Chapter 19 #2
That got something out of her, not quite a laugh, just a breath of one, and it brought her a little closer instead of further away, which he was pretty sure went against whatever plan she had claimed to have about him.
He looked at her mouth.
The open field was quiet enough to hear the river. Beira shifted her weight nearby, unbothered by any of it. There was nowhere he looked that she was not already there first.
“Edward…” Barely a word. More breath than sound.
His hand at her waist tightened, an answer he had not yet decided to give. Her grip tightened to match. Not pulling him closer, nor pushing him away. Just tightening.
He leaned in slightly, and the space between their lips nearly disappeared.
“Me Laird!”
Edward immediately dropped her and stepped back. His thick arm left her waist, and his hands hung limply at his sides as he sharply turned toward the sound of his name. The biting morning cold rushed into the space where his sudden warmth had been so quickly that it almost felt painful.
Chloe’s hands remained raised in the empty air for a fraction of a second before she lowered them. She pressed both feet hard against the ground and concentrated fully on that for a moment, and smoothed the front of her riding dress with fingers that were not quite steady.
Duncan came tearing across the open field at a frantic pace that suggested either a significant emergency or none at all.
His color was high, his muddy boots leaving dark prints in the wet grass, and a wooden practice blade bounced violently against his hip with every stride.
He was grinning from ear to ear. It was categorically not an emergency.
He arrived completely breathless and entirely unaware of the moment he had just shattered, planting his frame directly between them.
“Twelve clean strikes again this mornin’!” he announced loudly, directing it to Edward primarily and to the open field generally. “Tyler said ten was the mark, and I got twelve. Two above. On both sides.”
“Is that so?”
“Aye!” He held up the chipped wooden blade as physical evidence. “Me footwork as well, Tyler said it was the best he’d seen from me. He said…” he paused, sucking in a ragged breath. “He said I was beginning to look like an actual soldier and nae an enthusiastic scarecrow.”
“Tyler,” Edward said, his voice flat, “is easily impressed.”
Duncan’s bright face fell by approximately a quarter. “He wasnae easily impressed last week. He made me do the entire sequence forty times before he’d call it passable.”
“Then do it forty-one times this week.”
Duncan looked down at his wooden blade, then back up at the Laird.
“Aye,” he murmured. “Aye, all right.” He brightened almost immediately, which Chloe had come to realize was his permanent natural state.
“Are ye finished with the riding lesson? I can take the horses back if ye are. I’ve already done Tyler’s; his big bay was in a foul mood this mornin’, but I managed him, me Lady. ”
He turned to Chloe with the earnest, slightly formal address he always reserved for her. “Ye were brilliant, by the way. I was watchin’ from the gate. The trot, ye had it clean by the fourth time round. Melodie said ye’d never been on a horse before a fortnight ago.”
“Melodie,” Chloe said, her lips twitching slightly, “talks a great deal.”
“She does,” Duncan agreed happily. “But she was impressed. She told Isla, and Isla told me.”
He reached out and took Beira’s leather rein.
“Tyler says Lady Jenny used to ride before she could walk, but I think that’s exaggeratin’.
Me Lady, ye are doin’ better than most who start later.
That’s what I think.” He delivered the praise with complete sincerity, entirely unaware that it was a profound compliment, which made it considerably more of one.
Chloe looked at him and felt the suffocating tightness in her chest ease by several degrees.
“Thank ye, Duncan,” she said softly. “That is genuinely kind.”
He gave a sharp, businesslike nod, already moving to collect the horses.
He continued to talk while he gathered the leather straps, releasing a continuous, comfortable stream of information about the morning’s training, a fierce disagreement between two of the older guards about the correct way to sharpen a particular blade, and a stray cat that had taken up residence in the hayloft and produced four kittens sometime in the night.
He did not appear to require a single response. He was simply sharing the morning with them.
Chloe listened to the rhythm of his voice.
She breathed the cold air. She did not look at Edward, but she thought about the heavy imprint of his arm around her waist. The solid, burning warmth of his chest pressed against her open palms. She remembered the tiny fraction of space that had remained between their lips, charged and narrowing—until suddenly, it was not.
She breathed again, forcing it to come evenly this time.
Duncan had both horses securely in hand now and was rambling to Edward about the gray gelding’s near foreleg, though she caught only disjointed pieces of the speech.
Something about the way the beast was favoring the joint on these cold mornings, a detail the boy had noticed himself and thought the Laird should know immediately.
“Which leg?” Edward said, his head inclined, hands clasped behind his back.
“Near fore. Only on the cold mornings, me Laird, nay favoring once he’s warmed up proper.”
“Since when?”
“Four days. Maybe five.” Duncan considered this with great seriousness. “Didnae want to say sooner in case it went away on its own. It hasnae.”
“Show me the stall when we’re back.”
“Aye, me Laird.”
Duncan was already moving on to something about a girth strap that needed restitching when Edward cut back in.
“The kittens,” Edward said. “In the hayloft. How many did ye say?”
Duncan blinked, thrown by the reversal. “Four, me Laird.”
“Keep them clear of the grain stores.”
“Aye, me Laird.” Duncan grinned, plainly delighted that anyone had been listening to that particular piece of nonsense at all, and went straight back to the girth strap without missing a step.
Chloe watched it happen and revised, privately, everything she had decided a week ago about what kind of man bothered asking a fifteen-year-old a follow-up question.
She was in deep trouble. She had established this fact. She had been establishing it at regular intervals for the better part of a fortnight, and the realization was not becoming any less true as the days bled together.
Duncan eventually ran entirely out of things to report, or simply ran out of breath, which amounted to the exact same thing. He began to lead the horses toward the wooden gate. His high voice carried back across the grass, still talking comfortably, apparently to the horses now.
The field fell completely quiet.
She became aware of how much physical space Edward occupied, even when he was standing completely still. He was barely two feet away from her and was staring fixedly at the iron gate. The hard line of his jaw was set like granite, and the line of his shoulders was rigidly controlled.
He turned his head to face her.
“We will continue tomorrow,” he said.
His voice was not quite level. It was close, close enough that she felt the hairs in her neck stand.
She held his dark gaze, refusing to look away. “Aye,” she said softly. “Tomorrow.”
He gave a single, sharp nod. He turned on his heel and began to walk toward the gate.
She watched his retreating figure leave.
The stiff set of his broad back, the calm, unhurried stride.
She stood entirely alone in the middle of the open field, with the damp grass soaking through her boots, the river rushing somewhere beyond the trees, and the pale, thin light of the morning spreading flat across the world.
She understood with complete, cold clarity that he had not been talking about riding a horse.
Neither had she.