The fire crackled, and the map under the glass caught a strip of light and let it go. Her chest felt tight, as if her breath was stuck.
“Are you going to do something about that blood?” she asked. The words came out calmer than she felt.
He looked down at his side and then back at her face. “I will be fine. It’s just a little blood.”
“That doesnotlook like a little.”
“Then I couldnae see ye two weeks ago when I was fighting for me life.”
The line hit with the steadiness of a hammer. She absorbed it and did not look away. “Why do you make everything sound like a test you already passed?”
His jaw clenched. “What I pass, I pass so others can sleep.”
“Or so they can watch you and call it pride,” she retorted before she could stop herself.
A knock came, quick and uncertain, before the door opened a hand’s width. A maid stood there with a towel in her hands, eyes lowered. “Me Laird. Forgive me, I was told?—”
“Daenae beg off,” Logan interrupted. “I need another bath. Is the water still hot?”
The maid stepped over the threshold and bobbed her head. “The water is kept hot, me Laird. If ye?—”
“Good. Keep it so and draw another bath,” he ordered, then nodded toward the hallway. “And fetch Jenny.”
“Aye.” She looked as if she wished to vanish into the grain of the wood.
The maid slipped out of the room, her dress rustling.
Emma felt heat flare where humiliation had cooled. “Another bath,” she scoffed. “To prove that you are fine.”
“To clean the cut and make sure it stays closed,” he countered. “Ye prefer I drip on the maps?”
“I do not care what you do.”
“Is that so, lassie?”
Emma opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, they stood with the desk between them and the weight of their words still in the air.
She wanted to tell him that he could have said he was hurt and needed a moment, that normal men said such things without their lungs collapsing. She wanted to tell him that he looked like a man who would drag a boat over a hill because the river had turned. Instead, she kept quiet. Now wasn’t the time to push him.
Soon, footsteps approached and stopped outside the door. The maid pushed it open again. Another young maid entered, thinner than the first, hair tied back neatly, eyes alert. She curtsied to Emma without being told to.
“Jenny,” Logan said. “This is Lady Emma Huntington. She will be yer mistress from now on. Whatever she needs, ye bring it or find who will.”
Jenny’s eyes flicked to the stain on his shirt. “Aye, me Laird.”
Logan turned to Emma. “Ye ask her for what ye need, and she will see to it. If she cannae, she will bring it to Isobel or David. Ye daenae have to hunt through unfamiliar rooms.”
He had given her a handhold without asking if she wanted one.
She nodded once. “Thank you.”
“Ye will have a room,” he added. “Jenny kens which. She will take ye there now.”
“Anddinner,” Emma emphasized, because she would not be dismissed like a servant. “You told me we would continue our conversation.”
“At dinner,” he said. “We will set the rest of the terms and the hour.”
He turned to leave, but then paused, half turned toward the door. “If ye need anything before then, ask me sister.”
