Twelve
Laurel’s eyes fluttered open, but her mind was still groggy. She clung to the last moments of her dream, wishing she could fall back to sleep and see what would happen next. She rarely remembered her dreams, but this one had been so vivid that it felt more like a memory than the product of her imagination. She’d been somewhere she loved with someone she loved, and she sensed he reciprocated her feelings.
As her vision cleared, and she opened her eyes wider, Laurel found Brodie watching her. Pushing up on her elbow, she looked around her chamber, but nothing was amiss except for the mountainous man in the chair beside her bed. She closed her eyes once more, but the memory that surfaced stole her breath. She placed her fist over her chest, pressing as though it could ease the knot that formed.
“Laurie?” Brodie’s soft whisper brought her back to the present. When she looked at him again, he was leaning forward. Worry etched deeply into the grooves upon his forehead and around his eyes.
“I’m all right,” Laurel rasped, but she doubted she ever would be. “How did I end up here? What are you doing in my chamber again?”
“Do you remember me carrying you out of the Privy Council chamber?”
“Sort of.”
“You were asleep before I made it to the stairs, so I brought you here to rest.”
Laurel spotted her shoes beside the bed, and her face heated. If Brodie had removed them, he likely noticed their tattered condition. She wondered if he’d noticed how many times her stockings had clearly been darned. “Why did you stay?”
“Because I didn’t want you to awake alone. I didn’t want you to be by yourself when you remembered what happened,” Brodie explained.
“You mean when I learned my father would rather I be a whore than pay another penny to keep a roof over my head or bread in my belly?” Laurel rolled over and sat up, bringing her knees under her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her cheek on her knees as she looked at Brodie. She didn’t know what to say. She still felt numb. She was too far beyond hurt to feel pain, but she couldn’t drum up the energy to be angry because she wasn’t entirely surprised anymore.
“Laurel, what do you want? Do you wish to remain here, so I can court you? My offer remains in place, both to give you time to decide how we proceed—if we do, and to ensure you have what you need while you are here. Do you wish to go to Kilchurn, whether it’s as my wife or a new villager?”
“I don’t know, Brodie. My mind feels fuzzy when I try to think aboot it. What I do know is that I’m grateful for you. You could be on a horse halfway home after what you learned aboot my family and what you’ve learned aboot me. But rather than leave, you remained here,” Laurel looked around the chamber. “Beside me, so I wouldn’t wake alone. No one else would ever think to do that, to understand what it would have meant for me to be here by myself after what I heard.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not without you unless you say otherwise,” Brodie promised. He moved to sit beside Laurel. His heavy arm wrapped around her caused her to topple against his chest. She sighed as she closed her eyes again. The sense of peace and security she felt in her dream swept over her as she leaned against Brodie.
“Do you think that sometimes one part of our mind can know more than another?” Laurel asked.
“Aye. I think parts of our mind can sense things or deduce them before the part that forms our thoughts does. It’s how men stay alive in battle when they have no reason to suspect an attack, but they move away in time. It’s how a bairn learns to walk and talk, I suppose. It’s how I know I don’t want to leave your side.”
“I worry aboot what you will see if you sign a betrothal contract,” Laurel admitted.
“Not if, when. And Laurel, quite honestly, I don’t give a shite what your father does or doesn’t offer. My clan doesn’t need your dowry, and any lands you might have are too far from Campbell territory to be of benefit. I can ensure I set aside dower lands for you and any daughters we might have. I can and will provide for you.”
“You may say that, but your clan council likely will not agree,” Laurel countered.
“As you said earlier, you bring the Ross name to our marriage. That will suffice.”
“How can it? I bring naught else. No plates, no silver or gold, no linens. Naught.”
“You don’t know that,” Brodie soothed. “And don’t you see? I want you, Laurel. I want you as you are and who you are. I don’t want what your father does or doesn’t offer.”
“Are you this wise because you’re auld?” Laurel said playfully as she brushed her fingertips through a streak of graying hair.
“Mayhap, but I’m not so auld that I won’t chase you around our chamber and into our bed,” Brodie said before kissing Laurel. Before the fire turned into an inferno, Brodie pulled away with a groan. “Waiting for you may very well be the death of me.”
“Our?” Laurel asked timidly.
“Yours and mine,” Brodie nodded.
Laurel swallowed. “Would it have been yours and Eliza’s?”
“Not anytime soon. Mayhap one day, but I honestly doubt it,” Brodie admitted. “I never thought of sharing my chamber with her or anyone else before you.”
“Despite what the king relayed from my father, and despite my years here, I’ve never—I haven’t—I don’t know how…” Laurel stumbled over her words before shaking her head and twisting to bury her face against her bent legs. She was humiliated all over again. She squeaked when Brodie lifted her into his lap and leaned back against the headboard.
“And I told the truth. It doesn’t matter to me if you have or you haven’t. But I know you’re a maiden.”
