“I’m being crushed by yer defenses.”
“They’re necessary.”
“They’re ridiculous.”
“That daesnae make them unnecessary,” she argued, snuggling herself deeper beneath her blankets.
He stared up at the ceiling, fighting a smile. God bless the lass fer distracting him momentarily for his pain. “Keep talking, lass.”
She threw one pillow at him over the top.
He caught it easily. “That one goes on me side,” he said, placing it beneath his head.
A soft laugh escaped her. It warmed something deep in him. Then, silence settled. He didn’t see it as uncomfortable or strained, simply… quiet.
The fire crackled. The wind whistled outside. He listened to the sound of Davina’s breathing growing softer and steadier. Baird lay still, staring at the ceiling beams. He’d expected tension, fear and awkward distance. He hadn’t expectedthis, a warmth that had nothing to do with the hearth and a woman whose presence somehow made the walls feel less cold.
Eventually, the weight of the day caught up to him, the pain of his loss. His eyes drifted shut. And before sleep claimed him, he felt the bed shift. It was Davina rolling slightly toward him despite her mighty barricade.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Davina drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, tangled in blankets and lingering warmth. For one blissful moment, she forgot where she was. She forgot the tragic death, the marriage, the feast, the too-large man sharing the bed with her.
Then the world tilted. Her arm swooped. Her body slid. She was dreaming of tumbling down a hill when she abruptly realized that she was actually rolling off the side of the bed.
“Oh!”
Her breath left her in a startled gasp as her body pitched toward the floor. Except she never hit it. Strong arms closed around her in a swift, startling motion. One moment she was weightless and falling, and the next, she was lifted clean of the edge of the bed, pulled firmly and securely right against her husband’s chest.
Davina blinked up, stunned and disheveled. His heartbeat thudded under her ear, maddeningly solid.
“Well,” he rumbled in a voice still thick with sleep, “good morning tae ye, too, lass.”
Mortification hit like a blow. She shoved herself out of his arms so quickly she nearly fell of the bed again.
“I… ye… Saints above!”
He sat up, watching her with infuriating calm as she scrambled across the mattress like a startled cat.
She pointed a shaking finger at him. “Ye! I slepthorriblybecause of ye!”
His brows rose slowly, as if he were still waking up. “Because of me?”
“Aye!” She wrestled her hair out of her face, glaring at him. “Ye were… ye were there and everywhere, breathing and taking up all the space. Being,” she gestured helplessly at his entire frame, “ye.”
A smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth. “I was in me own bed, Davina.”
“Well, I was in it, too!”
“That tends tae happen when two folk share a bed.”
She huffed so forcefully, a stray strand of hair flew off her forehead.
Baird stretched as his long limbs shifted the mattress, and she could have sworn the bed dipped closer to him on purpose.
He eyed the collapsed heap of pillows, her carefully engineered barrier now demolished. “Seems yer grand wall didnae save ye.”
“Itwouldhave,” she said crisply, “if ye hadnae moved.”
