Page 34 of In Bed with a Highland Brute

He clambered into the furs and waited for her to appear, vowing to himself that if she attempted to sit in the chair, he would hold true to his promise to carry her to the bed. When she stepped out, she seemed to debate what to do, looking at that chair and considering it.

“Eloise?” Murdoch whispered and tutted, playfully.

“Infuriating. That’s what ye are,” she repeated her earlier words, with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and covering her torso in the night rail. She crossed the room toward him and climbed into the bed, but she would not lay down straight away.

Murdoch was comfortable, with his hand under his head as she started stuffing pillows between them.

“Ye think a pillow wall would do much good regardless?” he asked.

“It is something.”

“It is nothing.” He took a pillow and tossed it to the side, laughing when she objected loudly.

“Murdoch!” She snatched up a pillow and replaced the gap in her wall. “It’s for my own peace of mind.”

“Aye, very well, but ken this.” He lifted his head, just enough to peer at her over the wall. “If we are tae marry fer convenience, I wouldnae touch ye at night unless ye asked it of me. I give ye me word on that.” With these final words he rolled over and sought out sleep, frustrated when he found Eloise was as present in his dreams as she was in his bed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Eloise sat up in the bed abruptly. All was dark, the fire had burned down to the ashes, yet she was certain she felt something.

Is there someone there? Someone in the shadows?

She could have worn she saw movement. Grappling to the table beside her, she opened a tinder box and with shaking hands lit a rushlight, holding the tapered candle high in the air. The feeble orange flame cast little light across the room, but it was enough to reveal that where she thought she had seen a moving shadow, there was nothing, only the stonework and the tapestries that covered the castle wall.

“Nightmares. I’m seeing things. Aye, that is all.” Eloise abruptly remembered where she was and who should have been in bed beside her. Finding the bed was empty, the pillow indented from where Murdoch’s head had been, she reached across the covers. The furs were cold, a sure sign that Murdoch hadn’t been there for some time. “Murdoch?” she called across the chamber, yet there was no answer.

Now so acutely awake, Eloise knew she would not be able to sleep. She clambered out of the bed and moved toward the side of the room, where her maid had hung up an informal lounge dress. Easy to pull on over her shoulders and hang loose with the glimpse of night rail showing beneath, she dressed. Slipping her feet into small flat shoes, she left the chamber, taking the rushlight with her.

I am nae going tae look fer him. I just need tae distract meself from me nightmares. I need a book.

Hurrying to remember the layout of the rooms she had been shown two days before, she traipsed through the corridors and headed to the library. It was two floors down and tucked into the corner of the castle, through such dark corridors that she repeatedly glanced over her shoulder, startled that the feeling of being watched continued to follow her, even here.

It is my imagination. That is all.

When she reached the library door, she pushed it open and crept inside, hurrying toward the stacked shelves. She moved around a chaise longue before realizing that the room was not empty. There was another candle lit, casting a warm butter-tinged glow across the library. It made the mahogany shelves all the more visible, with their stacks of books, and the settle benches that were laid across the room.

Sitting with his back to her was an all too familiar figure. He bent across a table, with a chess board in front of him.

“Murdoch?”

He lifted his head from where it had been resting in in the palm of one of his hands. His eyes narrowed as he gazed at her.

“What are ye doing out of bed?”

“I’ll answer if ye dae.” Eloise crossed toward him, placing down her rushlight beside the chessboard. Seeing there was a small stool sat opposite him, where some seemingly imaginary player was taking part, she sat on the stool, taking his place.

“Did ye come looking fer me?”

“Nay, I couldnae sleep.” She looked down at his chessboard, not wishing to talk of her nightmares and that feeling of being watched. It sounded mad to her own mind and she did not want to be thought of as hysterical. “I came tae find a book. And ye?”

“Couldnae sleep either. Too many thoughts.” He tapped his temple and stared down at the chessboard once more, steepling his hands in front of him. He took a minute or two, staring at the board, before reaching forward and sliding one of the pieces to another square.

“Ye like this game?” she asked, sitting forward on the edge of the stool.

“Nay. I detest it. That is why I am playing it in the middle of the night.”

“Yer wryness…”