Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rose could not sleep.
When Christina left and the door closed, the room felt too quiet to bear. The wool blanket beneath Rose’s fingers felt too coarse, and her skin still remembered the soldier’s grip around her arm, the blade at her throat, the horrible drag of being pulled backward.
She sat there until the room blurred and she could no longer stand it.
Rose stood. The blue dress whispered around her legs as she moved to the door, and she paused with one hand on the latch, listening. The corridor beyond was quieter now. Somewhere far below, a door closed. A man’s low voice answered another.
Logan was out there somewhere. That thought alone pulled her forward. She stepped into the corridor before she could argue herself into propriety.
The castle felt different at night after blood had been spilled.
The torches burned the same, the stones held the same chill, but every shadow seemed to have a memory in it.
Rose kept her steps measured, her hands folded before her because if she allowed them to hang loose, she feared they might tremble.
She passed two guards near the stairwell, and both straightened at once.
“Me lady,” one said, startled.
“I am looking for the laird,” she said, her voice soft but steady.
The older of the two hesitated, then inclined his head toward the passage. “His study, I think. He only came down from the wall a short while ago.”
“Thank you.”
She continued before either man could offer to escort her.
By the time she reached the study door, her heart had begun to beat too hard again.
She stood outside for a breath, hearing nothing but the faint crackle of fire within and the soft shift of water.
She should have knocked and waited. She should have turned back.
A lady did not wander to a man’s study alone in the middle of the night, not after what had almost happened in the garden or after his arms had closed around her in the courtyard.
But the thought of him made something in her chest tighten beyond endurance.
Rose lifted her hand and knocked.
“Come,” Logan called. His voice was rough. Tired.
She opened the door.
Logan sat at the table near the hearth, one forearm resting on the wood, a bowl of water before him.
His jacket had been stripped off and thrown over the back of a chair.
His dark tunic was unlaced at the throat, exposing a narrow glimpse of warm skin and the strong column of his neck.
His sleeve had been pushed up, revealing a cut along his forearm, not deep, but angry and red against the tan of his skin.
He looked up.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The firelight lay over him in uneven gold, catching the hard planes of his face, the breadth of his shoulders, the weariness he had hidden from the hall and the men and the walls. Here, alone, he looked like a simple man who had spent the night holding himself together by force.
Rose’s breath caught.
“Rose,” he said, setting the cloth down at once. “What are ye daein’ here?”
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her with care. “I came to see whether you were hurt.”
His jaw tightened. “Ye should be resting.”
“So should you.”
His brows drew together faintly, and for one sharp, impossible second she thought he might smile. He did not.
He only leaned back slightly, putting distance between them. “It’s naething.”
Rose crossed the room, his eyes following her every step.
“You are bleeding,” she said, stopping beside the table.
Logan glanced down as if the wound belonged to someone else. “It looks worse than it is.”
“Then you will not mind letting me see.”
His mouth tightened faintly. “Rose.”
Her name, spoken low like that, should have stopped her. Instead, it moved through her with a warmth that made her fingers curl at her sides.
She looked down at him, gathering every bit of poise she had left. “You may command the entire hall if you wish, my laird, but I am not one of your guards.”
His eyes darkened slightly. “Nay. Ye’re far more troublesome.”
That startled a soft breath from her, nearly laughter, though it faded as quickly as it came. She reached for the cloth beside the bowl. “Let me help.”
He started to object. She saw it in the way his mouth opened, the way his body shifted as if he meant to rise and send her away with some careful order. But then his gaze fell to her hands, and something in his expression changed.
Perhaps he was too tired to pretend he did not need kindness.
Slowly, he sat back.
Rose dipped the cloth into the water and wrung it out with care. “You are such a difficult patient.”
This time, the corner of his mouth moved.
She stepped closer, enough that her skirts brushed his knee.
The contact was accidental, but the moment it happened, the air thickened.
Logan went still beneath her hand before she had even touched him.
Rose felt the heat of him through the small space between them, the scent of leather, smoke, and cold night still clinging to his skin. Her heart beat hard in her throat.
“Hold still,” she whispered, though her voice came out softer than she intended.
