Chapter 19
Beathag returned to examine her two days later.
She retied the final knot in the linen wrapping and smoothed the edge with her thumb, allowing the room to settle back into its usual quiet.
The fire softly crackled in the grate. Outside in the stone hallway, the thud of Edward’s footsteps gradually faded down the corridor and disappeared entirely.
Mrs. Donnan had not left the chamber. She remained standing near the frame with her hands folded tightly in front of her, watching Beathag work.
Chloe lowered her foot carefully from the wooden stool, keeping her weight off the joint.
“The Laird came himself,” she said softly. She did not direct the words to either woman in particular, simply placing the quiet observation into the open room.
Mrs. Donnan said nothing, her posture unyielding. Beathag gathered her medical instruments.
“He didnae send Tyler,” Chloe continued, her voice tracking them. “Or a maid. He came here himself and stood there the whole time.”
A thick silence stretched between them. Then Mrs. Donnan spoke, her voice dropping so low it was almost to herself. “Surprisin’, the way he kens how to care for someone. After all the violence he has ken.”
Beathag’s hands stilled instantly on her bag.
The words hung heavily in the air and stayed there. Chloe felt them settle deep into her chest.
She snapped her gaze up to meet the housekeeper’s eyes. “What violence?”
Mrs. Donnan’s expression closed up so fast the shift was almost audible in the quiet room. She pulled her already straight spine even higher and smoothed the front of her apron with both palms. A gesture Chloe had come to recognize as her automatic way of buying herself time.
“I only meant…” the housekeeper said, delivering the words with careful precision. “That the Laird has led men into battle. As all lairds must do. It is nae a delicate life.”
“That is nae what ye meant,” Chloe said flatly.
A sharp beat passed. Mrs. Donnan flicked an anxious look toward Beathag. Beathag closed the mouth of her bag with a small, firm snap.
“What I can tell ye,” the old healer said, her tone choosing every single syllable with surgical deliberateness, “is that the Laird has always been capable of more care than people ever expect of him.” She picked up her bag from the floor.
“And that yer ankle will be sound for ridin’ by the mornin’, if ye rest it today exactly as instructed. ”
She turned and moved toward the doorway. Mrs. Donnan moved immediately beside her. Then she stepped through the open door, Beathag following close behind her, and the door closed softly into the frame.
Chloe was left completely alone by the ticking fire, her ankle bound tight in its linen wrapping. A particular, sharp unease settled over her.
The field beyond the eastern gate was the one his father had used for drilling men.
Edward had not thought about that in years.
He thought about it now, crossing the soft, yielding ground with Chloe’s horse on a lead rein beside him, the morning mist still sitting low along the dark tree line, and then he put it away.
The ground was good. No stones to speak of, and the grass was short enough from the autumn. The clean air carried the scent of the river, cold and sharp. A good place to learn something. That was all it was.
He stopped in the dead center of the field and turned to look at her.
She was watching the horse. Not him, not the open field, just the horse. Her hands were already resting on the reins.
“Today ye ride alone,” he said, breaking the quiet.
Her eyes snapped to him. “Alone?”
“I will be beside ye. But the reins are yers, and the decisions are yers.” He paused, watching her face. “She already kens ye. That’s half the work done.”
Chloe looked down at Beira. The mare regarded her with large, patient eyes and exhaled a long, warm breath that steamed briefly in the cold air.
“The other half?” Chloe asked.
“Gettin’ out of yer own way,” he said flatly.
She mounted without his assistance this time and settled into the saddle.
Edward watched her find her seat. She had remembered what he had shown her: weight pressed into the heel, back straight, eyes fixed forward.
Her hands were the issue. She held the leather reins too tightly, her knuckles pale against the dark straps, her wrists completely locked.
He moved to her left side.
“Yer hands,” he commanded. “Loosen them.”
“I am loosenin’ them.”
They were not loosening. He reached up and placed both of his heavy, calloused hands directly over hers on the reins. There was warmth and weight, with no urgency in the contact.
She went completely still beneath his touch.
“Ye’re holdin’ her mouth,” he said, his voice dropping low. “She can feel every single thing ye feel through that contact. Right now, she feels fear.”
“I am nae afraid.”
