They did not step back. The line between them had shifted.
She knew it.And something told her that he did as well.
CHAPTER 9
The passageway was still cold,and the flickering lightsshowed the rough line in the stone and the dust along the base.
Erica kept her back to the wall for a breath, then made herself move.
She was the first to step away.Not because she was finished.But because she wasnot.
If she stayed one heartbeat longer, she would say a thing she could not unsay, or do what was not hers to do. The last thing she wanted to do was make this more complicated than it already was.
She put a pace between them. It felt thin and false and needed. Her hands curled into fists at her sides until her nails bit her palms, and she felt the walls suddenly close in on her like she was doing something wrong.Something she didn’t want to get caught doing.
This was nothing but a result of their proximity. It was just heat and anger knotted with excitement. Nothing more. She made herself believe it because the other possibility would be way too daunting to face.
Alex had not moved, and she still felt him in the space, quiet and steady. His breathing was even. She hated the way his waiting pulled at her.
She lifted her chin and forced calm into a voice that did not want it.
“This isnae what it looks like,” she said. The words scraped on the way out. “It was a mistake because we simply got carried away.”
Silence pressed in, but she carried on before the weight could tip her back toward him.
“The plan was to only do that in public if necessary. This… This was unnecessary.”
She tried to soften the edges but failed. She added the line that cut clean because it was honest.
“Let’s nae make this complicated, me Laird.”
The words were steady, but the cost was not. Something inside her had flinched. She did not name it. She would not even give it a chance to grow.
Alex shifted a fraction, boot leather creaking. She did not let him speak. That was the part she would not risk. If he put reason to what had passed between them, she would listen, and then she would break her own sense. She could not afford that in a house with so many eyes.
She turned. “Good evening,” she said, flat and formal, and walked away.
Each step weighed more heavily than the last. She squared her shoulders and held her head high. A corner came. She rounded it and let the wall take him out of her sight.
She could hear voices ahead. She slowed down without meaning to and strained her ears.
Servants. Two of them by the arch where the passage narrowed. They spoke low, the way folks do when they have no wish to be cruel, only to place new pieces on a board they live on.
“Did ye see her at the dining hall? She is bonny,” one said.
“Aye,” the other said. “Ye think she might truly be the new lady?”
“It is hard to ken. Do ye think it will last?”
“Who kens?”
They fell silent as she moved closer, but she kept her eyes on the far end of the hall. She did not make them kneel with an apology or question what they were talking about. No, that was not her way. She would not teach fear where she needed steadiness.
A guard at the stairhead looked at the wall with great interest, which told her enough. Nothing here went unseen. Every movement seemed to be seen by something or someone.And now a part of her wondered if anyone saw what had happened between her and Alex.
She rounded the next corner and found the short passage to her chambers. The firelight burned low, and a slow draft moved along the floor.
That helped.It kept her aware of something other than the memory of his hand on her jaw. She tried to breathe on a count. In for five, hold for three, out for five. The count stuttered, and she fixed it by force.
