Chapter 16
Chloe looked up as the ancestral fortress of the O’Briens gradually returned to claim them in slow, exhausting stages.
First came the heavy outer perimeter. The familiar groan of iron-studded oak swinging inward at the Laird’s approaching silhouette, the sentinels on the ramparts snapping to rigid attention.
“Do ye think he has missed us?” Chloe asked, her eyes on the gates.
Edward’s chest shifted against her back. “Who?”
“William.” She paused. “He has never gone a full day without one of us in the nursery.”
A beat of silence. Beira’s hooves found the cobblestones, the soft give of the glen track replaced by hard, unforgiving stone beneath them.
“He has Mrs. Donnan,” Edward said.
“Mrs. Donnan is nae us.”
He said nothing to that. But his arms tightened fractionally around the reins, drawing her incrementally closer against his chest.
Then came the inner courtyard. The sharp rhythmic clatter of iron shoes on muddy cobblestones, the claustrophobic symphony of Castle O’Brien folding around them once more.
The distant clang of a blacksmith’s hammer, the slam of a timber door, the overlapping chatter of scullery maids from the kitchens.
Within seconds, the crisp, liberating scent of coastal salt was utterly choked out by the heavy tang of peat smoke.
Chloe felt the freedom of the fishing village recede into the mountain mist behind her and said nothing, her throat tightening.
Edward dismounted first, his boots thudding into the mud. Before she could even attempt to swing her leg over the saddle, his massive, calloused hands clamped around her waist. He lifted her down without requesting permission, and for the first time in her life, Chloe allowed herself to be handled.
Her left ankle had stiffened into a rigid column of agony overnight despite the tavern mistress’s tight linen bindings; the alternative was hopping like a wounded crow across the courtyard under the scrutiny of his clan.
He lowered her to the flagstones but kept his iron grip locked onto her elbow until he was thoroughly satisfied her good leg had found its balance. Only then did he release her.
“The stairs,” he growled low, eye-leveling the steep stone steps leading to the keep. “Ye need help with them.”
“I am perfectly capable of navigatin’ stairs, Edward.”
He leveled a look at her, a flat, unyielding glare that made her feel about three feet tall.
She managed the climb, but only because his massive palm stayed pressed against her elbow. She endured the support, stubbornly refusing to comment on the humiliating truth of how much easier his brute strength made the whole task.
Their master chamber was precisely as she had abandoned it. The attentive maids had kept the hearth fire burning hot in their absence, the vast linen sheets of the four-poster bed were smoothed flat, and fresh, steaming water occupied the stoneware basin.
The late afternoon sun bled through the narrow stone casement, casting long, golden bars of amber light across the dark floorboards. Chloe stood in the center of the warmth.
Edward marched into the space, set down the small linen bundle containing their salvaged trail gear, and uncoiled his spine. He surveyed the perimeter of the room, his eyes darting from the bed to her bandaged ankle, and finally to the open doorway.
A sudden, desperate impulse surged in her throat before she could logically dismantle it.
Stay.
A single syllable. It sat perched at the very edge of her teeth, hot and demanding.
But then she looked at his hard profile, the guarded angle of his jaw, and the familiar, suffocating armor he was already meticulously reassembling after the vulnerability of the last twenty-four hours.
She swallowed the word down, the bitter taste of it burning her throat.
She was not truly prepared for what his staying would require of her. And neither, she suspected, was the man standing before her.
“I desire to see Will,” she spoke up instead.
Edward paused, his hand already reaching for the door latch. He turned back slowly. “William,” he corrected flatly.
The reprimand was an automatic reflex, a hard instinct, but Chloe watched him register his own hypocrisy a fraction of a second after the name passed his lips. A tiny, telling muscle twitched at the outer corner of his eye.
“Aye, William,” Chloe repeated, her tone dripping with an agreeable, deliberate softness.
He held her brown gaze for a charged interval. Then, without a word of negotiation, he pulled the heavy door wide.
“Come, then,” he muttered.
She had fully expected him to bark a command down the gallery, summoning Melodie or Mrs. Donnan to escort her. Instead, he simply broke into a slow, unhurried stride, and she fell into his wake.
