Chapter Seven
By afternoon, rain came in thin, silver sheets.
It swept across the glen and the loch in angled lines, turning water to hammered slate and the hills beyond to half-seen shadows. Raven’s Berry tightened inward under it. Doors shut. Fires burned brighter. Work moved indoors.
Claire spent the first hour pretending she was not listening for Lachlan’s tread in the corridor.
The second hour she admitted she was.
By the third, she was furious with herself and marched downstairs to escape her own thoughts.
She found the great hall quieter than before. Women mended linen near the hearth. A boy recited letters to a patient grandmother. Rain whispered against the windows.
Lachlan stood at a long table strewn with maps.
He looked up immediately. “Ye’ve come to surrender.”
She blinked, confusion momentarily held her tongue. Regaining her senses, she said, “To what?”
He grinned his infuriating grin. “My excellent company.”
Claire moved closer, drawn by the enigmatic man with quick wit and a handsome countenance. Such an arrogant man? “I would sooner surrender to the rain.”
He clutched his heart. “Cruel.”
She bit back a chuckle and pointed at him. “Accurate.”
Her attention returned to the maps. One showed coast and inlets, another the rough folds of glen and pass. Claire moved to his side. “You keep charts.”
“A laird with no maps soon has fewer lands than he began with.”
His words resonated as she considered them. Her father had said something similar to his steward. “England would say Highlanders govern with steel.”
“We do.” He leaned to point out lines etched within the parchment. His sleeve brushed against her. “But steel gets lost without roads.”
The answer was so practical she smiled before she could help it.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
A look crossed his face—brief, intent, almost warm—did strange things beneath her ribs.
“Look here,” Lachlan said as he gently shifted her hand to another portion of the map. “Without marking the route, men could become lost and perish.”
Instead of focusing on the increase of her pulse as his hand brushed with hers, she focused on the path wove between what appeared to be sheer cliffs.
“Why bring me into your work? Surely this is not fit company for a troublesome guest.” She slowly removed her hand from his.
“Because,” he said, shifting closer yet to her, “ye’ve a mind. I’d rather it be occupied than plotting to scale stone walls in a rainstorm.”
It was her turn to feign offense. Claire clutched her chest and widened her eyes. “I would never scale a wall in a rainstorm.”
He lowered his voice, indicated his head toward the window. “Then ye’d wait for moonlight?”
Claire looked up.
He was too close.
Not touching. Not nearly touching.
She became acutely aware of the warmth radiating from him, of the scent of rain and smoke clinging to his clothes. All she could think of was the breadth of him, the way his gaze dropped for one forbidden instant to her mouth before rising again.
I should step away. Instead, she remained exactly where she was.
She drew a breath, enjoying the invigorating banter with this man. “You assume I am predictable.”
“Nay,” he murmured with a bit of heat in his tone. “’Tis the trouble.”
Rain beat harder against the shutters.
Neither moved.
Maddy clattered in carrying a basket. She still, then shot them both a look older women reserve for people behaving foolishly while standing perfectly still.
Claire stepped back so quickly she nearly knocked into a chair.
Lachlan, damn him, looked entirely composed.
She decided then and there, composure in men ought to be outlawed.
# # #
The smirr belonged to Raven’s Berry.
It changed the keep’s sounds, softened footfalls, deepened voices, wrapped the hall in warmth and smoke and shelter. He had spent whole seasons learning the moods of the weather in the Highlands. And the steady mist of rain, sometimes proved the most troublesome.
He had no such mastery over the mood of one Englishwoman.
She unsettled him in ways battle never had.
When she smiled—only briefly, only when surprised—something in him loosened. Something he had kept hard for years.
’Twas peril enough.
The moments when she did not smile undid him more. When she watched. When she thought. When those blue eyes searched through him as though the truth might be pried loose by sheer force of will.
He wanted, with startling suddenness, to tell her everything.
Not because she demanded it. Because she deserved a world in which men stopped using secrecy as a weapon around her.
He could not give her what she wanted yet.
So instead, he gave her maps, conversation, and the false illusion standing near her did not cost him dear.
Bloody liar, he thought.
Standing near her cost him everything.