Page 123 of A Highland Bride Disciplined
Scarlett turned to him, the familiar set of her shoulders returning like an old cloak, Lady of Crawford, brisk and steady. “Go,” she said, trying to hustle him with gentle hands. “See to the men. I’ll find Morag and Brighde. The injured will be needin’ blankets and broth and supplies.”
He didn’t move. It was as if the idea of letting her out of his grasp felt like stepping onto the icy loch.
“In a moment,” he said finally looking up at her, a determined stich in his brow that took her breath away.
26
“Kian.” Scarlett tried a smile. It wobbled, but it was a smile. “I’m nae the one bleeding.”
“Scarlett.” He wasn’t smiling. Heat moved through him as the surge that had driven him clean through Roderick’s guard and to the far side of the man’s last breath echoed in his ears. But this wasn’t that heat. This was the kind that came when a man’s heart reminded him it could still be lost. “Come with me.”
Color rose into her cheeks, faint beneath the spill of worry and relief.
Had she any idea what she’d said in the nursery?
The edges of it shone in his head, about nearly losing her family, about foolishness and guilt. It lit something in him that he had written off for good.
Effie shifted beside the cradle, trying to pretend she was invisible. He looked to her. “Effie, take the bairn to the warm cradle by the hearth. Keep her with ye. If anyone but me or Scarlett or Morag knocks, ye do nae answer.”
He flicked a look over his shoulder at another guard who had been standing by the door the entire time. “And ye — send Tam to me the instant he’s seen the injured to sitting.”
The man straightened. “Aye, m’laird. We’ll hold this room,” he said, and Effie anchored the baby more securely in her arms with gratitude.
Kian bent, careful of the drying smears, and ghosted his mouth over Elise’s bonnet. He didn’t dare more than a breath of a kiss and a whisper of warmth. The strange ache he’d been refusing all week pulsed once, deeply. It was something protective and primal that had no place on a ledger.
He straightened. “Come,” he said to Scarlett.
“Where?” She asked it, but she went when he took her hand, that clever hand he’d seen steady babes and brandish knives and wag at lairds, now tucked in his like it had been made to.
They slipped into the corridor, past the man who closed the door behind them, securing Effie and Elise inside.
They moved easily past the scuffed marks of boots and the streak where a shield rim had scraped stone. Voices murmured on thestairwell. Someone hummed under her breath the way folk do after terror, testing the air to see if it would hold music again.
His chamber door stood cracked. The room beyond smelled of heat and lye and lavender.Morag’s doing. Of course it was.
She was still in there, back to the door, pinning drape strings and swearing affectionately at a stubborn knot. A copper tub steamed at the hearthside, scenting the air with rosemary. Clean linens were piled on a chair, a shirt hung from the bedpost, ironed within an inch of its life.
Morag turned, saw them both, and halted mid-scold, eyes flicking over the blood, the ruin of Scarlett’s gown. “Och,” she said softly, more feeling than she usually allowed into a single sound. And then, brisk once more, “Water’s at the right heat, m’laird. Bandages on the chair. I’ll send Brighde for the men in the hall. And I’ll send a girl to fetch ye stew the moment ye’ve —”
“Thank ye, Morag. That’ll be all for now. I’ll send for ye when I’m ready,” Kian said firmly, but not unkindly.
She assessed them both with the unerring eye of a woman who had raised whole households with her tongue and will, then nodded. “I’ll shut the door.” She squeezed past without further comment, though Scarlett received the briefest, fiercest brush of a hand at her elbow on the way.
The latch clicked. The quiet didn’t feel dangerous now. It felt earned.
Scarlett stood very still, looking at the tub like it might be a trick. “Ye should take a bath,” she said at last, voice hushed the way voices go in churches. “And rest.”
He didn’t move toward the water. He moved toward her. “Help me.”
She blinked. “Help —?”
“With the straps.” He tipped his chin at the buckles along his shoulder and ribs, the leather at once heavy and strangely too light now that there wasn’t a blade whistling at his head.
Scarlett uttered a small, unsteady breath of a laugh that might once have been a gasp. “Aye. Of course.”
She closed the distance to him. Her fingers finding buckles and straps that he couldn’t reach without wringing his shoulder. She was careful. Not because she thought him fragile, but because some part of her had decided that he was sacred for the moment, and that decision made his bones hum.
He watched her through it, every quick glance and narrowed focus, the way she bit the inside of her lip when a knot stuck. “What ye said,” he murmured, when her hands had steadied to the rhythm of the buckles. “In the nursery.”
