Page 60 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

“Ye impossible bastard,” Angus said, scowling with mock terror. “How long was this one?”

“Four years.”

“I have a barrel at three.” A heavy pause. “Ye are a deeply unpleasant person to compete with.”

“Aye,” Edward said.

Angus set his cup down and stretched his arms above his head. “I ride to Hendry’s lands at first light,” he said. “A hunt, three days, maybe four. Cailean is already there.” He looked at Edward. “Come. Hendry will sulk if ye daenae and ye ken how he gets.”

“Nae this time,” Edward said. “I’ve duties here.”

His gaze moved as he said it. Barely. A single fractional shift across the table to where Chloe sat, so fast it would have been invisible to anyone not already watching him. She had been watching him.

She looked down at her plate.

Angus caught none of it. Or pretended to catch none of it. He laughed instead, leaning back in his chair.

“Duties,” he said. “Aye, well. I will stay the night then. Long enough to finish that whisky.”

“Ye’ll finish nothin’.” Edward refilled his cup anyway. “Angus’s own brew tastes like bog water and regret,” he added, to no one in particular.

“It tastes like character,” Angus said with great dignity. “Somethin’ yer palette is too refined to appreciate.”

“It tastes like the bog Hendry went into.”

The laugh that went around the table was immediate and loud. Angus pointed a finger at Edward across the table.

Chloe had not moved. She was unsure if she had even breathed. She had seen him patient. She had seen him guarded, deliberate, and in one unguarded moment in a small tavern room, impossibly warm. She had cataloged every version of him.

She had not seen this.

This man, who sat with his shoulders an inch lower than usual and his jaw unclenched. This man, who laughed without deciding to, whose eyes stayed bright long after the sound had gone. This man, who had friends, who belonged to people, who belonged to her in a way she had not known to look for, because nothing in the fortnight before tonight had suggested it was possible.

He had not looked at her once. Through the story and the laughter and the whisky argument and Angela’s easy teasing, through all of it, his eyes had not found hers a single time. She had told herself it did not matter. She had told herself a great many things since arriving at Castle O’Brien and had believed fewer of them each day.

Then Angus rose, and Tyler appeared at his shoulder, and the evening started to fade away. Edward stood up. He said something brief to the men nearby, and they nodded before dispersing. He then turned toward the door to see his guest out.

He looked at her, his gaze intense but fleeting, lasting no more than a breath.

He saw Angus to the door, and she thought that was the last of him for the night. But he stopped on the threshold and turned back, his eyes finding hers down the length of the table.

“A word, Lady O’Brien.”

She did not wait to be asked twice. She set down her spoon and rose before Mrs. Donnan could remark on it, crossing the length of the hall with her chin up, aware of every eye that followed her.

“Ye gave me a look,” he said, once she’d reached him. “When Angus spoke of the hunt. What was it?”

He had seen, though she would have sworn he had not looked her way all night.

“Ye could have gone,” she said. “Three days. Yer friend wanted ye there.”

“Aye.”

“Then why did ye stay?”

“I have duties here.” The same words he’d given Angus.

“That’s what ye told him. It isnae what I asked.”