Page 118 of The Laird’s Sinful Obsession

He reached over and took her hand where it rested on her knee, not making anything of it, just setting his over hers the way he'd found himself doing more frequently.

The simple fact of contact that seemed to say what he wasn't always certain how to put in order.

"There's naethin' tae be afraid of," he said. "I'll take ye. We'll go slowly, as slowly as ye need." He met her eyes when she looked up at him. "And I'll be right beside ye the whole of the way."

She looked at him for a moment with that particular quality of attention she had, the one that made him feel, on occasion, that she was reading something he hadn't quite said.

"All right," she said, quietly. "Aye."

He nodded, his thumb moving once across the back of her hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"Ye dinnae have tae look down," Lachlann said. "Just look at the step in front of ye."

"I'm nae looking down," Alba said. "I'm looking at the step in front of me. That's the problem. The step in front of me is very narrow."

"The wall is right there." He put her hand on the stone. "Ye can feel it."

"Aye, I can feel it. That daesnae make the step wider."

Captain the dog, who had decided to be at Alba’s side more often than not those past days, was three steps above them both, and glanced back with an expression of complete impatience and then continued upward, his claws clicking against the worn stone in a steady, cheerful rhythm that was, somehow, the most aggravating sound in the world.

"He's nae helpin’," she said.

Lachlann's hand was at her back, light, steady, present. "One more. Then there's a landin’."

She took the step.

The stairwell twisted upward in a tight spiral, the walls close on both sides, each step worn slightly concave in the center from centuries of feet before hers.

The torch in the bracket below them had already receded around the curve; above, there was a grey suggestion of the opening at the top, still too far away to be reassuring.

She gripped the rope guide along the inner wall and told herself she was not afraid.

"How often do ye come up here?" she asked, because talking made the steps shorter.

"Often enough." His voice was close behind her, unhurried. "Less in winter. The wind's unkind at the top this time of year."

"That's encouragin'."

"Ye asked."

"I wasnae lookin' fer honesty, I was lookin' fer comfort."

"Those are two different things," he said.

"I'm aware of that, Lachlann."

She heard something in his breath that might have been amusement, and she fixed her attention on the next step and the one after that, one hand on the rope and the other finding the wall whenever the curve of the stair brought it within reach.

The cold intensified as they climbed, seeping through the stone, carried on a thin draft from somewhere above.

Her skirts were not designed for this. Nothing about her was designed for it.

The loose step announced itself without warning.

Her foot came down and the stone shifted, just slightly, just enough, and her balance went with it. She gasped, lurched sideways, and then Lachlann's arm was around her waist, firm and immediate, pulling her back against him before she'd fully registered falling.