Page 95 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

“He’s safe.” Edward’s voice, close, low, before she’d gotten further than the first inch off the bed. “Sleepin’ in the nursery. Melodie’s with him. He wasnae hurt, Chloe. Nae a scratch.”

She let herself back down and only then opened her eyes fully to find him. He was sitting in the chair beside her bed, close enough that his knee nearly touched the mattress. He was still in the same shirt from the clearing, a dark stain at one shoulder she did not let herself look at too closely, his hands clasped together in his lap with the knuckles scraped raw on one side.

“How long have I been out?”

“Most of the afternoon. Beathag gave ye somethin’ for the shock, and ye went under almost before she’d finished pourin’ it.” He said it plainly, no accusation in it, though something in the set of his shoulders suggested he’d counted every hour of it. “It’s near dusk now.”

Chloe pushed herself up against the pillows, slower than she meant to, and Edward’s hand came halfway toward her before he stopped it, as though uncertain whether help would be welcome or an insult.

“I can manage.”

“Aye.” He drew the hand back, though his eyes did not leave her, tracking the careful angle she’d propped herself at, the wince she had not quite managed to hide when her wrist bent wrong against the sheet.

“He’s dead,” Chloe said. Not a question, though she found she needed to hear it said aloud; needed the words to exist properly in the room, instead of only in the numb, half-formed shape they’d taken in her memory. “Me father.”

“Aye.”

“I saw it happen and I still cannae…” She stopped, tried again. “I kept thinkin’, all these years, that if it ever came to it, I’d feel somethin’ plain. Relief, maybe. Or grief, even, for whatever small part of him had ever been worth grievin’. Instead, there’s only this.” She held up one hand, palm flat, empty. “Naught at all. Is that wrong of me?”

“Nay.” Edward’s voice had gone rougher than before. “I felt naught, the night I did the same to me own father. Took me thirteen years to understand that wasnae wrongness in me. It was only what was left, once the fear finally had somewhere to go.”

Chloe looked at him properly then. Really looked, the way she had not let herself look at anyone in days, and found none of the wall left in his face that had been there in the distillery, none of the careful, formal distance he’d worn across the supper table like a second skin.

What was left instead was something rawer than she’d ever seen on him, stripped down past the Laird and past the gruffness and past even the man who’d told her that she had not earned the right to ask him anything.

“Ye killed him for me,” she said. “Nae for the clan, or the debt, or any of the reasons a laird’s meant to have.”

“Aye.” He did not dress it up in anything softer than the plain truth of it. “I’ve told meself a great many things these past weeks to keep from admittin’ what this was, Chloe, but I stood in that clearin’ and watched him strike ye, and there was nae a single thought left in me head about clans or debts or reasons. There was only ye, on the ground, bleedin’, and him standin’ over ye with a blade still in his hand.”

Her eyes had gone wet without her quite noticing when it started. “All this time,” she said, “since the sea, since the cave, all I’ve wanted, every single night, was to wake and find ye sittin’ exactly where ye’re sittin’ now. I didnae let meself say it, because ye’d made it plain enough where I stood with ye, but that’s the whole truth of it, Edward. That’s all I’ve wanted.”

Something moved through his face at that, quick and unguarded, gone before she could properly name it and then arriving again a moment later, slower this time, allowed to stay.

He reached for her hand, his fingers closing loose around hers first, testing, before he let them tighten properly.

His thumb found the raw line at her wrist where the rope had cut and rested there, not pressing, just present, as if merely touching the injury without hurting her further was something he needed to prove he could do.

“I said things to ye, in that distillery, that I’ve regretted every hour since.” His voice had dropped low, rough at the edges. “I told ye that ye hadnae earned the right to ask after me. That was a lie, Chloe. Ye earned it the very first night ye stitched a wound on me hand and didnae flinch from the sight of it. I only couldnae stand what it meant, ye askin’, so I made it yer fault instead of mine.”

“I ken why ye did it.”

“Ye shouldnae have to ken why. Ye shouldnae have had to sit at me table these past days bein’ spoken to like a stranger in her own home, for somethin’ that was never yer failin’ to begin with.”

His grip on her hand tightened, just slightly. “I watched ye across that table that night, sayin’ ‘Me Laird’ like it was a wound ye were pressin’ on yerself on purpose, and I let it happen because I didnae ken how to stop it without sayin’ the rest of it too.”

“Say it now, then.”

He looked at her for a long moment, the fire throwing soft, moving light across half his face, and Chloe found she could wait as long as it took, now, with his hand around hers and nothing left standing between them that either of them had not already said aloud once today in one form or another.

“I couldnae survive losin’ ye,” Edward said, finally, plain and rough and entirely without armor. “That’s the whole truth of what’s sat underneath every wall I’ve thrown up these past weeks, Chloe. Nae fear of what ye’d think of me. Fear of exactly this, of carin’ enough about someone that losin’ them would finish what me father started and never managed to.”

Chloe turned her hand in his, so that her fingers closed around his instead of merely being held by them.

“Ye havenae lost me,” she said. “Ye’re nae goin’ to.”

“Ye did, though. Lose me.” Edward’s thumb moved once over her knuckles, slow, like he was still convincing some part of himself she was actually there to be touched. “For about the length of time it takes a heart to beat twice, standin’ in that clearin’. I saw his hand come up, and I thought, ‘That’s it.’ That’s the whole of it, done, and I hadnae even told ye…”

He stopped himself.