Page 47 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

His eyes moved over her face. Unhurried. Taking in the flush on her cheeks, the set of her jaw, the defiance she was making no effort to conceal.

“Ye marched through the entire fortress just to deliver that sermon,” he murmured, his voice low.

“I got lost twice.”

His eyes were suddenly brighter than they had been in days. He was not laughing, not openly, but there was an unmistakable lightness living in the deep lines at the corners of his eyes. “Ye invaded the storage corridor?”

“The stone sconces all look exactly the same,” she snapped, deflating slightly.

“I will have the servants mark them for ye.”

“I would highly appreciate that.”

They looked at each other across the wide desk. The atmosphere in the study shifted, a sudden, tangible easing of tension, like the clear calm after a summer storm. She had not planned to break his defenses with humor, but as she saw the gentling around his eyes, she realized she did not mind it at all.

She lifted her hand from his desk, smoothed the gray wool of her skirts, and waited.

“Can ye ride?” he asked abruptly.

Chloe parted her lips, the question catching her entirely off guard.

“Nay,” she said, the single word dropping like a stone between them.

She felt the raw vulnerability of the admission immediately, a sudden prickle of shame in a room where she had just boasted of her lack of fear.

Edward did not mock her. He studied her face, his gaze entirely devoid of judgment, searching her features as if revising a tactical map.

“Ye’ve never been taught?” he asked, his rough voice softening.

“I was a maid,” she stated plainly. “Maids are nae granted stables, Edward. We have feet. We walk.”

“Ye are nae a maid now.”

“I am aware of that.”

“And yet.” He let the word sit there. “The Lady of Castle O’Brien cannae ride a horse.”

“I rode one once,” she said, with great dignity. “When I was eleven.”

“And?”

“And I ended up face down in a patch of stingin’ nettles.”

The sound that escaped him was quiet, brief, and completely involuntary—the laugh of a man caught off guard. He quickly pressed his lips together, jaw clenched, but his eyes were brighter than she had seen them in days.

“I will teach ye,” Edward said.

She blinked, surprised. “To ride?”

“Aye. It is nae negotiable. Ye are the Lady of Castle O’Brien now. Ye cannae be carried about the glen like a sack of barley.” He turned around slowly, his chest nearly brushing her shoulder as he looked down at her. “But nae today.”

He paused.

“Today, ye ride with me.”

He delivered the verdict as though it were the only logical conclusion on earth, a purely administrative solution to a transportation problem, before turning back to his desk to slam his ledger shut.

But Chloe had been a maid for ten years; she survived by reading the unspoken truths of her masters. She watched his hands. She noticed the way his large, scarred fingers stilled against the leather binding of the book for one fraction of a second before he closed it. And as he straightened his broad shoulders, she noted a subtle release in his posture.