Page 36 of Here in Your Arms
He paused and rolled his head and neck, his mouth compressing into harsh lines as he lowered his face and glared at her impatiently.
“Shouldn’t we do something? Should I go for help?” She asked, brushing her windblown hair from her face.
“Lass, I am going for help,” he growled. “Go on, run ahead if ye must. I’ll be right behind ye.”
Stricken once again by his harshness, Rose gaped wordlessly at him and took a step back.
He raised one brow, as if to ask,Well, what are you going to do?Or maybe he simply wanted her out of his way completely.
Rose stepped aside, lifting her chin. “Very well. Good luck with that, sir.” And she took one step—in the opposite direction he was going.
His gaze sharpened instantly. “Nae ye dinna.”
Directly at his side, she lifted a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Already ye are too far from the keep. Ye’ll return with me.” His voice was sharp, edged with quiet warning.
Her blood boiling—he seemed to do that to her, with relative ease and annoying frequency—she shifted her gaze to the grotesque wound in his arm. “I think I’ll be fine. I seem to have fared better than you, so...”
His expression darkened. “And I ken ye dinna listen to a word I said yesterday, wandering unescorted as ye apparently are.”
Another frown knitted her brow. “What? Am I a prisoner? To be jailed inside your house?”
To her chagrin, he rolled his eyes at this, and his expression, when he fastened it on her, could have easily been interpreted as a man annoyed by a woman’s ‘drama’.
“I just needed to...escape,” she said after a moment, hoping it would put the matter to rest, and allow her to carry on as she’d been—alone.
“Escape? From what?” He questioned, his countenance darkening again.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, knowing he did need to return to the keep and have the frightening wound tended. “You should get—”
“Escape from what?” He persisted.
Annoyed at his perseverance, she huffed vocally. “From Margaret’s mother, if you must know.”
Tiernan’s jaw flexed slightly. His response was slow in coming, following that same cool, assessing stare she’d met before. “She overwhelms ye,” he said at last, more a statement than a question.
Rose sighed, shifting on her feet, giving a brief nod of her head. She lifted her face and met his perpetually stormy blue eyes. “I just... I don’t want to...to encourage her, thinking I’m someone I’m not.”
He narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice, though it was still tinged with his own version of distrust. “And who are ye, Rose Carlisle?”
Rose paused and stared at him, at the severe, brutally handsome man before her, recalling his words of last night, the ones given to the crowd in the hall.
She wet her lips and pulled more of her hair away from her face. “I’m no one. Just a girl...lost in time.”
He inclined his head a bit, considering this, and then, saying nothing, turned, walking with a slow, measured stride, his limp still pronounced but ignored. “C’mon, then. Back to the keep.”
Rose sighed, falling into step beside him, feeling as if she had little choice. If he didn’t stand and argue about it now, she’d likely hear about it later.
The walk back to the keep would be long, she knew, the rolling hills once again stretching before her them in an endless expanse of green and gold. They walked in silence, the only sounds the very distant bleating of sheep and the rhythmic swish of her skirts through the grass and the stomp of his feet.
Rose stole a glance at the MacRae laird, who strode beside her with steady purpose, his limp noticeable but not debilitating. He moved as though he refused to acknowledge the pain, shoulders squared, mouth pressed in its usual firm, disgruntled line. If the silence was uncomfortable, he didn’t seem to notice.
Then again, maybe it was only uncomfortable for her.
Her hand moved to her cheek, idly following the line of her scar, nervously debating whether to break the silence or let it stretch on indefinitely, or until they reached the keep. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who indulged in idle conversation.
But then, to her surprise, he spoke first.
