The single word carried more understanding than explanation. Another petal fell between them. He glanced briefly toward the path where the forest opened back toward the castle. He regretted opening up, thinking he had made a mistake, that he had somehow burdened her with more sorrow, and she already had enough of her own.
“The sun will climb soon,” he told her.
Elaina looked up. “And the herbs?”
“Ye gathered enough.”
She watched him for a moment, as though sensing the change in his mood. Then she nodded.
Duncan stepped toward the horse, resting one hand against the saddle.
“We should return,” he said.
The words came gently, but there was a quiet finality to them, because suddenly the morning felt heavier than it had when they first rode into the woods, and Duncan was no longer certain he trusted himself to remain there much longer.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The garden behind the southern wall of the castle was quiet in the evening light. The day had been warm, and the last traces of sunlight now lingered softly over the stone paths and low beds of herbs. Bees drifted lazily from blossom to blossom, and the air carried the gentle scent of rosemary, thyme, and damp soil.
Elaina was kneeling beside one of the narrow beds, her fingers carefully loosening the earth around a young cluster of sage. It was work she did not truly need to do. The garden had already been tended earlier that afternoon. But her hands needed something to occupy them, because her thoughts had grown far too restless.
She brushed the soil aside with slow, deliberate movements, forcing herself to focus on the simple rhythm of the task.
Dig. Turn. Smooth the soil again.
Normally such quiet work soothed her. Today it did not.
Her mind kept returning to the morning ride into the woods and to the moment Duncan had lifted her as though she weighed nothing at all.
Her fingers stilled briefly in the soil. The memory returned with uncomfortable clarity. She could still feel the sudden rush of air as the ground disappeared beneath her feet and then, the warmth of his hands at her waist. Her heart had felt as if it were about to jump right out of her chest and into the palms of his hands.
Elaina exhaled slowly. This was not wise. She brushed her hands together and shifted to the next row of herbs, though she barely saw them.
The problem was not merely that Duncan was handsome, for that alone would have been manageable. It was the rest of him. Duncan Grant was stern, but he was also unexpectedly thoughtful, patient and far more complicated than she had prepared herself for.
Her fingers moved absently through the lavender stems she had been trimming, releasing their familiar scent into the evening air. The sky above the garden had deepened into soft shades of blue and violet, and the first lamps in the castle windows had begun to glow faintly.
She tried to steady her thoughts but the quiet of the garden only seemed to make everything clearer.
She was growing closer to him… too close.
The thought came unbidden and unsettling in its simplicity:tell him.Not the careful half-truths or the identity she wore like a borrowed cloak, but everything. Who she was, where she had come from and why she had truly crossed his path.
At that exact moment, the soft crunch of footsteps on the gravel path broke her thoughts. Elaina looked up. Duncan was standing at the edge of the garden, the fading light casting long shadows across the stone wall behind him. For a moment he said nothing, as though uncertain whether he had interrupted her. Which, she thought faintly, was not at all the behavior she would have expected from the laird of this castle.
She rose slowly to her feet, brushing the soil from her hands.
“Me laird.”
He stepped a little closer along the path, his gaze briefly drifting over the small collection of herbs she had gathered beside her.
“I didnae mean tae disturb ye.”
“Ye didnae.”
A short silence settled between them. Duncan rubbed a hand lightly across the back of his neck, which was a gesture she had begun to recognize as a sign that something weighed on his mind.
“I came tae speak with ye,” he divulged.
