Page 20 of When the Laird Claims
She searched for him among the crowd, spotting him as he quickly disappeared from her immediate sight. She was about toslip down from the saddle and pursue him, when he reappeared at the periphery of the group, standing in front of an older woman.
Neil took the reins of Arran’s horse, cast one last glance over his shoulder to Victoria with a curt nod of his head. She awkwardly dismounted her own horse, nearly stumbling in the process, but she would be damned before she asked for help if Arran was not going to offer it of his own accord. Neil took her reins too and headed around the side of the keep toward where she presumed the stables were.
It was a strange feeling that overcame her as she slowly approached Arran and who she presumed was his mother. The older woman pulled him down to her shorter height so that she could embrace him, while Victoria’s attention wandered to another woman. Younger, standing close by and holding a baby, looking nothing short of sorrowful. Was she upset that her Laird had returned home? Was this the wife and, apparently, child that he had neglected to tell Victoria about?
Victoria had never had any reason to feel as much of an outsider as she did approaching him now. Attention was something that she was very accustomed to, but this was certainly not the positive sort.
The older woman had a very kind face, and the look that she gave Victoria was one of curiosity, if not shock.
“And who is this then?” the older woman asked, and for the first time in days, Arran looked at Victoria directly with something almost akin to a smirk.
“That would be the bastard’s betrothed,” he answered shortly.
The girl holding the baby’s breath hitched, but it was the only external sign of emotion other than sorrow that she had. She started to rock her young child back and forth, and if Victoria was not mistaken, tears started to well in her eyes.
There was something that she was missing here.
Awkwardly, Victoria started to hold her hand out to the woman in front of her. “I am Lady Victoria Bolton. Thank you for opening your home to me. I am–”
“Pleased, I’m sure,” the woman answered somewhat curtly before turning over her shoulder. She gathered up her skirts at the other woman’s distress and quickly moved to take the child from her, but the woman refused. Slowly, with much compassion, the older woman started to escort the younger woman into the keep.
“My mother, Sophie, and my sister, Kristin… and young Ruby in her arms there,” Arran explained and then started walking at a pace almost too brisk for Victoria to keep up with.
“Have I said something wrong? Offended them?”
“Nay, ye will have to forgive me sister. That bairn in her arms was sired by none other than yer betrothed… ye are a bit of a shock to her,” Arran answered flatly.
The truth felt too blunt.
Arran spoke too casually about something that made her feel almost too dizzy to keep walking. How could he just spring that information on her like that? She ought to have been better prepared, or at least known that was the reason behind his hatred of Charles. There had been so many times while they were all out on the road together that he could have easily told her. Why had he kept that from her?
“Excuse me?”
“Ye can excuse yerself all ye like in yer room,” Arran sighed as he spoke and just kept walking.
“That is really all the information that you are going to give me on the matter?” Victoria scoffed. She should not be surprised, given how sparsely he had been speaking to her until now, but she was upset nonetheless. “How old is her child? Does the Earl know that he has a child?”
Victoria could only imagine how livid Charles would be if he were to learn that his firstborn child was not only a bastard, but a girl at that. Perhaps the latter would even be more offensive to him than the former.
It seemed that no amount of attempting to pry information out of Arran was going to make him actually speak to her. By the time they reached the room that he was leading her toward, she was so frustrated that she was ready to give up.
Arran pushed open the door to the guest room and nodded her inside. Resigned, she figured that she did not really have much of a choice whether she walked into that room or not, and so she did.
But, to her surprise, Arran lingered in the doorway for a moment instead of closing it on her or locking her inside immediately. “I apologize for kissing ye like that. I have tried to come up with a better way to say it, but it was a mistake and I shouldnae have done it.”
Victoria’s jaw fell open.
She was so rarely speechless that she felt thrown for a loop. She stood there, slack-jawed as rage slowly started to boil up inside of her.
Arran’s hands balled into fists at his sides before he lifted them and pressed them into the doorframe to keep himself from coming any further into the room. “I shouldnae have taken advantage of the situation, nor ye.”
That might be an apology, but it certainly did not seem as if he was asking for, nor did he expect, forgiveness. Was this truly what he had been stewing about this whole time?
“I know that ye have nay reason to trust me, Victoria, but if I—I should have done it the right way,” Arran finished with a huff of strained breath, still not looking her in the eye. “This room will be for yer personal use, and I’ll have a maid assigned to ye. Get some rest, and then if ye are willing… ye could dine at my table tonight?”
The rage and indignation that had been steadily building inside of her seemed to go out all at once at the offer to dine together. Whatever she had thought the outcome of that conversation was going to be after such a tense journey, it was not that.
She could not seem to get an answer out, no matter how she tried. She was not even able to properly find her voice until he turned to leave. “Wait!” she called, and Arran paused with his back turned to her. “Am I… am I allowed to walk around the keep? Perhaps… even to see the gardens? If you have gardens?”
