Chapter 20
The hardest part of the entire conspiracy was Angela.
It was not navigating the bustling castle kitchens. Chloe had been managing her way around hearths and sculleries since she was eight years old, and Isla had handed over the complete run of the larder.
It was not unearthing the thick blankets, or packing the heavy willow basket, or even convincing the unyielding Mrs. Donnan that little William was finally healthy enough for the fresh afternoon air and that she, Chloe, was perfectly capable of managing an eight-month-old baby in a meadow without a catastrophic disaster.
Mrs. Donnan had ultimately conceded the point.
The hardest part was Angela, because Angela was entirely incapable of telling a lie. She could not spin a falsehood. She knew she could not spin a falsehood, and yet she committed herself to the deceptive task anyway.
“I will simply tell him I need to show him somethin’ important in the north pasture,” Angela had declared firmly that morning, when Chloe explained the details of the plan over a quiet breakfast. “Somethin’ about the boundary fence. Somethin’ is wrong with the fence.”
“What exactly is wrong with the fence?” Chloe had asked, pausing with her spoon.
Angela had considered this with a furrowed brow. “I daenae ken yet. I will decide on the way.”
“Angela.”
“I will be utterly convincin’,” Angela insisted, lifting her chin. “I am always very convincin’ when I truly believe in what I am doin’.”
“Ye believe in a fictional fence.”
“I believe in ye,” Angela said softly, and picked up her teacup as though the entire matter were permanently settled.
The preparations took Chloe the better part of the morning.
Isla produced a hearty meat pie, a thick wedge of sharp yellow cheese, and a clean linen cloth packed full of crumbly oatcakes, without even being asked, and added a small stoneware jar of preserved sweet plums.
Chloe found wool blankets that were thick enough to ward off the damp ground yet light enough to carry across the fields.
She even took the time to cut early wildflowers from the kitchen garden, which were bright yellow and white blooms, the small, hardy ones that had stubbornly come up along the stones of the south wall.
She tucked them carefully into the corner of the basket for no practical reason at all, except that the meadow was already full of them and it simply felt right to bring some along.
She collected young William from the sunny nursery at midmorning. The bairn was in spectacular spirits, batting wildly at the silk ribbons on the nursemaid’s linen cap with single-minded focus. He submitted to being bundled snugly into his warm blankets and settled against Chloe’s shoulder.
She was just unlatching the heavy meadow gate when she heard them coming down the path. Angela’s voice rang out first, pitched slightly louder than was strictly necessary.
“And here it is, the very fence I mentioned, I think it was… Oh.” A dramatic pause rattled the air. “Oh, Chloe is out here. What an absolute coincidence.”
Chloe closed her eyes briefly against the midday sun, praying for patience.
Edward’s heavy footsteps stopped dead on the dirt path.
She turned around slowly.
The Laird was standing at the wooden gate.
His dark eyes moved methodically from Angela—who had arranged her features into an expression of innocent surprise so terrible it would not have convinced a child of six—to the thick blankets spread out across the green grass, to the packed larder basket, to the delicate wildflowers she had set in the center of the cloth, and finally to William resting warm on her hip.
Then his gaze snapped directly to her.
Chloe lifted her chin, refusing to shrink back. “I thought it was yer turn to be surprised,” she said, her voice steady.
A heavy beat passed between them in the open air.
“Angela told me there was somethin’ severely wrong with the boundary fence,” he said, his voice level.
“There may well be somethin’ wrong with the fence,” Chloe replied smoothly. “I didnae look at it.”
He cast a long look at Angela. Angela immediately looked away, staring at the nearby wooden posts with sudden, intense interest. He looked back at Chloe, and she watched him take in the fullness of the blanket, the abundant food, the neatly arranged flowers, and William wrapped in his finest wool.
As he looked, something profound moved through his harsh expression that he did not manage to lock away in time. A brief, entirely unguarded opening.
He unlatched the gate and crossed into the green meadow. He stopped just at the edge of the wool blanket, looking down at the spread, and then looked up at her.
“Ye did this,” he said, his voice low.
“Angela distracted ye,” she noted. “I did the rest.”
“Ye planned this.”
“Aye.”
