Page 52 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

Chloe parted her lips to object. “Edward, the bairn.”

“Ye cannae mount a horse with a joint in that condition,” he cut her off, his voice flat and final. “The joltin’ of the trail will turn a simple strain into a permanent ruin. We bide our time here.”

“I have ruined the entire outin’,” Chloe said, the words slipping from her throat with a raw, heavy bitterness she had not intended to expose. She cut herself off, her eyes dropping to her lap as she twisted her fingers together. “I only desired… I just wanted a few hours of peace. Ye possess a mountain of work. I dragged ye from yer ledgers, and now we are trapped in a drafty tavern because I am an idiot who canna watch where she places her feet.”

“Chloe.”

The sheer weight of her name cut through her spiral. She went quiet.

He stood perfectly still before her, the amber glow of the hearth fire dancing across the harsh angles of his scarred face. His arms hung loose at his sides. His expression had returned to that careful, stoic mask he wore like a shield, but beneath the ice, something raw and hot was burning in his eyes.

“Ye are more important than all that,” Edward said in a low rumble. He grabbed her chin and made her look at him.

Chloe had absolutely no script for those words. She turned the sentence over in her mind, searching frantically for a qualification, a hidden insult, or a political caveat. She discovered nothing. He had delivered the truth raw and naked, and the moment the words were spent, he ripped his eyes away from hers as if he thoroughly regretted the honesty of them. She was left alone with the echo of his confession, the weight of it settling deep behind her ribs until her chest ached.

“Thank ye,” she whispered into the quiet.

Edward offered a single, stiff nod of his chin, turned on his heel, and strode toward the door. “I will see to the broth.”

He personally brought the tray up. She had not expected that service either; she had assumed a tavern maid would be sent to tend to her. He carried the wooden bowl and placed it on the small three-legged table beside her armchair.

“Mind the steam,” he grunted before sinking his massive frame into the room’s only other chair across the hearth. He crossed his boots and stared fixedly into the dying coals.

She picked up the pewter spoon and ate slowly, the thick broth rich with pearl barley, roasted roots, and a deep, smoky flavor that warmed her blood. The heat spread through her limbs, making her realize just how thoroughly the damp coastal chill had seeped into her bones without her permission.

The silence stretching between them across the small hearth was not comfortable, precisely. But the violence had left it.

“William,” Chloe spoke up softly, the name a gentle bridge across the quiet. “Was the bairn born here? Within the coastal village?”

Edward did not move a muscle for a long time. She watched his profile in the firelight, tracing the hard, clean line of his jaw and the shadow of his thick lashes.

“He was found,” Edward muttered, his voice raspy.

She paused, keeping her spoon still. “Found?”

“Left at the iron gates of the fortress,” he said, reaching for his pewter cup and rotating it slowly between his fingers. “Eight weeks old. Wrapped in a soiled rag. Nay note. Nay name.”

Chloe absorbed the image, a cold ache opening in her belly. “And ye took the orphan into yer own nursery.”

“There was nay one else to claim him.”

“There is always someone else, Edward. In a clan of hundreds, a laird can easily find a tenant willin’ to raise a stray.” She held his gaze across the hearth. “Ye chose to claim him as an O’Brien. Ye chose the burden.”

He said nothing. She looked at his face and recognized the aggressive stillness that took over his features whenever something touched his soul.

She did not push further. She lowered her eyes to the bowl and ate.

He stared into the coals.

She believes he is a foundlin’.

The words sat in his chest like a stone. He had not corrected her, and he had known, in the moment the lie of omission settled between them, that he would not.

Nae yet. Nae tonight.

She had looked at him across this hearth with those steady brown eyes, and he had wanted, with a ferocity that alarmed him, to keep the look on her face exactly as it was.

The truth about William's parentage was a wound he had not yet decided how to show to another person.