Page 68 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

Her hands remained on his shoulders. He was still holding her tight by the waist.

“Ye can let go of me now,” she said. She did not test the theory by moving.

“Aye.” He did not either.

Her fingers curled slightly against the wool at his shoulder, not gripping, just present. “Ye caught me.”

“I did.”

“Twice, now. This week.”

“I am keepin’ count.”

That got something out of her, not quite a laugh, just a breath of one, and it brought her a little closer instead of further away, which he was pretty sure went against whatever plan she had claimed to have about him.

He looked at her mouth.

The open field was quiet enough to hear the river. Beira shifted her weight nearby, unbothered by any of it. There was nowhere he looked that she was not already there first.

“Edward…” Barely a word. More breath than sound.

His hand at her waist tightened, an answer he had not yet decided to give. Her grip tightened to match. Not pulling him closer, nor pushing him away. Just tightening.

He leaned in slightly, and the space between their lips nearly disappeared.

“Me Laird!”

Edward immediately dropped her and stepped back. His thick arm left her waist, and his hands hung limply at his sides as he sharply turned toward the sound of his name. The biting morning cold rushed into the space where his sudden warmth had been so quickly that it almost felt painful.

Chloe’s hands remained raised in the empty air for a fraction of a second before she lowered them. She pressed both feet hard against the ground and concentrated fully on that for a moment, and smoothed the front of her riding dress with fingers that were not quite steady.

Duncan came tearing across the open field at a frantic pace that suggested either a significant emergency or none at all. His color was high, his muddy boots leaving dark prints in the wet grass, and a wooden practice blade bounced violently against his hip with every stride. He was grinning from ear to ear. It was categorically not an emergency.

He arrived completely breathless and entirely unaware of the moment he had just shattered, planting his frame directly between them.

“Twelve clean strikes again this mornin’!” he announced loudly, directing it to Edward primarily and to the open field generally. “Tyler said ten was the mark, and I got twelve. Two above. On both sides.”

“Is that so?”

“Aye!” He held up the chipped wooden blade as physical evidence. “Me footwork as well, Tyler said it was the best he’d seen from me. He said…” he paused, sucking in a ragged breath. “He said I was beginning to look like an actual soldier and nae an enthusiastic scarecrow.”

“Tyler,” Edward said, his voice flat, “is easily impressed.”

Duncan’s bright face fell by approximately a quarter. “He wasnae easily impressed last week. He made me do the entire sequence forty times before he’d call it passable.”

“Then do it forty-one times this week.”

Duncan looked down at his wooden blade, then back up at the Laird. “Aye,” he murmured. “Aye, all right.” He brightened almost immediately, which Chloe had come to realize was his permanent natural state. “Are ye finished with the riding lesson? I can take the horses back if ye are. I’ve already done Tyler’s; his big bay was in a foul mood this mornin’, but I managed him, me Lady.”

He turned to Chloe with the earnest, slightly formal address he always reserved for her. “Ye were brilliant, by the way. I was watchin’ from the gate. The trot, ye had it clean by the fourth time round. Melodie said ye’d never been on a horse before a fortnight ago.”

“Melodie,” Chloe said, her lips twitching slightly, “talks a great deal.”

“She does,” Duncan agreed happily. “But she was impressed. She told Isla, and Isla told me.”

He reached out and took Beira’s leather rein. “Tyler says Lady Jenny used to ride before she could walk, but I think that’s exaggeratin’. Me Lady, ye are doin’ better than most who start later. That’s what I think.” He delivered the praise with complete sincerity, entirely unaware that it was a profound compliment, which made it considerably more of one.

Chloe looked at him and felt the suffocating tightness in her chest ease by several degrees.