Page 37 of Beloved Enemy
Where Lachlan’s handsomeness was quiet and unassuming, Reid’s was bold and overwhelming. He was the kind of man who could silence a room with a single glance, who carried the weight of his authority like a second skin. He was, quite simply, the most compelling man Charlotte had ever encountered, and she found herself both drawn to and intimidated by the sheer force of his personality and his beauty.
Good Lord, stop!She scolded herself.
She approached the towering gates of Kingswood, eyes searching the faces of people seen inside the spacious yard, looking for Lachlan. And she tried to justify in her head what she was about to do—commit to a little bit of embellishment to promote a little bit of matchmaking. All for a good cause, she told herself. In much the same way Charlotte would struggle to put herself out there, to approach a man, or instigate a situation that might make a man notice her, she guessed that Una would never give any unsubtle hint to Lachlan that she was interested in him. But Charlotte didn’t mind doing so. If nothing came of it, so be it, but just maybe—
Her step faltered and her mind emptied of all thought as Reid himself stepped out from the keep into the yard, and all that she’d just mused over a moment ago returned to her; he was simply magnificent to look upon. Today’s bright sunshine highlighted all the red and dark gold in his auburn hair. As he paused briefly just in front of the door talking to one of his soldiers, his broad shoulders all but hid the thick wooden door from view. He stood a full head above the man to whom he wasspeaking but didn’t bother to slouch in accommodation of the young man with his head tipped back so drastically.
I know how you feel, dude, Charlotte thought, her stride restarted but slower now.
A flush crept up her cheeks, which was ridiculous and annoying, but not anything she wasn’t used to. She blushed easily, too easily, and apparently merely the sight of Reid Nicholson, followed so closely on the heels of her most glowing and private review of his person and his looks, would be no exception.
He nodded at the young man and had begun or resumed his exit from the keep before the man had finished speaking, so that Charlotte guessed the soldier was long-winded and Reid was either no longer interested in what he was saying, or had heard everything he needed or wanted to.
And then his gaze met hers and his eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly—though not truly with displeasure or anything like that, more with speculation, possibly wondering why she was here, why she wasn’t with Una—and Charlotte offered a small smile as she approached.
The young man stopped speaking as she did, as he realized her coming.
“Hi,” Charlotte said. “Do you know where I might find Lachlan?”
Reid pulled his brows together in a tight line.
“He’s out to the loch,” he said. “Ye have need of him?”
“Yes—well, no, not me. But Una does.”
The brows lowered now. “She is unwell?”
“Not Una, but Thomas,” Charlotte explained, now committed fully to her plot. “He burned his arm this morning on the kettle.” Not a lie at all.
Charlotte was continually amazed at what children did in this century, at such young ages, as compared to what kids inthe twenty-first century would never be allowed to do. Thomas was only three and yet he sometimes added peat to the fire or stirred the ever-present stew inside the pot. Today, while Una had been changing Effie’s diaper—clout, Una called the plain linen fabric—and while Charlotte was outside with Lilias, her third potty trip in less than an hour, Thomas had helped himself to breakfast, filling a wooden bowl with that hodge-podge soup. He’d burned the underside of his forearm on the rim of the kettle.
“It’s probably fine,” Charlotte explained to Reid. “Una put some salve on it, but I just thought the doctor—er, Lachlan—should look at it.” The tender skin of Thomas’s arm was red but not dangerously so. There hadn’t been any welt or blistering, not that Charlotte had noticed. But still....
“I’ll walk ye down there,” Reid surprised her by offering. “To the loch.”
The hazel of his eyes was more blue than brown today as his gaze fleetingly roamed over her face. He then turned a scowl upon the young man who stood silent at his side, which effectively sent the kid scurrying away after a quick bob of his head.
Charlotte blinked at the swift exchange but followed Reid as he motioned her forward, their footsteps crunching on the gravel as they made their way out of the yard. Beyond the gates, they turned right toward a wide expanse of tall grass that led to the loch. The morning sun cast a golden hue over the landscape, and though it warmed her cheeks, Charlotte had learned that there was always a chill in the air, in the wind.
As they passed through the gates, she risked a glance up at him, noticing the tight set of his jaw, the way his eyes scanned their surroundings with a sharpness that suggested he was always on guard.
“So, why would Lachlan be at the loch this morning?” Charlotte asked, trying to fill the silence between them.
Reid’s gaze flicked toward her before returning to the path ahead. “He’s sometimes involved in the fishing,” he explained, but did not expand upon this. But he did further surprise her by promoting conversation between them, remarking, “Seems ye’re getting on well with Una. And her bairns.”
“Una is wonderful,” she said. “She’s been very kind to me—and very patient with me. Obviously, I don’t know how to do half the things she does all day, which has me feeling quite useless—and which seems to frustrate her— but she’s been slowly teaching me.”
“I’m sure she appreciates the help ye are with the bairns,” Reid said, holding back a low branch on a tree as they followed the path into a thicket of trees.
“Taking care of children is one of the few things I can be helpful with, since I have experience in that field.”
“Ye have bairns of yer own?” He asked.
Though he didn’t look at her, Charlotte sensed a bit of shock in his tone, possibly with some concern—where before he’d hardly shown any—that she might have left children behind in that other century.
“I do not,” she was quick to inform him. “But it’s my job. I’m a teacher who every Monday through Friday for ten months a year is responsible for the growth and development, and the well-being of my students, twenty-four five-year-olds.”
“They foster with ye?”
