“Ida,” he repeated, tasting her name on his lips. Ida had never heard her name spoken so eloquently and certainly not by someone like him. “Do yer worst lass.”
Carefully, Ida wiped the blood away from his cheek where he smeared it with his sleeve, then around his upper lip, careful not to knock his nose while she cleaned the blood off his face. “Tell mah,” Ian said, his voice far too calm. “Who is he tae ye?”
Uncle. He wanted to know about her uncle. “He’s the only family I have left,” she stated, figuring the laird should know what would happen if he decided that uncle should deserve some sort of punishment for what he did. “He used tae be different and not wot ye see now.” Once upon a time, her uncle had been a respected member of the clan. When Ida was a wee lass, she remembered going to the keep with him and her parents, feasting on foods she had never seen before. He had smiled more back then, with an easy laugh and quick word to make another smile as well.
“Wot happened tae him then?” Ian asked softly, his breath blowing over her arm as she worked on a small bit of blood near his cheek.
Ida’s heart wrenched in her chest. “A lot of loss,” she admitted, remembering the stories that her ma used to whisper to her. When Ida grew older, she started to notice the bottle in his hand more, that his easy laughter was because of the drink he was imbibing in and not because he enjoyed laughing. He spentmore time at their hut and it hadn’t taken long for Ida to realize he had nowhere else to go. “He drowned his pain in the bottle.”
“Ah,” Ian said in understanding. “Loss can weigh on a man until he feels as if he has nothing left.”
His words rang true to Ida. She had heard her uncle state those very words repeatedly. After her parents perished from a lung sickness four summers ago, he had spiraled down even further. When Ida needed comfort from her grief, she had instead found nothing from him. “Aye,” she said softly, setting the rag aside. “Wot is yer favorite color?”
Ian looked at her questionably, but before he could get the words out, she had already reached up and pushed his nose back into place, the satisfying crack pleasing her.
Surprisingly, the laird barely winced, tears coming to his eyes briefly before he blinked them away. “How does that feel?” she asked, stepping back to admire her handiwork. It was relatively straight now, with just a slight curve in it that Ida imagined was already there to begin with.
He sniffed a few times, moving his nose around carefully with his hand. “Tis feels fine. I can breathe easier now.”
Her work was done.
“Tis blue.”
“Wot?” Ida asked, confused.
He grinned and her heart started to beat rapidly in her chest. “Mah favorite color. Tis blue.”
“Oh,” she said, her cheeks blooming with color. The question was meant to distract him and she had used it numerous times over the years, but she hadn’t expected the laird to actually provide an answer.
He made no move to rise from the chair. “And yers Ida?”
“Pink, nay, green.” Truly, she had never thought about her favorite color before. “Perhaps I like them all.”
Ian laughed and the sound was like she had just drank an entire bowl of stew, warming her insides. “Ye canna like them all. There has tae be one that suits yer fancy.”
Ida thought for a moment. “Yellow then,” she decided on, thinking of the color of a fresh stack of hay or the sun’s rays as they filtered through the slats of the stable in the late afternoon. Yellow made her happy.
“Yellow then,” Ian declared, looking as if he had nowhere else to be but sitting at her kitchen table. “Do ye run the stables Ida?”
Ida swallowed hard, picking up the supplies so she didn’t have to meet his eye. If she told him the truth, would he tell the laird? No one was going to let her run the stables by herself, especially not an unwed lass, no matter who she was. If they took the horses away from her, Ida was truly have nothing. “I…”
“Donna worry lass,” Ian said a moment later. “I’m not going tae say anything regardless of wot ye tell mah.”
The worry didn’t go away but Ida knew that he could force the answers out of her if he chose to. This was the laird of the Wallace clan, a bloodthirsty clan that was known for its brutality. She had been told tales by her uncle, mostly drunken tales, but he wasn’t the only one who both hated and feared the Wallace clan.
“Aye,” she finally said, deciding that there was nothing she could do now. If he chose to tell her laird, then Ida would lose everything and there was nothing she could do about it.
“How long?” he asked, his voice full of curiosity.
Ida couldn’t remember. She had felt like she had been taking care of horses all her life. It was her solace when she needed to escape. They were part of her family now. So in the end, she didn’t answer him with more than a shrug of her shoulders.
“How did ye learn?” he pressed as she poured the water out of the bowl and put it away.
Ida looked at Ian, wondering why he would even care to know about her. “I’m naught more than a stable hand mah laird.”
He smirked as he stood, towering over Ida. She hadn’t realized how impossibly tall he was. “Sounds like tae mah that ye are more than that lass.”
Despite what had happened, a small measure of pride moved through Ida at his recognition of what she was doing for not only her uncle, but also her clan. “I will do anything tae protect mah clan.”
