Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rose returned to her chamber with the image of the little girl still caught in her mind. Elsie’s bright face. The crooked wreath held like a treasure between her hands. The way she had run to her mother without hesitation.
Rose closed the chamber door behind her and stood there for a moment, her fingers still resting on the latch.
The room felt too quiet after the garden.
The fire had been built again while she was away, and the faint scent of smoke and lavender warmed the air.
Beyond the narrow window, the castle moved on with its morning, boots crossing the courtyard, women speaking below, someone calling for a stable boy.
Life continuing, despite blood, despite threats, despite Barnaby’s words folded somewhere in Logan’s hand.
Her throat tightened.
Mama.
The thought came so suddenly that Rose had to press her lips together.
She crossed to the small writing table near the window and sat before she could talk herself out of it.
For a moment, she only stared at the blank parchment.
Her hands rested neatly before her, fingers composed, as if she were about to write some ordinary household note, some polite inquiry about weather or health.
But her chest did not feel quiet.
It ached with the memory of her mother’s hands shaking as she fastened the cloak around Rose’s shoulders. With the sound of Giselle whispering her name. With the terrible thought that Barnaby might be near them still, circling Briar Hall because Rose had escaped his reach.
She dipped the quill.
My dearest Mama and Papa,
Her hand trembled once. Rose stopped, breathed, then continued.
I pray this letter finds you well. There is not a day that goes by when I do not wish I were home with you.
I am safe, though I cannot yet tell you all that has happened.
Please do not fear for me more than you already have.
I am under the protection of Laird Logan MacKenzie, who has shown me more kindness than I expected to find so far from home.
She paused at Logan’s name.
An immediate warmth moved through her, followed by a fear so sharp it nearly stole the breath from her lungs. She had showed him she cared for him. And still, here she sat, writing to the family she had left behind, with no way to know whether her choice had placed them in greater danger.
Rose swallowed and forced the quill onward.
Are you well, Mama? Are Marion and Giselle safe? Has Lord Henshaw come to Briar Hall again, or sent men to trouble you? I beg you, if there is danger, find some way to send word. I cannot bear not knowing.
The ink blurred slightly before she realized her eyes had filled.
She blinked hard, trying to keep the tears at bay, but she had grown tired of restraint.
For one breath, she let her hand cover her mouth, let the ache pass through her quietly, without sound. Then she folded the letter, though she did not seal it yet. She was not ready to send it. Not when a messenger could be followed.
Rose tucked it among her things, beneath a folded shift, and had only just straightened when a knock sounded at the door.
She turned quickly, smoothing her skirt. “Come in.”
Christina entered with her usual brightness, though her eyes searched Rose’s face more carefully than her smile admitted. “I hope I’m nae disturbing ye.”
“Not at all,” Rose said, gathering herself into a small smile. “Is something the matter?”
“Nay.” Christina stepped inside, holding a folded length of green wool over one arm. “Some dresses arrived this morning from the seamstress in the village. I thought ye might like tae see them.”
Rose’s gaze dropped to the fabric, rich and soft in the light.
Despite herself, something inside her eased.
“I should like that very much,” she said.
Christina smiled properly then. “Good. Come wi’ me.”
Rose followed her to Christina’s chamber, where several gowns had been laid across the bed: deep green, soft grey, warm brown, and a blue darker than the one Rose had worn the night before.
Christina lifted each one with quick, delighted hands, explaining which wool came from which holding and what could be altered.
Rose touched the fabric with quiet admiration.
“They are beautiful,” she said. “So much softer than I expected.”
Christina laughed. “Ye thought we dressed in sacks?”
“No,” Rose said, though a smile tugged at her mouth. “Only that Scottish dresses seem made for living in. English gowns often feel made for being looked at.”
Christina tilted her head, pleased. “And which dae ye prefer?”
Rose looked down at the green wool beneath her fingers. For a little while, the letter beneath her shift felt farther away.
“These,” she said softly. “I think I prefer these.”
Logan stood outside Rose’s chamber longer than was sensible.
