Page 25 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

"Ye might try staying on yer own side of the corridor," he said back, and neither of them moved.

She was warm through the fabric, clean and faintly herbed, and the scent of her reached him in the narrow space between them. Her hands came up between them. He leaned in without meaning to. She did the same.

They were close enough that he could feel her breath. Her eyes dropped to his mouth.

He released her and stepped back. She held his gaze for one more second, then arranged her expression into something composed and unreachable, and walked away without a word.

He stood where he was until her footsteps were gone.

In his study an hour later, on his second cup of dram, he was still thinking about it.

Ye were meant to be simple.

A practical solution to a simple problem. Someone to run the house and look after the bairn. That was the total of what he had agreed to. But she had walked into his kirk in mud-stained clothes, lit his fireplace with her bare hands, stormed into his study without knocking, and now she was leaning toward him in dark hallways without even realizing she was doing it.

His mother had once leaned toward his father. Had trusted him, built a life beside him, and it had killed her. Not in one moment but in a long accumulation of them, each small enough to dismiss until there was nothing left.

Edward had his father’s hands. He had proved what they were capable of at sixteen, and he had not allowed himself to forget it.

He flung his cup into the fire. The dram surged white up the chimney and settled.

“That is how it is,” he told the fire. His voice came out rough and low in the empty room. “Cruel as that and just as merciless. I am nae human enough for a woman.”

He would do his duty by her. She would have everything she needed in this house. Safety, warmth, and position. William to care for, and one of her own to love, when she was ready. He would give her all of it.

He would give her none of the rest.

He sat forward, elbows on his knees, and stared into the flames until they burned low. He had locked in his decision, and it was final.

She turned onto her left side. Then she fumbled under the quilt, wondering what the maids had done to the bed that had made it so uncomfortable.

She adjusted to her right. Then, on her back, staring at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides like a person lying out for burial.

She was not going to think about the garden or corridor. She turned onto her left side again.

The problem was not that he had kissed her. The problem was that she had kissed him back, and she had wanted to taste more of that sweet cinnamon taste on his tongue when they had met in the corridor.

She knew what she was doing and had not stopped, nor had she wanted to. She was a grown woman of five-and-twenty who had apparently lost the use of her common sense the moment a broad-shouldered man with pale eyes and a jaw like carved stone had given her as much as a glance.

She pressed her hands over her face.

He is yer her husband, is he nae?

That was the truth of it. There was nothing wrong with feeling attraction for one’s husband. Especially one as striking as Edward.

No man like Edward had ever looked at her. Not once. Not ever.

She pressed her mouth together.

A giggle escaped before she could contain it.

Silly lass. That is quite enough of that.

She sat up.

The problem was, he blew hot one breath, and frozen as ice the next. She never knew which version she would encounter when they met.

Enough.