He went completely quiet for a long moment. His eyes drifted back to the basket, tracing the small jar of preserved plum sitting slightly crooked against the woven willow side, and the wildflowers she had arranged with far more care than she ever intended to admit aloud.
She watched him examine each small thing.
“No one has…” He stopped abruptly, the words catching in his throat.
Chloe waited, her breathing shallow.
“No one has done this before,” he said quietly. Simply. The words were stripped entirely of pride, performance, or defense, left as nothing but what they truly were.
Chloe looked back up, her heart aching. “I ken,” she said, her voice just as quiet, just as bare.
He held her gaze for a long moment, a beat longer than was strictly comfortable or safe for either of them. Then, breaking the spell, he reached down and picked up one of Isla’s round oatcakes, turning the baked grain over in his rough hand. He sat down on the thick blanket.
“The fence is perfectly fine,” he murmured. “I checked every post meself last week.”
“I ken,” Angela called out cheerfully from her post at the gate. “I am leavin’ now.”
She turned and vanished down the path. Edward watched her retreating figure go, then looked down at the oatcake in his palm with an expression of mild, amused resignation.
Chloe sat down carefully across from him, settling young William safely between them on the wool. The wide meadow seemed to settle around them all. The bright wildflowers moved gently in the light wind, the enormous, dark hills rose beyond the green tree line, and the endless sky stretched above.
William immediately attempted to grab the edge of the blanket and eat it.
“Nay,” Chloe scolded gently, reaching down to pry the wet wool from his mouth.
The baby looked up at her, and then instantly reached for the fringe again.
Edward extended his large, scarred hand and placed a single thick finger into William’s tiny palm.
The baby’s small hand closed tightly around it at once.
Edward looked down at his own weathered skin, staring at the tiny pale fingers wrapped so securely around his single large one, and said absolutely nothing.
They ate without much ceremony. The meat pie was good—rich, properly seasoned, Isla clearly had not skimped—and the yellow cheese was sharp, exactly the way Chloe liked it, though she’d never once mentioned that to a soul in this castle.
“Good?” Edward asked, watching her reach for a second piece.
“Ye tell me. Ye ate half of it before I got to mine.”
“I was hungry.”
“Ye’re always hungry.”
“I work for a livin’.” He said it without heat, already reaching for the preserved plum.
She watched him bite into it. He chewed. He swallowed. A low, involuntary sound of approval escaped his throat before he could stop it.
“Well?” she asked, fighting a smile.
“It’s fine.”
“Ye made a sound.”
“I did nae.”
“Ye did. A happy one.”
His jaw worked, caught fair and square. “Isla,” he said, without adding any further comment to embarrass himself.
“Aye,” Chloe said, far too pleased with herself. “Aye.”
The progress was less crawling than a series of highly determined, erratic lurches, each violent push carrying him approximately six inches in an entirely unpredictable direction.
Then his own wild enthusiasm, or a tangled sleeve, sent him collapsing sideways onto the blanket.
He did not seem remotely discouraged by any of these failures.
He simply reoriented his small body, picked a new target, and lurched again, his face a mask of complete and purposeful concentration.
“He’s headin’ left,” Chloe observed, tracking his movements.
“He always goes left,” Edward said. A fractional, quiet pause hung in the air. “He did the exact same thing in the nursery this past Tuesday. I put him down on the rug, and he veered left straight into a heavy chair leg.”
“Was he all right?” she asked, her voice softening.
“He cried for perhaps thirty seconds,” Edward replied, the corner of his eye twitching, “and then he immediately tried to put the oak chair leg in his mouth.”
“That does sound remarkably like him.”
“Aye.”
Together, they watched the bairn lurch left once more, targeting a particularly thick patch of green clover.
Edward reached out his massive hand once to gently redirect him away from the rough edge of the blanket, his palm resting briefly against the baby’s warm middle.
William accepted the physical course correction without complaint, pivoting onto his stomach and continuing his relentless progress.
At some point during the afternoon, she could not have named the exact hour it happened, the remaining food was packed away, and William fell fast asleep between them on the wool.
He lay with one tiny fist tucked tightly beneath his soft cheek, his chest rising and falling in slow, deep rhythm.
The wide meadow had gone incredibly quiet.
The summer wind moved through the high grass in long, lazy, sweeping passes.
Edward suddenly lay back.