Page 88 of The Laird’s Unexpected Twins

No matter what, she refused to leave.

Not the first day, when Brigid brought up porridge and found her already dressed, sitting on the window seat with Amelia asleep across her lap. Not the second, when the rain came in off the loch and drummed against the glass until even Archer stopped babbling to listen. Not the third, nor the fourth, when Brigid stopped asking whether she’d like to take the bairns to the garden and simply carried in a basket of wooden blocks and a rag doll with one button eye, as though the garden could be brought to them instead.

Brigid didn’t dare ask her what was wrong. She tried once, but Freya shut her down with a look. Never had she been so cold toward Brigid. The woman had become a dear friend in the short time they’d known each other.

She slept on a pallet beside the cradles. It was a far cry from the beds she was used to sleeping in, but she wanted to remain in the nursery with the children. Stepping out of the room meant facing what she’d been foolish enough to hope for. She’d sworn off love at sixteen, and she was furious with herself for forgetting it.

Evander actively refused to try to love her. That was what hurt her the most. He wasn’t willing to try, to break the vow he had made to himself. He wouldn’t even consider it.

The last thing she wanted was to speak with him. At least in the nursery, she could avoid him. No matter how much she hoped he might come in looking for her.

On the first day and the second, she thought he might. The thought filled her with anxiety and something else that she refused to examine. But then three days passed, then four, and it became clear to her that he wasn’t going to cross the threshold.

For the time being, at least, she would be able to keep her distance from him. Imagine, barely married a few weeks, and they were already estranged.

Marriage, it seemed, was clearly not for her.

She ate what was put in front of her, because she’d learned her lesson, and because she would not give anyone in this castle the satisfaction of watching her faint. She changed the twins and fed them their mashed neeps and sang to them, and when they napped, she sat with her back against the wall and stared at nothing.

She did not speak to her husband. She didn’t dare to even think of speaking with him.

Of course, she couldn’t avoid him completely. Even if she didn’t leave the nursery, she still caught glimpses of him.

She saw him on the first morning, standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the frame, the way he’d stood in Skye’s doorway the day he came to claim her. He looked as though he hadn’t slept. She’d turned her back and continued dressing Archer, and when she’d looked again, he was gone.

She had lingered there for a moment, almost expecting him to return. She was ashamed to say that she had wanted him to return, but nothing good would come of that. She had closed the door to rid herself of such thoughts.

She saw him from the nursery window on the second day, down in the yard with his men, swinging his sword at a post until the wood split. She had stepped away from the glass before she could notice anything else about him.

She was done noticing things about him. Noticing had gotten her nothing but a ring she no longer wore and a pain under her ribs that wouldn’t ease.

Noticing things about him was how her heart had ended up hurt in the first place. If Freya was ever going to start healing, then she had to do something about it.

She saw him on the stairs. In the corridor. Once, late, through a crack in the nursery door, standing in the dark outside as though he’d come to knock and couldn’t make himself do it. She’d held her breath until his footsteps went away. Some traitorous part of her had wanted him to knock.

“He’s looking at ye again,” Brigid murmured on the fifth day.

Freya didn’t lift her head from the blocks she was stacking for Archer. “I ken.”