Page 11 of When the Laird Claims
Victoria said nothing, letting her silence speak for her.
It took a good few minutes for anyone to come and tend to them, and when someone did—a rotund man with a ruddy face—he did not look too pleased about it.
“Do ye have rooms?” Arran asked.
“Not enough for all of you,” the man replied, with a nod toward the stables outside.
“Me men will sleep in the stables, if that’s all right by ye.”
The man shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, so long as they don’t make any mess. So, it’s just the one room?”
Victoria drifted out of the conversation, her attention drawn by an enormous spiderweb dangling from the rafters overhead. Spine crawling at the thought of the spider it belonged to, her gaze wandered the rest of the inn, wondering if they had any books hidden away somewhere. Something to read to calm herself.
At the word ‘honeymoon,’ however, her attention snapped right back to the conversation between Arran and, presumably, the innkeeper.
She was about to protest that she was the very furthest thing from married… but then she realized how it must look. Was it better to be a lone woman being accompanied by a man who was not related or known to her, or to lie a little? The ingrained sense of propriety with which she had been raised was starting to take over.
“My congratulations,” the older man said with a touch more friendliness.
Victoria smiled weakly in response. Sheshouldhave protested that she was being held here against her will… or just outright asked for help in getting to Emma’s residence to meet up with her sister, but there was something about the way that the man’s gaze lingered on her wedding gown that she did not care for.
Perhaps that was part of the reason that Arran’s voice suddenly turned brusque as he said, “We’ll take dinner in our room. Show us upstairs. Me wife is tired.”
“Of course, sir,” the innkeeper replied with one last look at Victoria’s gown, before he shouted for someone else to come and take care of the “newlyweds.”.
A woman who Victoria presumed was the man’s wife headed upstairs ahead of them, leading them through a low-lit door and into what must have been their only guest room. “I willhave water sent up so that you can have a bath before such an important night, my lady.”
The woman looked sinister from the outside, her face in a permanent frown, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and full of warmth. She seemed rather reluctant to look Arran in the eye for reasons that Victoria could guess at.
“That would be lovely, thank you,” Victoria muttered, not wanting to have the attention on herself.
She waited for the woman to leave the room after pointing out the clean bath linens and where more blankets could be found, and when she did, Victoria waited for Arran to leave the room as well. But instead of following the woman out of the room to join his men in the stables, he merely closed the door behind her and started to unpin the tartan that he wore.
“What do you think you are doing?” Victoria gasped, quickly turning around before he could disrobe any further.
“Readyin’ meself for the night. Unless ye still wanted to threaten to strangle me in me sleep?” Arran chuckled.
“As if I could wrap my hands around your thick neck!” Victoria spoke without thinking.
“Ye are welcome to bathe first, of course,” Arran continued as if she had not spoken in the first place.
Victoria glanced down at the dress that she was wearing, the white hemline now stained green and brown from the grass, her slippers muddy and ruined. The green sash was still in one piece, which she was somewhat disappointed in, as it was the only part that she had not liked about the dress in the first place. She had nothing else to wear, and she was not going to be caught dead running around in her shift.
“I have one of the men finding a suitable traveling dress for ye, daenae worry about that, lass,” Arran said, as if reading her mind. He untucked his white linen shirt from his kilt as he spoke, and she knew that she ought to avert her gaze, but some part of her could not seem to move. “Or, if ye daenae wish to wait…” He continued as he pulled his shirt up and over his head before holding it out to her.
Victoria panicked and held her hands up in front of her face. She started to protest quickly, and loudly… but she caught a glimpse of his torso through her splayed, gloved fingers, and maybe she widened them a little more to get a better look. From the defined ledge of his collarbone to the ridge of his hips, he was riddled with scars and mottled bruises in various stages of healing, an angry-looking cut slicing across the contoured muscle of his abdomen. She had never seen anyone look so injured before. She had never seen anyone so… unclothed before, though he still wore his kilt; he had just unpinned the part that draped like a sash across his broad chest and over his shoulder.
And yet, he seemed wholly and utterly unfazed by what looked like very painful injuries. Her eyes widened, and whatever protest she might have said otherwise died on her lips as she headed over to see if any of the wounds needed attending to. Shewas not trained in any of it, not in the slightest… but she could not stand to see another person suffer if there was something that she might be able to do about it.
Nor could she suppress the impulse to touch him, to see if his skin was as warm as she suspected.
“What… how did you…” She glanced up at him for only a second, barely even registering his expression.
Clearly, he was a man who was accustomed to a brawl or two. From looking at his battered body, it seemed like that was just about the only thing that he did with his time. Unless perhaps he had recently returned from the wars on the Continent? That would certainly explain it. She knew of many men who had been similarly dispatched, though a laird—if that was anything like the titles in England—he probably would not receive such orders.
She could not see anything actively bleeding, which was something of a blessing, but she could not understand how he was not wincing with every movement. “Are you not… hurt?”
This time, when she glanced up, he was looking at her with a very puzzled expression. “It’s just a little tender, lass, nothin’ to fuss about. “Most people would nae be up and fighting with this sort of injury.”