They navigated the drafty upper corridors together in the dying gold of the afternoon, her boots clicking in an uneven limping rhythm, his massive steps adjusted to a pace she could match without straining.
“Ye daenae have to come,” she said, after a while.
“I ken.”
She glanced sideways at him. His eyes were forward, his jaw set in its familiar line. “Then why are ye?”
“Because ye cannae manage the stairs alone.”
“I managed them perfectly well earlier.”
“Ye managed them because I had hold of yer elbow.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. He was not wrong.
They turned the corner into the upper passage, the nursery door visible at the far end, a thin thread of warm light beneath it.
“He will be asleep,” Edward said. “At this hour, he usually is.”
She looked at him. He was still watching the corridor ahead, but something in his voice had shifted, quieter, less armored.
“Aye,” she said softly. “Probably.”
Chloe halted at the threshold, her breath catching.
The young nursemaid was nowhere to be found. The room was filled with deliberate silence. Edward crossed the boundary without hesitation.
He crossed the floorboards to the cradle with an agonizing, reverent care that looked completely incongruous given the sheer, terrifying mass of his shoulders.
Each heavy boot was placed with a silent precision he never yielded in the great hall or the training yard.
He came to a halt beside the wooden frame and looked down into the blankets.
He did not touch the child.
He simply stood over the boy in the pooling golden light, his massive arms hanging loose at his sides, watching the tiny rise and fall of the infant’s chest. The expression carved into his scarred face was entirely, beautifully undefended, the raw, naked look she had witnessed in the blackness of the tavern bed.
It was that fleeting, primal devotion he only allowed himself when he believed the world was blind, a vulnerability she was learning to fiercely protect by pretending she did not see it at all.
He was not hovering over the child. He was guarding him. That was the only word for it. The absolute, lethal stillness of his posture, the unyielding focus of his eyes. He was a warlord standing sentinel over his heart.
Chloe watched him from the shadows of the door, a profound, terrifying emotion rippling through her soul, an ache so sharp she could not name it.
“Do ye pass the majority of yer days in this room?” she asked, her voice a low, reverent whisper. “When ye are nae hidin’ in yer study or drownin’ in yer dram?”
“Aye,” Edward rumbled, not breaking his gaze from the bairn.
She filtered further into the golden sanctuary, carefully dragging her splinted ankle across the oak planks until she occupied the space directly opposite him, the wooden cradle separating their bodies.
“And yer nights?” she challenged softly.
She studied him across the sleeping form of the orphan. He kept his eyes locked on William, his jaw setting into a hard, rigid line, his features instantly hardening back into his stoic armor. The suffocating silence stretched out between them, heavy and thick with unsaid truths.
Chloe did not attempt to shatter it. She had lived a life of servitude; she knew that some silences were the loudest confessions a man could offer, and this one was deafening.
Suddenly, William stirred beneath his wool blankets.
The child let out a small, high-pitched whimper. Chloe was already on the move.
Her left ankle screamed in white-hot protest at the sudden weight, but she ruthlessly overrode the agony.
She reached into the depths of the cradle before the child’s whimper could crest into a full-throated cry, her hands sliding beneath his warm little body.
She lifted William smoothly against her chest, settling him into the familiar, comforting hollow of her shoulder as her hips fell into a swaying rhythm.
“Yer joint,” Edward growled, his eyes snapping to her leg, his brow furrowed in dark disapproval. “Ye should nae be bearin’ weight.”
“The lad was about to wake the dead.”
“The nursemaid should be doin’ that.”
“The nursemaid is nae in the room, Edward,” she cut him off smoothly. She turned her torso, balancing the settling baby against her ribs, and met his fierce gaze dead-on. “The boy is quiet. I am perfectly well.”
He cast a dark, piercing look down at her bandaged foot, then dragged his eyes up to the flush on her cheeks. His expression made it clear that he deemed both of her assessments to be utter lies.
He took a heavy step toward her, breaching her air.
“Yield the boy to me,” he commanded, his voice dropping an octave.
She looked up, her breath hitching. He was standing agonizingly close, far closer than the narrow dimensions of the wooden cradle required.
He had moved with immense, physical purpose, trapping her between his massive frame and the wall, leaving no room for a diplomatic retreat.
His large, scarred hands were already rising into the space between them.
Chloe hesitated.