Page 59 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

Ten years in reading rooms had taught her to find the shape of a household quickly. This one was tightly knit, guarded with outsiders, and fiercely loyal to something she had not yet fully identified.

Edward’s empty chair pulled at the edge of her attention. She looked at the empty wood once more, her throat tightening, then forced her gaze away.

Maybe he regrets the intimacy of the other night.

Soon, the main dishes arrived. Tyler refilled her goblet without being asked, his eyes never quite leaving the doors.

“Ye’re nae eatin’,” she said.

“I ate at noon.” He did not sit. “Ye always learn the kitchen girls’ names on yer first try?”

“Only the ones brave enough to answer me.” That earned half a smile, though his gaze had already gone back to scanning the hall. “Jean’s all right. Skittish, but all right.”

“And ye’re nae eating because?”

“Because someone ought to be watching that door instead of the broth.” He said it easily enough, but he had not so much as glanced at his own plate.

Then the great hall doors slammed back against the stone.

The change in the room was immediate. A sudden straightening of spines, a dead settling of voices. She set down her spoon, her heart striking against her ribs, and looked toward the doors.

Edward came through them, a second man walking close at his side.

The stranger was perhaps Edward’s age, exceptionally broad through the shoulder, and easy in the way he carried his heavy frame. His dark hair was pushed back carelessly. He was talking rapidly as they walked, gesturing with one large hand to emphasize a point, and Edward was listening with his head slightly inclined.

Edward’s eyes found her the exact moment he crossed the threshold.

It was so fast it almost did not happen. A single, icy flick of pale blue light shot across the smoky length of the room to where she sat at his table, right in his chair’s shadow, and then it was gone. His expression had not changed in the slightest. He was still listening to his companion, his stride remained unbroken, his scarred jaw set in its familiar hard line.

She reached for her goblet to keep her shaking hands busy.

They reached the head of the table. Edward pulled out his chair, his tall frame blocking the hearth fire, and looked down at her. His voice, when it came, was an even, composed stone. It carried no trace of the nursery.

“Lady O’Brien.”

“Me Laird,” she said, her own voice matching his, equally level and cold.

“This is Laird Angus O’Calloran.” He gestured briefly to the man beside him with a sharp nod of his chin. “A neighbor of ours.”

Angus O’Calloran bowed deeply. “Lady O’Brien. I have heard very little about ye, which, from what Edward tells me, is everythin’ I need to ken.” His dark eyes moved to Angela with the same easy, teasing warmth. “Lady Angela. Ye have grown wiser since I last had the misfortune of losin’ an argument to ye.”

Angela’s face opened into a genuine, unforced smile. “Laird O’Calloran. Ye have grown nay better at losin’ them.”

Angus laughed, a loud, chesty roar without self-consciousness that made the pewter plates rattle. Several people at the table smiled reflexively. Even Mrs. Donnan permitted her mouth a brief, rare softening around the eyes.

Chloe watched Edward watch his friend, and felt something tight and sharp catch somewhere behind her ribs.

He was different. That was the only word for it, and it was completely insufficient. His massive shoulders had dropped a fraction, barely perceptible to the room, but she saw the subtle difference between a man braced behind a shield and a man at rest.

The line of his jaw was still set, still hard, but the defensive steel in the quality of the hardness had changed. He was not holding himself against a blow. He was simply standing. And when Angus turned to him and muttered something in a low voice that she could not catch, the corner of Edward’s mouth moved into a smile.

She had not known, until this moment, that he had a face for the people he trusted and loved. She had known he was capable of patience. She had seen it in the nursery, in the stables, in the careful, protective way he held William. But patience was effort; it took work.

This was something else.

Angus settled into a heavy chair that Tyler had found somewhere and started telling a story with both hands, his fingers cutting the air, about a hunt that had gone terribly wrong near Laird Hendry’s lands the previous autumn.

Edward reached for the clay jug, pouring himself a dark stream of whisky from the head of the table. Angus stopped mid-sentence, lifted the cup, tasted the liquor, and set it down with an expression of exaggerated reverence.