“I ken,” he murmured. “But yer hands daenae.”
A quiet beat passed. Then, slowly, he felt her fingers soften under his. One by one, the knuckles lost their white strain. The leather loosened slightly, then a little more, and Beira’s head dipped half an inch in immediate response, the stiff tension draining from the horse’s neck.
“There,” he said.
He did not pull his hands away immediately. He was acutely aware that he should. He was aware of the heat of her fingers beneath his own, the slight tremble in them that had nothing to do with the morning cold, and the way her breathing had changed the exact moment he had reached up.
He stepped back and moved to her shoulders instead, placing one large hand on each, pressing them down and back from behind. She startled slightly at the sudden contact.
“Ye’re carryin’ them at yer ears,” he said.
“I am nae.”
“Ye are.” He pressed down firmly until he felt the tight muscles release, and her shoulders dropped where they belonged. “There. Now breathe.”
She breathed.
Beira took one slow, deliberate step forward, feeling the change in her rider, and settled.
Edward stepped back entirely.
“Walk her,” he said. “Nothin’ else. Just walk.”
Chloe led her to walk. He stayed on her left side, a stride behind, close enough to act and far enough not to crowd either woman or beast. She made a full circle of the open field, then another.
By the second circle, her hands had stayed soft against the reins. By the third, her hips had found the natural rhythm of it.
He watched her figure it out. That was the thing about teaching someone to ride. You could explain it in words indefinitely, and it would mean nothing until the body suddenly understood.
“Now trot,” he called out.
She snapped her head around to look at him.
“Ye’re ready,” he said.
She looked like she wanted to argue, her lips parting. She turned back to the horse instead and asked Beira for the trot with her legs, pressing the horse’s flanks the way he had shown her.
Beira moved into the quicker pace immediately.
Chloe lurched forward. She caught herself, then lurched again. He watched her fight the hard bounce for four strides, then five, her hands tightening again, her jaw clenched, and her eyes focused on a point between Beira’s ears with almost painful concentration.
He said nothing, letting her figure it out.
Six strides, seven, and then something in her lower back relaxed.
Her hips started to follow the rolling movement instead of resisting it, and she was sitting the trot.
Not gracefully, not without real effort, but she was sitting it—actually sitting it—moving around the open field on her own on a horse she had needed physical help just to get on a week ago.
The sound she made was immediate and entirely involuntary. Bright, breathless, and startled out of her. She came around the bend toward him, her face open and flushed, lit with something uncomplicated and purely triumphant.
Edward felt his mouth move before he had decided to allow it. The smile was brief. He pressed it back almost immediately, the familiar reflex taking over, the hard containment.
“Again,” he said, his voice coming out slightly rougher than he intended.
She did it again. And again after that, each circuit cleaner than the last, her confidence expanding into the space her fear had occupied.
He walked the center of the field and watched, saying very little because there was very little left to say. She was doing it.
Then she asked Beira for more.
He saw the slight, premature shift of her weight, the leg asking for speed before she had fully thought through what speed on a horse meant.
Beira responded honestly, lengthening her stride into a canter, and the abrupt change in pace sent Chloe’s balance completely off. Not catastrophically, but enough.
He was already moving before she could fall.
Beira felt her rider go loose and turned instinctively, a sharp left that sent Chloe sideways out of the saddle.
Edward reached them in three massive strides.
One hand caught the leather rein to stop the horse, and the other went directly to Chloe’s waist. She came down, not to the hard ground, but hard against his chest, his thick arm taking her full weight while her hands found his wide shoulders at the exact same moment.
She was pressed tightly against his chest, her fingers gripping his shoulders, his arm securely wrapped around her waist. She was breathing heavily, her ribs rising and falling against him.
So was he, although the three quick strides across the grass did not slow the rush of his blood.
Her face was inches from his. He could see the flush high on her cheeks and the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose that he had been noticing—against his better judgment—for some time now.
Her hands remained on his shoulders. He was still holding her tight by the waist.
“Ye can let go of me now,” she said. She did not test the theory by moving.
“Aye.” He did not either.
Her fingers curled slightly against the wool at his shoulder, not gripping, just present. “Ye caught me.”
“I did.”
“Twice, now. This week.”
“I am keepin’ count.”