Page 91 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

“Ye didnae have to.”

Tyler pushed off the door and started back toward the hall, already talking about something else entirely. A shipment expected from the coast, a dispute between two tenants over a fence line, the kind of ordinary castle business that had filled Edward’s days for thirteen years before Chloe had walked into his kirk in the rain. She made every one of those days feel considerably less full than he’d once believed them to be.

Edward followed him inside because there was nothing left in the yard worth standing over, and the road stayed empty behind him the rest of the morning, exactly as a well-guarded road with nothing wrong on it should.

The carriage stopped at midday to rest the horses in a clearing off the road, where a shallow burn flowed over stones, and the guards could water the team.

Melodie took William down along the bank, and Chloe stayed behind on the carriage step with a lapboard and the stub of a candle, finishing the letter she’d started drafting in her head somewhere around the second mile.

We depart as planned and should reach ye within the week. I bring William, Edward’s nephew, along with me. He is easy company once he's had an hour to settle into new surroundings, which I mention only so ye're nae alarmed if he greets ye with a scream instead of a smile.

She read it back once, satisfied, and reached to fold it when one of the guards—Robb, the youngest of the four—approached the side of the carriage with his hand already halfway up in apology for the interruption.

“Me Lady. There’s a rider stopped up the road, asking after our party. Says he’s come from MacLaud lands.”

Chloe set the lapboard down. “Asking after us, how?”

“By name, me Lady. Yers and the boy’s both.”

That was enough to bring her down off the step herself rather than wait on a report secondhand. The rider had drawn up a short way off, close enough to have been watching the clearing before announcing himself, and he sat his horse with his hands loose on the reins, unhurried.

“Lady O’Brien.” He inclined his head, not quite a bow. “Fergus Boyd. Laird MacLaud sent me ahead to meet yer party on the road and see ye escorted safe the rest of the way.”

“We’ve an escort already, Master Boyd. Four of me husband’s own guard.”

“Aye, and fine men they look, too. But four who ken the general shape of the route isnae the same as one who’s ridden every mile of it a hundred times in every season. The Laird thought ye’d want the extra certainty, this close to the western passes. There’s been talk of raiders workin’ that stretch.”

Chloe glanced past him at the road he’d come down, empty in both directions, no second horse, no sign of the letter he’d claimed to be carrying back. “Ye daenae have the return letter, I’ve only just finished writin’ it.”

“Nae yet, me Lady. I’d meant to carry it back once I’d seen ye a fair way further along, so I could report to Lady MacLaud that I’d laid eyes on the party meself and found ye well.” He nodded at the folded page still sitting on the lapboard behind her. “Whenever it suits ye to hand it over.”

It was a reasonable answer. She turned it over and found nothing in it she could have pointed to and named wrong, and still some old, stubborn part of her sat forward, unwilling to let go of the shape of him without knowing why.

“How did MacLaud hear we’d set out, and on which road, quickly enough to send a man ahead of us?”

“Word travels the coast faster than folk credit, me Lady. A rider passing through Hendry’s lands carried it along, and Lady MacLaud had me saddled within the hour of hearin’.” He said it without pause, without the small hitch of a man building an answer rather than reciting one. “She’s had the good chamber aired since. Asked me to tell ye so.”

The good chamber.

Jenny’s own phrase, from her own letter, landed just right enough to loosen something in Chloe’s chest, followed almost immediately by the colder thought that a man sent to be believed would naturally know to say exactly what would be believed.

“Ye ken the household well, then.”

“Well enough. Carried word between the two castles more times than I could count.” He held a hand out, palm up, toward the letter. “I will take that now, if it please ye, and ride a while ahead to be sure the road’s clear before ye reach it.”

Chloe looked down at the letter. One folded page, a blot of wax, weighing nothing at all, and she found she was in no hurry to put it in his hand for reasons she could not yet defend to anyone, least of all herself.

“What clan are ye of?”

“MacLaud born and MacLaud raised, me Lady. Lady MacLaud will vouch for me the moment ye arrive, if ye’d rather wait on that than take a stranger’s word for it on an empty road.” He said it patiently, unbothered, and that patience should have settled something, but it settled nothing at all. “I daenae mean to press ye. Only the day’s movin’, and I’ve a fair ride ahead of me whichever way ye decide.”

She had no real cause. That was the whole trouble of it. Every answer he gave her came back sound and plausible, exactly what a real messenger would say standing in a real clearing on a real errand. Yet she kept circling back to the set of his shoulders, too straight, too much like a man used to a sword rather than a saddlebag, and to the way his eyes had gone once, briefly, past her toward the four guards watering their horses, cataloging something she could not name.

“Ye’ll ride ahead of us the whole way, then. Nae just the passes.”

“The whole way, me Lady. Every mile of it.”

She held the letter out. He took it with a small nod, tucked it inside his jerkin, and gathered his reins.