Page 27 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

“I will get it, me Lady,” the boy said, already moving.

Isla made a sound that was definitely not a laugh.

“Nae a word,” Chloe told her.

“Nae one,” Isla agreed, and handed her a clean cloth for her hands.

They settled into a companionable quiet, Isla stirring whatever had been arguing with her in the pot, Chloe finishing the dough. The kitchen moved around them, warm and ordinary and entirely without ceremony.

“Can I ask ye somethin’?” Isla said, after a while.

“Ye will, anyway.”

“The Laird.” Isla kept her eyes on the pot. “How do ye find him?”

Chloe was quiet for a moment. She pressed the heel of her palm into the dough and pushed.

“Complicated,” she said at last.

Isla lifted a shoulder. “He runs everythin’. Makes every decision. Never asks for anythin’ back.” She glanced sideways. “Mrs. Donnan says he has been alone since before she came to this castle, and she has been here twelve years.” She stirred slowly. “A man who is feared and capable and alone for that long.” She shook her head. “It does somethin’ to a person. Even a hard one.”

“Aye,” Chloe said quietly. “It does.” She looked down at the dough. “But complicated and broken are nae the same thing. I am beginnin’ to think people have been too quick to decide which one he is.”

Isla said nothing to that. But she stopped stirring and looked at Chloe for a long moment before turning back to her pot.

He had everything and still felt lonely. She shook the thought out of her head, forcing her mind to focus on the task in front of her.

“All right.” Two hours later, Chloe set both hands on the table and looked at the loaves cooling on the rack, golden and even, the crusts split perfectly along the top. “The bread is done.”

Isla leaned over her shoulder and let out a low sound of appreciation.

“Me Lady.” The older woman at the end of the table was shaking her head slowly. “Ye have a golden touch. We have never seen bread come out like that.” She looked at the rack and then back at Chloe. “I wonder what the Laird will say when he tries it.”

Chloe smiled and reached for her shawl. “Serve it with the afternoon soup.” She looked around the kitchen once, at the flour still on her sleeve and the boy who had helped more than he knew, and at Isla watching her with an expression that she knew meant a comment was being held back at some effort. “Well done, all of ye. Thank ye.”

She left before Isla could say anything.

She had not meant to end up at the stables.

She had simply walked, following corridors until they ended and open air greeted her, with the stables at the far end of the yard. Their doors were pushed back, and the smell of hay, leather, warm animals, and the dry earthiness of a space that was used and functional met her.

She went in and felt glad she did. It was quieter here. The yard noise faded away. Her footsteps grew softer on the packed earth as she walked slowly between the stalls, not searching for anything, just allowing the smell, the warmth, and the steady breathing of the large animals to work their way through her.

The mare in the third stall was not standing quietly like the others. She shifted from foot to foot, ears moving, her head coming up and dropping and coming up again.

Young. Nae yet settled in herself.

She knew the feeling. She stopped in front of the stall and spoke low, the way she had watched grooms do. No words that meant anything, just sound and steadiness, letting the animal hear that she was there and that she was not a threat.

The mare’s ears angled toward her.

Chloe waited. Then slowly, carefully, she lifted her hand and reached toward the horse’s neck. The mare threw her head back and shied sideways, hooves loud on the stall floor.

A hand closed over hers.

“Too fast.”

She had not heard him come in. His voice arrived beside her ear, low and close, and then the rest of him was there, stepped between her and the stall door, one arm coming across her waist to draw her back from the barrier. She went still.