Logan’s gaze lifted to hers from beneath his brow. He had been watching the cloth in her hand as if it were a blade, his jaw set, his shoulders held too rigidly for a man claiming the wound was nothing.
“I am.”
“You are glaring.”
One dark brow rose. “That is how I hold still.”
Rose lifted the damp cloth to his forearm with a small smile.
The first touch made him inhale sharply through his nose.
His eyes remained on her face, watching as she dabbed the blood from the cut.
Rose focused fiercely on the wound, on the slow movement of her hand, on the water darkening the cloth, because if she looked fully into his eyes she feared she might forget the purpose of coming here.
The cut was not deep. It would heal. The knowledge should have soothed her but still, her throat tightened.
“You did not tell me,” she said quietly.
His gaze did not leave her. “Tell ye what?”
“That you were hurt.”
“It happened during the fight. I had other things tae think about.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing the cloth gently along the cut. “I was one of them.”
His silence told her enough.
She swallowed, but her hand stayed steady. “I saw the blade at your side. I saw the men coming at you. I thought?—”
The words stopped.
Logan’s fingers closed lightly around her wrist. “What?”
Rose looked at his hand around her wrist, at the careful restraint in his grip.
“I thought I had brought this to your door,” she whispered. “And then I thought I might watch you die because of me.”
His eyes sharpened. “Nay.”
Rose blinked.
“Nay,” he repeated, quieter now, though no less firm. “Dinnae put that on yerself. Those men came because a cruel bastard sent them. Nae because ye breathed under me roof.”
Her lips pressed together. The tenderness of the words hurt worse than accusation would have. “But your men were wounded.”
“And they live. Because they did their duty. Because this clan protects those under its care.”
His thumb moved once against the inside of her wrist, a small, absent stroke that sent heat racing up her arm. His eyes dropped to where he touched her, and for a moment, he seemed to realize what he was doing at the same time she did.
He released her.
Rose missed the contact immediately.
She wrapped the linen around his forearm slowly, careful not to draw it too tight over the cut. When she finished, her fingers lingered over the knot.
“These need binding too,” she murmured, looking at his split knuckles. She drew a breath and forced herself back to the task. “Your hand.”
“It disnae need?—”
“Your hand, Logan.”
His gaze lifted to hers. Something passed between them, and it made her stomach tighten.
He gave her his hand.
It was large and warm and rough in hers, the palm calloused, the knuckles bruised and split where he had struck bone.
Rose laid it carefully over her own palm and cleaned the blood from his skin.
He did not move. He barely seemed to breathe.
His attention was fixed entirely on her, so openly that the back of her neck warmed.
“You are staring,” she said, though the accusation lost most of its strength before it reached him.
Her voice had come out too soft. Too aware. She kept her eyes on his forearm, on the strip of clean linen waiting beside the bowl, on anything but the weight of his gaze fixed so steadily on her face.
“Aye,” Logan said.
Rose’s fingers stilled and she looked up, despite herself.
There was no apology in his eyes. No attempt to pretend he had only been watching her hands or the wound or the careful way she worked.
He was looking at her as if the rest of the chamber had gone dark around them, as if the blood on his arm and the bowl of water between them were only poor excuses for letting her stand this close.
Heat rose to her face, and she looked down quickly, reaching for the clean strip of linen beside the bowl.
“You should not,” she murmured.
“Why?”
Because I cannot think clearly when you do. Because your eyes feel like touch.
Instead, she said, “Because it makes this very difficult.”
His voice lowered. “Dressing a wound?”
“Yes.”
A beat passed.
“Then I’ll look away,” he said.
She nodded once, relieved and strangely disappointed. “Thank you.”
He kept looking.
Rose pressed her lips together to keep from smiling, but it came anyway. She wrapped the linen around his hand slowly, winding it between thumb and palm, careful not to tighten too much. When she finished, her fingers lingered over the knot.
“There,” she said.
Logan looked at the bandage, then back at her. “Ye’ve a steady hand.”
“It does not feel steady.”
His expression softened.
The words had slipped out before she could polish them, and now they hung between them, fragile and too true.
Logan stood. Rose stepped back instinctively, but there was nowhere far enough to go. He was too large in the dim room, too near, his presence filling the space the moment he rose.
“Come,” he said quietly.