Page 27 of Sinbound to the Highlander
Conall stood and bowed, “Thank ye, Me Laird.”
When the door closed behind him, Evan sagged into his chair. His fear of impending attack and a massacre of his people was evaporating away like water from a hot stone.
Do I still have to marry Miss Milleson?
He mused over the issue, and decided that, just like giving up surveillance over his Lairdship, it was still too soon to be making rash decisions about the marriage.
He took out paper and quill, to pen a letter to Laird Lobhdain about his newest finding on the Jacobite troops. If the war was not going to be a pressuring issue, there could be more time for the courtship. Lady Lobhdain had said that she would rather him be there to give Freya a familiar face, but he was not sure how to go about that.
How will Elspeth feel about that?
Evan remembered the moment. Before he had said his title, Freya had been so open and direct, telling him her name and correcting him about Elspeth. But that changed when he had told her his title. She had looked like she wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear. Her eyes were down, her shoulders hunched, and he got the strong impression she was scared of him.
It was only propriety that had stopped him from telling her how stunning he found her, and that he didn’t care about her plain dress or rough hands. But how would that have come across from an engaged man, and one that she did not know at all?
With the letter done, he sat back and twiddled the quill. Freya probably felt that she was not worthy in his presence, that he’d look down on her for not having the education or class that he and his ilk had. He had to persuade her out of those notions.
He did not want her to shy away or hide who she was when he was near her, because he liked the woman he saw. He knew she had more layers to her, and he would love for her to discover them all. But what Evan tried to deny, was that he also wanted to see them as well.
