He closed his eyes. He saw her by the lake, reading about dragons to keep the world kind a little longer. He saw her in the village, gentle with the elderly and chirpy with the bairns tugging at her skirts. He saw her kneel in blood and try to tether a stranger to this world. He saw her in the study, saying she might have missed him, too.
He sat with it all until the room grew loud. The truth came without a fight this time. It stole his breath and left his shoulders loose.
He had not been afraid of love.No, not the feeling.He had been afraid oflosingit. Afraid that if he reached for what he wanted, the world would snatch it as payment. Alex in a bandits’ den. His mother in a grave. The way hunger had taken everything in that cabin but his stubbornness. The way grief had taken what was left.
Avoiding Kristen had not protected him. It had only hurt her.
He let out a long breath. Simple truths were the hardest to acknowledge.
He did not just want Kristen safe behind walls he watched.He wantedher.He wanted to bewantedby her.
He wanted the family she kept trying to make from scraps and kindness. He wanted to be the kind of man who could stand in the middle of that and not ruin it.
If he did nothing now, he would become exactly what Davina had described: a man who wasted the one real thing he was given.
Dawn drew a pale edge along the window. He stood up, rolled his sleeves, and left the tower to the tight spiral of the stairs.
The courtyard was a hush of dew and cold stone. When he entered the stables, the air shifted from night to hay and leather.
The stable boy jerked upright on a stool. “Me Laird?”
“Saddle me horse,” Neil ordered. “I ride for Ainsley land.”
The boy blinked twice and hopped to his feet. “Aye.”
Neil checked the tack while the boy worked. He tightened a strap, pressed the girth, and set his palm on the horse’s neck until the animal’s ears relaxed.
He felt steady in a way that had nothing to do with calm. There were no promises waiting on the road. Kristen could send him away. She could tell him that he had missed his chance. But for once, he was not letting fear choose for him.
He put his boot in the stirrup and swung himself up. He glanced once toward the empty road that had swallowed the carriage, then turned his horse and urged him into a canter that stretched into a gallop as the fields opened.
The castle shrank behind him while the wind stung his eyes and whipped at his shirt. The sky brightened by slow degrees.
Whatever awaited him at Ainsley, he would face it.
He was done running from what mattered most.
32
Kristen sat on a low, flat rock above the lake, with her hands folded tightly in her lap. The sunlight lay on the water like a sheet of glass, clear and harmless.
Finn, Anna, and Skye, her niece, ran in loose circles at the shore, and Maggie bounded after them with a grin that never seemed to fade.
Finn shouted orders that meant nothing to anyone but himself, a stick lifted like a sword. Anna bounded after him, squealing each time Maggie splashed close to her shoes. Skye, older and steadier, kept a watchful eye and called a warning when the little ones drifted too close to the edge.
It should have been perfect. Hell, itlookedperfect.
Kristen made her mouth shape a smile. It felt thin and brittle. The kind of smile that held while wind tugged at it, the kind that would vanish if she breathed too deeply.
She tried to convince herself that she was safe here. No bandits lurked in the bushes, and no voices rose in cruelty behind closed doors. Murdock’s people were loud and kind, quick to lend bread, quicker to laugh. They had opened their arms to her and the children as if they, too, had always belonged to this land.
It should have settled her. And yet every time Finn tripped and pushed back to his feet, she saw Neil kneeling in the kitchen and asking how the game ended. Every time Anna clapped and demanded kisses, she heard Neil say,I daenae like it when other men are being nice to me wife.
Her chest ached in a way the clean air could not mend as she drew the shawl tighter around her shoulders and told herself she was only watching the children. She lied to herself with care, and counted the ways the moment felt half made. The way the view felt incomplete without him.
Grass rustled beside her, and her brother sat, a slow, heavy fold of a man easing himself down, legs stretched out and ankles crossed. He watched Skye for a while, and the soft look in his eyes made her throat tighten.
“Braither,” Kristen greeted, her voice soft. “Come to tell me the food is ready?”
