Page 16 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

His dark eyes swept across the room behind her again, checking the tightly shut window and Becky standing with neutral precision beside the open trunk.

It was a thorough survey, however quick and practical. It was the same way he had surveyed the women at the auction, the way she suspected he calculated most things in his life; checking them off against an internal list of rigid requirements and moving on the instant they were satisfied.

“All set?” he asked, his voice low.

“Aye.” She paused, her fingers smoothing her silk skirts. “Thank ye. For the room. It’s… It’s warm.”

He nodded once. A sharp, definitive nod.

She expected him to turn and leave, but he seemed to have no such intention. She looked squarely at him. Her eyes moved to the dim corridor, then to the heavy closed door behind him, which presumably led to his quarters. She thought of the library downstairs, the solitary worn chair, and the candles placed with such exact intention. She thought of Mrs. McAulay ’s quiet revelation.

An interesting man, indeed.

“Do ye have a favorite book?” The question came out before she could think better of it, but her tone remained light. “In the library. I noticed there were quite a number of them.”

“Nay.”

She blinked, caught off guard by the unexpected reply. “No favorite, or no books?”

“No favorite.”

“Oh.” She folded her hands tightly in front of her. “Do ye play an instrument? Or enjoy music? There was a fiddle at the auction.”

“Nay.”

“Right.” She swallowed, forcing herself to try one more time. “Do ye have, I daenae ken, particular places on the estate ye prefer? For leisure, I mean. In the evenings.”

“I daenae.” He paused heavily. He seemed to genuinely consider the foreign word, his brow furrowing. “Leisure.”

She looked at him.

He looked back at her with a blank expression.

“Yer childhood,” she pressed on, because she was thoroughly committed now, and this had to be safer ground. “Did ye grow up here at Ben Cruachan? Did ye have favorite places as a lad? Things ye enjoyed doing.”

“Dead,” he said.

Elspeth froze. She stared up at him. He looked right back down at her, and the vast corridor fell into a suffocating silence.

“I beg yer pardon?” she rasped.

“Me family,” he stated, delivering the line without decoration. “They’re dead. So, that is yer question about me childhood answered.”

She stared at him.

He seemed to believe with absolute sincerity that he had answered her question in the most helpful, efficient manner possible. He was watching for her reaction.

She tried frantically to conjure a response that was not, I’m so sorry, ye could have said that differently. Or even better, were ye raised by wolves?

The two responses scrambled for dominance in her mind, though only the second felt truly inadvisable. She settled heavily on silence, because silence at least did not make the conversational wreckage any worse.

Magnus shifted his massive weight slightly. He looked uncomfortably at the solid wood doorframe. He looked at the stone floor. He looked into the middle distance.

He cleared his throat with a low rumble.

“Ye’ll likely need boots,” he said. “Until yers arrive from yer home. The floors are cold, and the courtyard—” He broke off. “It’s a working castle.”

Elspeth blinked, stunned. She looked at him, then looked down at her feet; at the soft, delicate kid slippers she had worn to the auction, which were already demonstrably unsuitable for this wild environment and of which she had been painfully aware since her very first step on the cobblestones.