Her father’s voice, low and weary. Gabriel Jamison’s, quieter still, but intent.
She slowed at once, instinct tightening her steps even as curiosity pulled her forward. The sound of their voices—serious, measured, unguarded—made it impossible to turn away. She moved carefully toward them and stopped behind a low outcrop of stone where the lantern light fell short but the words carried clearly.
“I dinna doubt he would speak to ye,” Gabriel was saying. “Jacob’s never been one to leave a mess unattended.”
Elena cringed.A mess?
Liam let out a slow breath. “Aye. He rode up beside me once we were clear of Strathfinnan and said his piece plain enough.” He paused and cleared his throat, spitting off to the side. “He apologized with nae hedging. Said he accepted full responsibility for what happened in the lee, and that he would nae see Elena bear the cost of it.”
Elena’s breath caught.
“He told me,” Liam went on, “that he was prepared to wed her at once, if that was what was required to keep her name clear of scandal.”
Gabriel shifted his weight. “He means to do right by her.”
“I dinna doubt that,” Liam said at length. “He’d stand to it, if it came to that. He made that much clear enough.”
Gabriel shifted his weight slightly. “Aye. He’s never been one to flinch from what he believes is owed.”
“Nae,” Liam agreed, his voice measured, almost weary. “And that is nae small thing. There are men who would have looked for a way around it, but he dinna.”
A pause followed, long enough to stretch thin, to Elena’s way of thinking.
“A shame, though, done this way,” Gabriel said carefully, choosing his words as one might choose footing on uncertain ground. “'Tis a hard foundation to build a life on, when a man steps forward because he must.”
Liam let out a breath through his nose. “That’s just it.”
Neither spoke for a moment after that, the silence likely pressing more heavily on Elena than either of them.
“We’ll see what the morning brings,” Liam said finally. “There’s nae sense binding anyone to words spoken under pressure.”
Gabriel inclined his head. “Aye. Let the night pass.”
Elena stepped back then, careful and silent, the weight of what she had heard pressing down on her chest as she retreated toward the wagons. The night air felt sharper now, as though the cold had finally found her. She climbed back into the wagon and lay rigid beneath the blankets, staring into the darkness while her mother slept on, unaware.
Of course Jacob had offered marriage—to save her. That’s what he did, what he’d always done—he saved her. He would do what honor required, what duty demanded, what necessity dictated. In every memory she had of the boy, the youth, the man, Jacob Jamison was always the first to step between harm and another, always ready to shoulder whatever had to be borne. In dozens of small, unremarkable ways, Jacob had always chosen the burden—never once thinking it might be possible to simply refuse.
So yes, it made perfect, devastating sense that he would go to her father and offer himself up like a sacrifice. He would bind himself to her for a lifetime if it was required, would shoulder a scandal for her sake, would trade away his own freedom to see duty done. The knowledge landed on her with the crushingweight of inevitability, and for a moment, she hated him for it—hated his sense of responsibility, his relentless, suffocating goodness. Why could he not be reckless and selfish and choose her because he wanted her and not because honor demanded it?
But she knew the answer. She had known it since childhood, since the first time she watched him stand his ground against some childish injustice with his jaw set and his eyes gone dark and unreadable. Duty would always come first, and if there was any room left for his own heart, it would be the narrowest of margins.
And suddenly, all the lovely, wild possibility of the day before—the hope she’d dared to feel in the lee, the electricity that had sparked up between them curdled into something sharp and unpleasant.
She wondered if that was why he’d kept his distance all day—so that he would not have to see her, would not have to play directly for her the reluctant but dutiful hero.
She lifted her hand to her lips, remembering the certainty of his kiss in the lee, and felt it shift painfully, reshaped now by the knowledge that what he had to offer her was protection, not choosing.
Tomorrow, she knew, she would look at him differently—not because she cared less, but because she understood that he did.
