Chapter 9 #3
He was watching her hand on the horse’s neck with an expression she had not yet seen on him.
Focused, yes, but not in the way he was focused across a desk or in a room full of people he was managing.
Something quieter than that. Something that looked, if she was reading it right, like a man who was simply glad a thing was going well.
He was patient. That was the word that kept arriving, no matter how many times she set it aside.
She had been bracing for coldness, for the distance he wore everywhere else, and instead he had stood beside her in a stable for the better part of an hour, corrected her elbow, told her to breathe, and never once made her feel slow or foolish for needing to be told.
She had not been prepared for that.
She had been prepared for a great many things about Edward Mason.
She turned her head to look at him as he watched her.
Not the horse. Her. His expression was unguarded in a way she had not yet seen on him, open in some way she could not fully name, as though the sight of her standing there with her hand on the mare’s neck had caught him somewhere he had not meant to be caught.
He did not look away when she caught him at it.
Neither did she.
The stable was very quiet. The heavy, warm scent of hay and horses seemed to close in around them, shrinking the world down to the scant few inches between their bodies. Edward’s gaze dropped to her mouth, his breathing altering, turning thick and shallow.
There was no anger to shield him this time. No duty to hide behind.
He stepped in, his movement deliberate and heavy, closing the distance until the fabric of his jacket brushed against her stays.
His hand came up, his large fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck to tilt her face upward.
Chloe did not flinch. She let out a soft, trembling breath against his lips a second before they claimed hers.
Edward groaned into her mouth, a low sound from the back of his throat, his other hand finding her waist and pulling her flush against him.
Chloe reached up, her fingers gripping the wool of his lapels as she leaned into his heat, tasting the dark, intoxicating flavor of him.
For the first time, he was giving instead of demanding, pouring a desperate, unvoiced need into the seam of her lips.
The world tilted, spinning on the axis of his mouth, and Chloe lost herself entirely to the violent, beautiful rush of it.
“Chloe? Chloe, are ye in there?”
The distant, frantic shout of his sister echoed down the stone corridor, accompanied by the faint, piercing wail of the bairn echoing from the courtyard.
The sound broke over them like ice water.
Edward tore his mouth away, his chest heaving as he stared down at her, his dark eyes wide and utterly undone.
His hand lingered on her neck for a moment of agonizing, breathless silence before he dropped it, stepping back into the shadows of the stall just as footsteps hurried toward the stable door.
Angela skidded to a stop in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame, William on her hip, red-faced and furious but very much whole.
"He fell off the settle," Angela said, mostly to Chloe, though her eyes cut once, sharply, to her brother's flushed face and the deliberate stall's-width of space he'd put between himself and his wife. "Barely a foot. He's loud, which as far as I can tell means he's fine."
As if to prove the point, William hiccupped, then let out a wail that could've reached the kitchens.
"He does nae sound fine," Chloe said, already moving.
"He never sounds fine. That's simply the volume he comes in." Angela handed him over anyway, watching Chloe check him over with quick, practiced hands.
Edward said nothing. He stood exactly where he'd stepped back to, arms folded.
Angela looked between the two of them, made no effort to hide her smile, and said, "I will leave William with ye tonight, I think. The two of ye clearly need the practice."
She was gone before either of them could argue it. The stable went quiet, save for William settling into small, damp sniffles against Chloe's shoulder.
"He's fine," Chloe said, mostly to break the silence.
"Aye." Edward hadn't moved. "Ye're good with him."
It wasn't much. From him, it was a great deal, and they both seemed to know it.
She reached for the safest thing in the room. "Did ye try the bread?"
His brow drew down, thrown by the turn. "What bread?"
"The bread I made. Isla was to serve it with the soup."
Something almost like amusement crossed his face, there, then gone. "I had three bowls of soup and lots of bread, if that answers yer question."
"It does answer it, and it tells me ye eat like a man being chased."
"I have nae been chased in years." A beat. "Until recently."
She didn't have an answer for that one. Neither, apparently, did he.
He gave a short nod and turned back to the mare he'd abandoned mid-lesson, and Chloe carried William toward the house before either of them could find anything else to say to each other.