Chapter 14 #2
Chloe stood alone in the sudden silence of the study, her breath catching in her throat.
She looked at the stone bench under the window.
At the rumpled fur. At the lonely pillow.
Then she looked out the arrow slit at the gray morning light, which was finally, incrementally, beginning to break through the mist.
Half an hour.
She turned and marched off to plunder Angela’s wardrobe.
The beast Edward had selected for her was a massive, dapple-gray mare with a back as broad as a tavern table. The mare stood perfectly still in the muddy yard as Chloe approached, accepting the cautious press of Chloe’s fingers against her velvet nose.
“Her name is Beira,” Edward’s voice rumbled from directly behind her shoulder.
“After the queen of winter?” Chloe asked, turning her head slightly.
Edward looked down at her, a fractional recalibration passing through his pale eyes. “Ye ken the old lore?”
“Lady Jenny possessed an extensive library,” she said, returning her hand to the mare’s snout, enjoying the blast of warm, sweet breath against her knuckles. “I read every volume she permitted.”
He was quiet for a beat, his eyes tracking the vibrant red of her hair against the dark green wool of the riding habit she had salvaged from Angela’s trunk. The jacket fit her snugly, pinning her waist and accentuating the swell of her hips.
“She is steady,” Edward murmured, clearing his throat. “She willnae throw ye.”
“I am nae particularly terrified of hittin’ the dirt.”
“Ye should be. The glen rocks are unyieldin’.”
She snapped her gaze to his face. He met her eyes with absolute, deadpan neutrality, but she caught the tiny glint of light in his iris. It was the closest the man would ever come to a jest. A small smile tugged at her lips as she turned back to Beira.
“Before ye go any further,” Edward said, moving to stand at Beira’s left shoulder, “ye’ll learn to mount her yerself.”
Chloe looked at the stirrup. Then, at the distance between the stirrup and the ground. Then back at him. “Now?”
“Ye’d prefer to learn once we’re already in the glen?”
She gathered her skirts and put her left foot in the iron. She pushed up, got halfway, and the saddle shifted. She came back down.
“Again,” Edward said.
She tried again. The same result.
“Yer weight is goin’ forward,” he said. He stepped in behind her without ceremony, one hand coming to her waist and the other to her knee, adjusting her position before she had time to register the contact. “Push through the heel. Nae the toe.”
The heat of his hands went straight through the wool. She pushed through the heel.
She made it up. Barely. She grabbed the pommel to steady herself, more graceless than she would have liked, and sat there slightly breathless on top of a very large horse.
“There,” he said.
He took up a position at Beira’s head and began walking her in a slow circle around the yard. “Sit straight. Daenae grip with yer knees.”
“How am I meant to stay on without grippin’?”
“Balance. Nae force.” He glanced up at her. “Let yer hips move with her. Stop fightin’ it.”
She tried. The mare’s walk had a roll to it she had not anticipated. She overcorrected, grabbed the pommel again.
“Ye’re thinkin’ too much,” he said.
“I am thinkin’ exactly the right amount. I have never done this before.”
“Aye.” He came alongside and, without warning, put one hand on her lower back, steadying her. The contact was brief and entirely practical. It was also, she discovered, extremely difficult to ignore. “Breathe,” he said. “Ye tense up, and she’ll feel it.”
She breathed. Beira’s stride evened beneath her.
“Better,” Edward said. He let his hand fall, and she felt the absence of it immediately.
They continued the circle. He walked beside her, correcting her elbow once. His fingers briefly closed around her forearm to lift it, and he also lifted her chin once, tilting it upward with two fingers beneath her jaw before stepping away again.
“Ye’re starin’ at her ears,” he said.
“They are very large ears.”
“Look at the horizon. Where ye’re goin’, nae where ye are.”
She raised her eyes to the far gate. The mare’s stride seemed to settle further.
“There,” he said, quieter this time.
She glanced down at him. He was watching her.
“How long did it take ye?” she asked. “To learn.”
“I daenae remember learnin’. I was four.”
“Of course ye were.” She looked back at the horizon. “And ye expect me to manage it in twenty minutes.”
“I expect ye to manage the basics in twenty minutes,” he said. “The rest will come. Assumin’ ye stay off the nettles.”
She laughed before she could stop it, a sharp, genuine sound that startled Beira’s ears. Edward caught the bridle with one easy hand, steadying the mare without breaking stride.
“Right,” Chloe said, composing herself. “I think I am ready to go.”
“Aye,” he said. He looked up at her, and the morning light caught his eyes. “Ye did well.”
She did not trust herself to answer that.
“Up,” he said, and swung himself up behind her.
Chloe’s breath caught in her lungs. She had not fully calculated what this arrangement would require.
His broad, muscular chest pressed firmly against her shoulder blades, a solid wall of warmth. His long, powerful arms wrapped around her waist to hold the leather reins, enclosing her so closely she could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of his ribs against her back with each breath.
The scent of him enveloped her instantly. Woodsmoke, cured leather, and that sharp, intoxicating musk of fresh Highland earth.
She fixed her eyes straight ahead, her spine turning to iron.
“Relax, lass,” his gravelly voice whispered, his breath stirring the loose hairs at the nape of her neck.
Her entire body became, in that exact instant, utterly incapable of compliance.
The dapple-gray mare shifted beneath them, her iron shoes clinking against the cobblestones. At a shout from the wall, the massive iron-studded gates of Castle O’Brien groaned open, revealing a path to the wilderness.
The Scottish Highlands unfolded before them in every direction. A vast, stunning sea of jagged gray peaks, ancient stone cliffs, and rolling valleys of gold and purple heather, all shimmering beneath the rising morning mist.
Chloe kept her chin high, her eyes locked on the horizon as the horse broke into a steady, rhythmic walk.
As the shadow of the fortress walls fell away behind them, she felt rather than heard a long, low exhale leave the man at her back. It was not a sigh of weariness; it was the deep, shuddering release of a prisoner stepping into the sun.
She wondered how many months he had been suffocating inside that stone tomb. She said absolutely nothing, leaning fractionally back into his heat, and watched the mist dance through the deep green glen below.