“She needs rest!” the healer exclaimed, her voice booming through the room and insisting on a quiet that neither of them could argue with.
They exchanged a glance as Annabelle returned with a cold compress and brought it to Innes’ head. Innes smiled at the girl, still feeling rather weak, and the healer planted her hands on her hips and looked between them.
“The foxglove pollen is potent,” she warned. “She’ll no’ suffer much, given that she took the antidote, but she’ll need to sleep.”
“Then go,” Lachlan allowed, lifting a hand to dismiss the healer and the maid. “I’ll take it fae here.”
The two women left the room as Innes pressed the cold compress to her forehead and closed her eyes. She still felt rather shaky and weak, though not as awful as she had when she had fainted earlier.
“Come here,” Lachlan murmured to her as he stooped down, pulling her into his arms and carrying her towards the bed.
“I can walk,” she protested, but she wasn’t sure if it was even true.
Besides, she was too exhausted to do anything other than let him hold her. There was a comfort to his arms, something about his touch that made it hard for her to think of anything but how much she wished for his presence. She should not have been so quick to trust him, she knew that. But in the midst of what seemed to be an attempted poisoning, he was about all she had to cling to.
“Aye, I’m sure you can,” he cooed, as he laid her down carefully on the bed, reaching for the covers and drawing them up and around her.
She peered up at him for a moment and was surprised to find genuine concern on his face that seemed to be aimed at her. She was sure she was just mistaking it for something it wasn’t, looking for an inch of kindness in this man who had been nothing but cruel and confusing to her since they had met, but still, she took some comfort in the fact.
He glanced over to the trunk, his mouth set in a hard line.
“I’ll have that taken fae here,” he muttered. “Cannae have you sleep so close to poison.”
“It won’t fly in my mouth, ye know.”
He shot a look at her, daring her to continue testing him.
“Either way.”
He rose to his feet, closing the lid of the trunk and going to lift it. Before she could stop herself, she spoke again.
“Wouldn’t it be easier fer you to just let me succumb to the poison in my sleep?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him. “The great Lachlan Fraser would finally have broken the Anderson Clan.”
He paused and then looked at her again.
“No pride in that,” he explained. “Just bloodshed. I’d find no honor in butchery.”
His words were short, but there was a softness to his tone, something beneath it she could not ignore.
“You truly wouldnae wish me dead?” she asked, and a curl of satisfaction wound its way around the base of her spine.
It was hardly asking for much from her husband to at least wish for her alive, but there was a relief to hearing those words from him that she had not known she’d needed till then.
“Of course I wouldnae,” he denied as he moved to the edge of her bed. “I couldnae stand to let a woman as beautiful as you go to her grave so soon.”
She smiled, distinctly aware of the weight of him in bed next to her. The warmth of his thigh pressed against hers beneath the covers.
Did he know the effect he had on her?
Did he enjoy it?
She almost wished she had the nerve to ask, but she wasn’t sure she’d have wanted the answer.
“You think me beautiful, husband?” she whispered.
He hesitated for a moment, and his eyes dropped to her mouth. “Aye,” he relented, his tone roughening. “And far too proud fer yer own good, too.”
Before she could part her lips to protest, he kissed her. A kiss meant to silence himself as much as her, she was sure of it.
