“Folks believe what they choose to believe, lass. The truth of me story matters little more than what those same folks whisper behind me back.”
“It matters if yer story is the truth and their whispers are false!” she argued, pushing herself up onto her elbow again with a flush of righteous indignation.
“Me reputation is that important to ye, lass?”
She stammered for a moment, trying to find the right words. Finding it hard to choose them when she didn’t know exactly the point she was trying to make. “I-I just—I mean?—”
“Just sleep, lass,” Aiden interrupted, voice gentle but firm. “We’ll nae fix how I’m perceived tonight.”
After opening her mouth a few more times, Hannah finally let out a long breath, realizing he was right. No matter how indignant she might be on his behalf, she also didn’t know the true story, and for all she knew, he was lying to her.
She barely knew the man. He was handsome, had caused her no harm, and in fact had been kind to her, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a risk that he wasn’t showing her his true face.
She let herself drop from her elbow onto her back again, closing her eyes and sighing. She listened to the rustling as Aiden resettled himself. She chose not to speak again as his steady breathing filled the room and tried her best to sleep.
As he’d said, she wasn’t going to solve the problems in either of their lives in the middle of the night.
9
Hannah felt as though she’d lain awake all night, staring at the wall with her back to the man sleeping on her floor.
Her mind kept replaying that moment in the inn, standing between his legs, his hands on her shoulders. Her lips and his so close they could have touched if either of them had so much as shifted a step, eyes locked, both holding their breath.
The way he’d warned her that he would either take her to her home or his. She was no wee lassie despite her inexperience. She knew what sort of thing he’d implied. His intention certainly hadn’t been to tuck her into a guest room with a cup of tea.
The way they’d been so close astride the horse. Despite his best efforts to keep space between them, she’d been unable to help relaxing against his chest as subtly as she could and enjoying the feel of his strength at her back.
He was so warm and sturdy. It had been rather nice having his arm around her. Her face heated slightly at the memory of letting herself snuggle up against his chestjust a littlewhile he’d been dozing behind her. If he hadn’t suddenly tightened his arm enough that it began to hurt, she wouldn’t have said anything to make him distance himself again.
The way he was currently sprawled on her bedroom floor as if it were equally as comfortable as the straw mattress she currently lay on.
She yawned and rolled over, curious to see if he still looked as content as he had in his plaid when she’d last peered at him through the darkness, and froze. Where there was meant to be a laird, there was empty space.
She frowned and pushed herself up, rubbing the heel of her hands against her eyes. She was almost certain she hadn’t slept. Still, she should have heard the massive man getting up and leaving the room, even if he’d been trying not to be too obvious. It wasn’t physically possible for him to have moved that much bulkandopened the door to her bedroom silently.
Now that she was paying attention, she saw that the door was cracked wider, the flickering hearth light allowing her the dim but clear view of her confirmed empty floor.
Now fully aware of her surroundings, instead of lost in her own head, Hannah realized she could hear sounds coming from the main room beyond. Curiosity pulled her from the warmth of her bed, and she reached for the shawl she kept folded atopher trunk, wrapping it around herself and slipping through the panel door that separated her room from the main hearth, eyes still heavy with the sleep she wasn’t certain she had or had not partaken of.
The sight beyond made her pause in the doorway and clutch the shawl around her shoulders even more tightly, her heart racing.
Violet sat at the table, a bowl of porridge in front of her that she was mostly just stirring but occasionally taking a nibble from. In fact, as Hannah watched, her sister attempted a proper bite. She felt a grain sack of weight fall from her shoulders when her sister’s body didn’t immediately convulse and just chewed, swallowed, and kept talking. Easy as could be. As if she’d been doing just that for the last several months without trouble.
Aiden stood by the hearth nearby, spurtle in hand, stirring the porridge with his right hand in the proper direction. The way any sensible person stirred their oats. Before his feet, the fire flickered, carefully built up for the day and keeping the porridge simmering. A cast-iron pan was resting on the coals he had raked forward from the fire, and she could smell butter.
“And they say after that ye tried to wrest the lairdship for yerself,” Violet was saying.
“I ken,” Aiden replied seriously. “They say wrong.”
Violet took another nibble of her porridge and leaned a little more over the bowl. She still looked like she had one leg planted and was ready to bolt if the massive man so much as sneezedunexpectedly, but she also had a gleam of youthful curiosity in her eyes.
A gleam of any sort had been gone from those blue eyes for far longer than Hannah cared to admit. Though she would have preferred her sister had regained that gleam slightly less at the expense of their guest’s peace.
“And some say ye secretly killed the Laird.”
Hannah pressed a hand to her forehead and wondered if she could hit her sister with a boot from the door to her room if she threw it hard enough.
“God’s teeth, lassie,” Aiden scoffed aloud and glanced at Violet as he cracked an egg into a bowl with a single hand. He dropped the shell on a plate on the hearthstone and cracked another egg.
