Chapter 22 #2
They entered his study, and the warmth greeted her. The chess table stood near the hearth, pieces arranged neatly, dark and pale wood facing one another like two armies waiting for permission to ruin each other.
Rose paused beside the chess table, her gaze catching on the neat arrangement of carved pieces waiting near the hearth.
“You play?” she asked.
“Aye.”
“Good.” She turned to him, one brow lifting with quiet challenge. “I was beginning to wonder whether anyone in this castle had a gentler pastime than swinging steel.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Careful, lass. Chess has started more battles than me sword ever has.”
“Then perhaps I should be afraid to ask,” she replied, folding her hands neatly before her. “You look like a man who dislikes losing.”
His eyes sharpened with immediate interest. “I dislike losing tae men who boast before they’ve earned it.”
“How fortunate I am not a man, then.”
A low laugh left him. “Aye. Fortunate fer more reasons than that.”
Heat rose into her cheeks, but she held his gaze. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was.”
“How reckless of you.”
“Sit,” he said, pulling out the chair for her, his voice low with amusement. “Before ye make me reckless enough tae give ye another.”
Rose lowered herself into it, smoothing her skirts with practiced care while her heart behaved with considerably less dignity.
Logan took the seat opposite, but instead of beginning at once, he leaned forward and began setting the pieces properly, his large hands moving with an unexpected delicacy over the board.
She watched the motion despite herself.
Logan leaned back as he arranged the last piece, studying her in that slow, intent way that made warmth climb her throat. “If ye lose, I get a kiss.”
Rose’s fingers tightened around the pawn.
She should have looked away. She should have rebuked him, perhaps lightly, perhaps with the delicate offended dignity expected of her. Instead, she met his gaze, and the memory of his mouth moved through her so vividly that she felt it in her knees.
“And if I win?” she asked.
His expression changed, the humor deepening into something more dangerous. “Then ye get one.”
The laugh that escaped her was soft and breathless. “That is the same prize.”
“Nay.” His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth. “One is taken in victory. The other is surrendered in defeat. Very different things.”
Rose’s pulse leapt so violently she nearly forgot the rules of the game.
“That is a terrible distinction.”
“It is an important one.”
She looked at him across the board, at the man who had gathered berries in the rain and asked for kisses as if he had not already begun to ruin every careful boundary she had ever possessed.
“Very well,” she said, placing the pawn down. “I accept.”
Logan simply looked at her, and she had the strange, dizzying sense that the air was vibrating between them.
Then a knock sounded at the door.
Rose startled, the moment breaking apart.
Logan’s jaw flexed. “Enter.”
A young messenger stepped inside, rain darkening his cloak and hair. He bowed quickly, his gaze darting once to Rose before settling on Logan.
“A letter, me laird,” he said, holding it out. “Brought by a rider from the south. He said it was tae be placed in Lady Rose’s hand.”
Rose went cold and hot all at once.
Logan rose. The ease left him so quickly that it seemed the entire room felt the absence. He crossed to the messenger and took the letter, his gaze lowering to the seal.
Rose stood before she had decided to do so. Her heart had begun to pound.
“Is it…” Her voice failed. She swallowed and tried again, forcing her hands to remain still at her sides. “Is it from Briar Hall?”
Logan’s face was unreadable as he turned back to her. “It bears the Algernon seal.”
She forgot how to draw the next breath.
The study blurred around the edges, all firelight and rain and the dark shape of Logan standing between her and the thing she had wanted so desperately that she had almost taught herself not to want it anymore.
Her parents.
Logan came toward her slowly, holding out the letter. Rose took it with fingers that did not feel like her own.
The wax was familiar. The crest pressed into it made her throat close so sharply that pain flashed behind her eyes. How many times had she seen that seal on household accounts, invitations, letters sent to neighbors? It was ordinary. It was home.
She broke it carefully, though her hands trembled.
The first line nearly undid her.
My dearest Rose.
A small sound caught in her throat. Then a whisper of doubt, which she promptly erased.
Logan moved, not touching her yet, but close enough that his presence steadied the room.
She read quickly at first, then slower, as the words struck one after another.
Alive. Safe. A merchant had seen her in Scotland.
Word had reached Briar Hall. Barnaby had been driven away.
