Page 64 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

She lay back down, told herself sternly that she had no intention of lying awake, waiting for the outcome of another man’s restlessness, and was still awake fifteen minutes later when the footsteps returned. They were closer this time, unmistakably closer, and stopped directly outside her door.

She sat up so fast that the blanket slid clean off the bed.

Three knocks. Not hesitant ones.

She was across the room and had a shawl half around her shoulders before she knew it, tying it one-handed as she crossed the cold floor and pulled the door open to find Magnus standing in the corridor.

“I owe ye an apology,” he said.

“For which part?” she asked, because she remembered asking him the very same thing the night before and getting nothing useful in return, and found she wasn’t inclined to make this easier for him twice in a row.

“For…” He stopped, his jaw working. “Ye ken.”

Her cheeks warmed despite herself, and she was briefly grateful for the dim light of a single sconce rather than full daylight to give her away.

“And,” Magnus continued, before she could decide whether to press him further, “for the manner in which I have behaved toward ye since. Ye asked for outings. Ye asked to be given a choice, rather than told what to do with yer days.”

His hands were loose at his sides, and she watched him deliberately keep them there rather than cross his arms, which she was coming to understand was the closest thing he had to standing exposed.

“I gave ye instructions instead. That was wrong of me.”

“It was,” she agreed, because there was little point in denying it.

“If ye still wish it, we could go out on another outing.”

She studied him for a moment, waiting for the qualification—the “when the harvest’s in” or “once the fire’s dealt with”—that would turn the offer back into another instruction wearing a kinder face.

“An actual outing,” she said. “Nae an inspection ride where ye lecture me on drainage the entire way.”

“An actual outing.” Something at the corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile, but close enough to one. “As close as I am capable of providin’ one.”

“That’s a fair answer.”

He didn’t say anything further for a moment, only looked at her. Elspeth felt the look land somewhere low in her stomach and made herself hold still under it rather than fidget with the edge of her shawl, which was what her hands very much wanted to do.

“And I promise ye this,” he added, quieter now. “I willnae touch ye again before the handfasting.”

Something in her chest folded in on itself, sharp and sudden. She could not have named why a promise clearly meant to reassure her should feel instead like a door slamming shut.

She kept her face even. She had spent a great many years keeping her face even for her father’s benefit, and the skill, it turned out, transferred rather well to Highland lairds standing in doorways at midnight.

“Ye neednae promise that,” she said, and was pleased that her voice came out steadier than the rest of her currently felt.

“I ken I neednae.” He held her gaze a beat longer than was strictly comfortable. “I’m promisin’ it regardless.”

She smiled at him, because there seemed nothing else sensible to do with her face at that moment, and because some contrary part of her refused to let him see that the promise had cost her something.

“Meet me in the stables,” he said. “After ye’ve broken yer fast. Wear somethin’ ye daenae mind getting mud on.”

“I own nothin’ else at this point.”

That did coax something closer to a real smile from him, brief as it was, there and gone before she could comment on it.

He inclined his head to her and turned to go.

She watched him walk down the corridor with the same unhurried stride, until he rounded the corner to his rooms and was gone from sight.

She closed her door and stood with her back against it, her shawl knotted crookedly at her throat, her heart beating considerably faster than any midnight apology from a man who’d promised not to touch her warranted.