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Lachlan might have been aching, but he wasn’t about to show it. “I can manage.”
The stables were impeccable. Horses were shut away, their stalls clean and smelling of fresh hay. A few nickered and snuffed as they passed, which gave him a pang of grief and longing through him for Goldie. He looked for Ollie’s dappled gray with the white forelock or Johesha’s mahogany quarter but didn’t see either. Disappointment and fear weighed heavily on his shoulders. Had they not survived the ambush?
Stars, he was tired, and the thought of trying to solve his problem—being stranded—seemed too big just then. With the closed border, how was he going to get word to his family that he was alive? How was he going to get home?
When they reached the ladder, he stopped, put his hands on the rungs, and looked up.
“You’re sure?” Tarley asked and laid a hand on his back.
He looked over his shoulder at her, took in the concern riding her brow. “I’ve carried you. I can climb a fucking ladder, Tarley,” he groused. Her comforting hand disappeared from his back, and he climbed the ladder and stepped onto the platform.
“Trevis sleeps up here,” she said from behind him.
Lachlan moved aside and leaned to help her up, grabbing hold of his ribs as he did.
“You did too much today,” she chastised, swatting his hand away as she stepped up next to him, and reached to check his ribs.
He fell back both grateful and resentful of her hovering, though he wasn’t sure how those went together.
She pulled her hand away, looking suddenly timorous, which Lachlan hated because Tarley wasn’t timid. Swallowing, she moved beyond him. “I’ll have Trevis set up a palette for you. He’ll also help with water for a bath. And it will be warm.”
“Warm water. An indulgence,” he replied on the off chance he could reconnect to the rhythm from before, missing it.
“I’ll be sure there’s soap.” She pressed a finger to her lips, tapping as she considered things that needed to be done, and it dawned on Lachlan he’d kissed her only a day and a half ago, but it might as well have been a month with how much had changed. He wanted to do it again, but she clearly didn’t.
“And clothes,” she added.
She’d rejected him. He didn’t want what she didn’t. So, he quelled the thoughts about kissing her, and looked away. “Thank you.”
“I’ll gather some bedding,” she said and moved to the ladder, disappearing over the side of the platform.
He walked the length of the narrow loft, stopping to study Trevis’s space, which had a palette situated between the raw wood of a dormer. A small crate next to the bed held extra clothing folded neatly inside. Next to the oil lantern on top of the crate was a small book, the cover wrapped in etched leather. Lachlan wanted to pick it up but didn’t, knowing it wasn’t his place. It made him curious about the boy.
Besides Trevis’s accommodations, there were bales of straw, barrels, and crates of materials, the area above the horse stables serving as a storage space in addition to the boy’s sleeping quarters. In contrast, Lachlan’s suite of rooms back home weren’t ever anything he had to worry about. They were cleaned and cared for, the sheets changed each day. He had running water and a bathing room, a closet filled with clothes that he never had to clean. He looked down at his boots now, four inches caked in mud. While he’d had muddy boots before, of course, he’d never had to clean them.
He glanced at Trevis’s meager accommodations.
Suddenly Tarley’s criticisms felt appropriate, and Lachlan felt ashamed of his own entitlement.
The sound of voices and footsteps echoed across the stone corridor of the stable, snapping him back to the present.
“What do you mean you’ve been alone with a man?” a male voice asked.
“What was I supposed to do, Tai? Leave him to die?” Tarley answered, her tone frustrated.
They’d stopped walking and Lachlan peered over the loft’s railing. Tarley stood below, her back to him, facing a giant of a man—a young man, no more than eighteen or nineteen. Though Lachlan’s view was skewed, he could see that the young man was taller than Tarley by at least a foot. Their coloring was similar, brown hair, light skin, though the young man was trying to grow a beard. It was patchy. Her brother, Lachlan decided.
“What if you’d been caught?” His long arms came out to his sides.
Tarley crossed her arms across her chest. “A hunter showed up–”
“Tarley! What?!”
Unable to see the brother’s face, Lachlan could still hear the panic in his elevated tone and choppy words.
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
“How?”
