isla considered this. “Aye. But a lady of a clan need never have to worry about disaster.”
Chloe’s mind flashed to her father and the debt he had run his clan into. No, definitely. Some ladies would have to face disaster.
At the far end of the table, the boy reached past her for the flour jar and knocked it sideways. White powder sheeted across the table and across the floor.
“Oi!” The word was out before she could stop it. She was already reaching for the cloth. “How many times does a person have to…” She stopped.
The boy stared at her. The women stared at her. Isla had both hands pressed over her mouth.
Chloe looked around and felt a hot flush across her face. These people had let her in, and she was pushing them away.
“Leave it,” she said, forcing a smile. “I will clean it.” She looked at the mess. “I mean, someone else can…” She gestured vaguely at all of it.
“I will get it, me Lady,” the boy said, already moving.
Isla made a sound that was definitely not a laugh.
“Nae a word,” Chloe told her.
“Nae one,” Isla agreed, and handed her a clean cloth for her hands.
They settled into a companionable quiet, Isla stirring whatever had been arguing with her in the pot, Chloe finishing the dough. The kitchen moved around them, warm and ordinary and entirely without ceremony.
“Can I ask ye somethin’?” Isla said, after a while.
“Ye will, anyway.”
“The Laird.” Isla kept her eyes on the pot. “How do ye find him?”
Chloe was quiet for a moment. She pressed the heel of her palm into the dough and pushed.
“Complicated,” she said at last.
Isla lifted a shoulder. “He runs everythin’.
Makes every decision. Never asks for anythin’ back.
” She glanced sideways. “Mrs. Donnan says he has been alone since before she came to this castle, and she has been here twelve years.” She stirred slowly.
“A man who is feared and capable and alone for that long.” She shook her head.
“It does somethin’ to a person. Even a hard one. ”
“Aye,” Chloe said quietly. “It does.” She looked down at the dough. “But complicated and broken are nae the same thing. I am beginnin’ to think people have been too quick to decide which one he is.”
Isla said nothing to that. But she stopped stirring and looked at Chloe for a long moment before turning back to her pot.
He had everything and still felt lonely. She shook the thought out of her head, forcing her mind to focus on the task in front of her.
“All right.” Two hours later, Chloe set both hands on the table and looked at the loaves cooling on the rack, golden and even, the crusts split perfectly along the top. “The bread is done.”
Isla leaned over her shoulder and let out a low sound of appreciation.
“Me Lady.” The older woman at the end of the table was shaking her head slowly. “Ye have a golden touch. We have never seen bread come out like that.” She looked at the rack and then back at Chloe. “I wonder what the Laird will say when he tries it.”
Chloe smiled and reached for her shawl. “Serve it with the afternoon soup.” She looked around the kitchen once, at the flour still on her sleeve and the boy who had helped more than he knew, and at Isla watching her with an expression that she knew meant a comment was being held back at some effort. “Well done, all of ye. Thank ye.”
She left before Isla could say anything.
She had not meant to end up at the stables.