Page 98 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

He found Duncan already in the yard, going over the tack with two of the younger guards, the morning still cool enough that everyone’s breath showed faintly in the air.

“Ye’re up early,” Duncan said, not looking up from the bridle in his hands. “For a man who spent yesterday killin’ his father-in-law and the day before that nearly gettin’ his wife kidnapped.”

“Someone has to see the grain counts done.”

“Aye, the grain counts. That’s what’s got ye up before the sun.” Duncan set the bridle down and looked at him properly, and whatever he saw in Edward’s face made him grin, slow and entirely unrepentant. “Ye look like a man who slept well.”

“Mind yer own tack, Duncan.”

“I am minding it. I can mind me tack and yer good mood at the same time, me Laird, I am nae so simple as that.” He picked the bridle back up, still grinning. “Mrs. Donnan’s already told the whole kitchen ye will be smilin’ by breakfast. First time in a fortnight, she said. Made a wager with Isla over how long it’d last.”

“There’s nae wager on me temperament.”

“There’s always a wager on yer temperament. Ye’ve just nae been payin’ attention to it before now.” Duncan handed the bridle off to one of the younger guards and fell into step beside Edward as he crossed toward the granary. “How’s the Lady this mornin’?”

“Sleepin’.”

“Good. She’s earned it.” Some of the teasing dropped out of Duncan’s voice. “I meant to say, yesterday, in the clearin’. I did right, turnin’ back for ye instead of stayin’ to fight.”

“Ye did right,” Edward said it without hesitation, because he’d turned the question over in his mind more than once. “Ye brought me there in time. That’s the whole of what mattered.”

“I’ve thought on it since, that’s all. Whether I ought to have stayed.”

“If ye’d stayed, ye’d likely be dead, and I’d have arrived to find one less sword standin’ and nae faster than I did regardless.” Edward clapped a hand briefly to his shoulder. “Ye did right, Duncan. I will nae say it twice.”

“Ye just said it twice.”

“Daenae push yer luck.”

They reached the granary, and Edward went through the morning’s business the way he always did.

The steward’s tallies revealed a dispute between two tenants over a fence line that had apparently been simmering since before the wedding and showed no sign of resolving itself without his direct help. A message from Hendry’s lands confirming the boundary dispute from days earlier had been settled quietly. Ordinary matters. The kind of business that had filled his days for thirteen years and had, for most of that time, been all that filled them.

He found himself hurrying through the fence dispute faster than the tenants likely appreciated, and cutting the steward’s report shorter than was strictly proper, entirely because some part of him kept measuring the morning by how much longer stood between himself and the moment he would be free to go find Chloe and William again.

“Ye’re doin’ somethin’ new,” Duncan said when Edward had signed off on the last of the tallies rather quickly.

“Doin’ what?”

“Rushin’ through yer own castle’s business like a man with somewhere better to be.” Duncan did not bother hiding his amusement this time. “Which, I suppose, ye have. Go on, then. I will finish the rest of it. Tell the Lady I said good mornin’.”

Edward left him to it and crossed the yard toward the keep, taking the back stairs up past the kitchens, where Isla was already elbow-deep in bread dough. She called out something cheerful after him that he only half caught, and up again past the solar, until he reached the nursery door and found it standing open.

Chloe was already there ahead of him, seated in the low chair by the window with William settled against her shoulder, one hand moving slowly and steadily over his back.

“Is he sleepin’?”

“Tryin’ to convince himself he wants to.” Chloe kept her voice low. “He fought his mornin’ nap somethin’ fierce. I think yesterday frightened more out of him than he’s got words to say.”

Edward crossed the room quietly and crouched by the chair, close enough to see William’s face, eyes half-shut, one small fist curled loose against Chloe’s collar. He reached out and let the boy’s fingers close around one of his own, the same gesture he’d made a hundred times now without ever quite tiring of it.

William stirred at the touch, blinked up at him, and made a small, considering sound before his eyes drifted shut again.

“He kens ye,” Chloe said, watching. “Every time. However tired he is.”

“He kens ye better.”

“He kens both of us. That’s the whole point of it, isnae it?” She shifted him slightly, settling him deeper against her shoulder. “Tyler came by earlier, before ye finished with the tallies. Sat right there in the doorway and made faces at him for the better part of ten minutes, tryin’ to get him to laugh.”