They begged her to meet them near the border, quietly, carefully, so they might hold her again.
By the time she reached the end, the parchment shook visibly in her hands.
“They are alive,” she whispered.
Logan said nothing.
Rose pressed the letter to her chest, and the movement was so instinctive, so childlike, that she almost felt ashamed of it. But she could not stop.
“They know I am safe,” she said, her voice breaking around the wonder of it. “A merchant recognized me. He carried word back to them.”
Logan’s gaze sharpened faintly at that, but he only asked, “What else daes it say?”
Rose looked down again, blinking quickly to clear her eyes.
“They say Barnaby has been driven away. That he no longer holds the same power over the house, at least not openly. They…” Her lips trembled, and she hated that she could not steady them.
“They wish to meet me near the border. At an inn. They want to thank you for keeping me safe.”
She looked up at him then, and for a moment all the light in her seemed to turn toward him.
“Logan,” she whispered. “They know about you.”
His face changed, but only by degrees: the slight tightening of his jaw, the brief dip of his gaze to the seal, the way his hand flexed once at his side before stilling again. Yet when he looked back at her, his eyes had softened enough to make her chest ache.
“I’m glad,” he said quietly.
Rose’s fingers curled around the letter. “You do not sound glad.”
His eyes held hers, steady and careful. “I am glad ye have word from them.”
“But?”
He exhaled slowly, the sound almost lost beneath the rain. “But I wonder why they would ask ye tae meet near the border instead o’ sending word fer ye tae stay where ye’re safest.”
The question struck her chest, and for one awful instant, Rose felt her hope flicker.
Then she looked down at the letter again, at the shape of the words, at my dearest Rose and the careful affection that seemed to rise from the page.
Her mother would not endanger her. Her father had already sent her away once to save her life.
They would not ask this unless they thought it necessary.
“They are afraid,” she said, and her voice steadied because it had to. “If Barnaby has only just been driven away, perhaps they fear being watched.”
Logan’s jaw tightened.
She knew that look now. The silence at his mouth. The stillness in his shoulders. The care he took before speaking, as if every word had to pass through the fear of hurting her.
“You think it might be a trap,” she said softly.
His eyes closed for half a heartbeat.
“I think,” he said, opening them again, “that any road leading toward Barnaby Henshaw deserves caution.”
The name chilled the room. Rose looked back at the letter, and the hope trembled but it did not vanish.
“My parents wrote this,” she said, almost to herself. “My mother called me her dearest Rose.” A shiver of doubt again, something was not fully right. But no, it was them. They were looking for her.
Logan’s expression changed. He crossed the remaining space between them and reached for her hand, his fingers closing over hers with a warmth that made her breath catch.
“I dinnae want tae take this from ye,” he said, rough and low.
The fierceness of it moved through her with unbearable tenderness. She stepped closer, still holding the letter in one hand, and lifted her free palm to his chest. Beneath her fingers, his heart beat hard and steady.
“I want to see them,” she said. “I need to. I cannot explain it except to say that some part of me has been standing at that doorway since the night I left, waiting to know whether they are still there.”
Logan’s throat worked. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he raised his hand and covered hers against his chest, holding it there.
“I ken,” he said quietly.
Her eyes stung again.
He bent his head, pressing his mouth to her knuckles, and the kiss was so gentle that it made her heart almost stop. When he lifted his head, his gaze had gone darker, firmer.
“We’ll speak o’ it properly,” he said. “Wi’ Conn. Wi’ men I trust. Nay decisions made out o’ tears or hope alone. I’ll gather them right now. I willnae be long. Wait fer me here.”
She nodded, though her heart had already begun racing ahead to the border, to her mother’s arms, to her father’s face, to the impossible relief of being Rose Algernon again and still being Logan’s Rose too.
“Of course,” she said, drawing herself upright, gathering what dignity she could around the wild, trembling joy inside her. “That would be sensible.”
The corners of his mouth lifted, though his eyes remained watchful. “Sensible, is it?”
“I am capable of it.”
“I never doubted that.” His thumb brushed over her fingers.
Rose looked away, smiling despite the tears gathering on her lashes.
And for the first time since the night she fled Briar Hall, Rose let herself believe that not every road behind her had been a road into danger. Some had led her here, to him, and perhaps one might still lead her home.