The small gift sat heavy in his palm, though it weighed almost nothing. A thin leather cord, softened by use, held a little carved horse no larger than his thumb. It was a simple thing, its mane etched in careful strokes, its head lifted as though it had just caught the wind.
Logan had seen it that morning while passing the craftsman’s bench and had thought of Rose at once.
Her hands tightening on the reins. Her chin lifting even when fear had touched her eyes. The stubborn, elegant courage of her trying again because she would rather tremble than be ruled by what frightened her.
His fingers closed around the little wooden horse as he knocked once.
No answer came.
Logan frowned and knocked again, softer this time, listening for the rustle of skirts or the quick, composed sound of her voice bidding him enter. Nothing stirred beyond the door. He glanced down the corridor, then eased the latch open.
“Rose?”
The chamber stood empty.
The fire had been fed recently, and the room held the faint warmth of lavender and smoke. A shawl lay over the back of a chair. Her comb sat near the basin. The bed was neatly made.
He should have left. Instead, he stepped inside, only to leave the gift.
That was all.
He crossed to the small table beside the bed and set the carved horse down carefully, turning it so it faced the window.
For a moment, the sight of it there made something in his chest ease.
He imagined her finding it. The small pause she would take before touching it.
The way her mouth might soften before she tried to hide it.
Then his gaze caught on a folded letter half-tucked beneath a shift on the chest nearby.
He went still.
It was not hidden well. The folded edge showed enough for him to see the address written across it in her careful hand.
Briar Hall
The air in the chamber seemed to thin.
Logan stared at the letter for one breath too long. He had no right to touch it. He knew that. Still, his hand moved, and he picked it up.
She was writing home. Of course she was. They were her family. She loved them. She had every right to ache for them after the letter Henshaw had sent. But the sight of those English names, that English house, that life she had been torn from, opened an old, ugly wound inside him.
Was she asking them to send for her? Had she decided, now that Barnaby’s threats had reached them all, that the only way to spare his clan was to leave?
There is not a day that goes by when I do not wish I were home with you.
His fingers tightened on the letter, then loosened at once when he heard the paper strain.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.
The word sounded too loud in her quiet chamber.
He set the letter back exactly where he had found it, though nothing inside him returned to its place so easily.
His gaze moved to the carved horse on the table, absurdly small now, foolish almost. A gift from a man who had spent the night holding her as if love alone could answer every threat at their door.
Logan stepped back.
His face settled into stillness because that was what it knew how to do. But beneath it, something had gone cold.
If Rose meant to leave, he would not chain her here. He would not be another man who mistook wanting her for owning her. But God help him, the thought of waking to find her gone felt like a blade already pressed between his ribs.
He stepped out of her chamber before the fear could turn into something uglier, closing the door with more care than he felt, and walked the corridor without any clear thought beyond the need to move.
By the time the stairs gave way to the lower passage and the cooler air of the yard reached him, his hands had already curled into fists. He needed something solid to focus on before he said or did something he could not take back.
Logan found his way to the training yard before he had decided to go there.
The evening had begun to settle over the castle, staining the stones in a low, copper light that caught along the edges of the practice blades and made the hard-packed ground look almost red.
Somewhere beyond the yard, men were gathering for supper.
Voices rose and fell near the hall, softened by distance.
The smell of roasting meat drifted faintly through the air, but Logan barely noticed it.
His attention had narrowed to the training dummy before him.
He struck it hard enough to make the wooden post shudder.
The impact traveled up his arm and settled in his shoulder, clean and brutal and simple.
He welcomed it. There was relief in pain when it had a shape he understood.
There was relief in the scrape of leather around his palm, in the bite of strain through his muscles, in the dull thud of wood beneath his blade.
He struck again.
And again.
The dummy’s wrapped torso began to split along one side, straw pushing through the torn sacking.
Logan hit it anyway. His breathing remained controlled, though sweat had begun to dampen the hair at his temples and cling beneath the collar of his tunic.
Every blow should have emptied him of the thing pressing behind his ribs.
But the letter remained there.