“Ye think that’ll make a difference to the marquess?”
Lachlan’s look drifted from his friend and he shook his head. It was what he’d had planned, to leave her to the mercy of Vinehill—the very little mercy his grandfather possessed.
A plan that now needed to change.
He glanced at Domnall’s profile. His friend would make her a fine husband.
Hell. Any one of his men would make her a better husband than he would.
But he already knew he wasn’t going to allow any of them the opportunity.
~~~
Her skirt lifted high, Evalyn bit into the edge of the fabric and then tore another strip off of the bottom of her chemise. The motion shifted her feet in the shallow pool at the edge of the brook she sat next to, sending sharp pangs of torture from her heels up her legs.
Her head bowed as she caught air into her lungs and her look steadied on the tiny smooth pebbles along the tips of her toes. She let the pain wash over her for a long breath. Letting it come and go was far easier than fighting it.
“Does it help—the cold water on your feet?”
Her head snapped up and she twisted on the boulder she sat upon to find Lachlan standing behind her.
She hadn’t heard him approach. After helping her down to the brook, Domnall had said she would have privacy so her guard hadn’t been up.
She turned back to the bubbling water and shoved the skirt of her dark wool dress down over her shift. “It does. At least the coolness of it does, though I thought that as well last night when I soaked them. If anything, at least the blood has been washed away.”
“Don’t stop what you’re doing on my account.” He flicked a finger at the bottom hem of her skirt and stepped forward, his black boots crunching along the pebbles that lined the water’s edge. Stopping next to her, he settled his hands on the hilt of his sword as he looked down at her. “What were you doing?”
“I was ripping strips from my chemise.” She picked up the pile of already torn linen and held it up to him. “They’re to wrap around my feet. I’m hoping I can at least hobble along with these swaddling my skin.”
“The roads will shred the fabric within fifty feet.”
“No, Domnall cut out the toes and heels of my boots.” She leaned over to pick up one of her mangled boots and lifted it to him. “And I can loosen the laces so there is space for the wrappings and my feet will still be protected at the top and bottom.”
Lachlan took the boot from her, turning it around in his fingers as he studied Domnall’s craftiness with his blade.
His mouth went to a terse line, his brow furrowing. “Most enterprising of him.”
She blinked at the harsh cut of his voice. “I’m sorry, is there something I don’t understand that is amiss? Should I not have accepted his help?”
“No—no.” Lachlan shook his head slightly and the annoyance on his face disappeared. “It’s good that he was helping you. These and the strips you are to wrap your feet with should work until we can procure new, properly fitting boots for you.”
He handed the boot down to her. “But you do understand that no one is going to make you walk from here on?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know, so I wanted to be prepared. I would at least like to be able to hobble down to the water’s edge and stand enough to help Rupe with the meals.”
Lachlan pulled his dirk from his waist and dropped to balance on his heels. “Can I help?”
Her look fixed on the blade only inches from her and she had to force herself not react, not to scramble away from him. “Help?”
“With the strips.” He motioned to her skirts and the chemise she hid away. “It looks like you’ll need at least five or six more and it’ll go faster with a blade.”
“Oh.” She had to override her instant alarm and ignore the sudden adrenaline coursing through her veins. “Then yes. Yes, that would be helpful.”
She lifted the gray wool skirt and tugged out the now ragged bottom edge of her chemise. Her legs were bared to him, but there would be no helping that. Of course, he’d seen far too much of her bare skin when he’d stripped off her wet dress in the tent. Any propriety she attempted to feign had been lost days ago.
He set to work, quickly slicing the fabric into long even strips, much more even than what she was able to accomplish by tearing at the fabric. His work went further and further up her legs, over her knees to her thighs, but in a small kindness, he managed to keep his fingers from brushing her.
When the pile of the strips appeared sufficient, he set his dagger back in the sheath at his waist and moved to sit on a boulder next to the one she sat on.
He glanced down at her feet soaking in the water. “Your feet do look better without the blood smeared all about them. Are they already healing?”
Evalyn looked down at her toes, lifting her foot to inspect her heels. “I hope. The blisters that were still holding pus don’t look quite as angry as they did earlier.”
She glanced up to catch a half-smile lifting his left cheek. It brought a slight crinkle to his eyes, enough spark to catch her gaze on his irises as he looked at her feet. She’d noted them before, his hazel eyes, but she’d never really studied them, separated out the streaks of blue and brown, along with the random flecks of green that made a kaleidoscope of color. She stared at the variations, trying to trace them, transfixed.
Transfixed for far too long.
His gaze lifted from her feet and she started, caught in her stare. A flush traveled into her cheeks and she turned her head, searching for something—anything—to move her past the awkwardness.
The cloth.
Even though her feet felt so much better submerged in the coolness of the brook, she picked up a strip of the cloth and pulled her left foot from the water.
She crossed her left leg atop her right so she could hold her toes in midair, swirling them slowly to dry before she started wrapping.
He cleared his throat. “We are to cross into Scottish lands on the morrow.”
“How much farther is Vinehill beyond that?”
“Another day.”
She nodded, her look drifting away from her foot to settle on an eddy across the rippling surface of the water. She’d finally learned how to navigate this small crew of men and now it would be ripped away from her, a whole new life to navigate in Lachlan’s household. If she’d been more successful in making herself useful with these men instead of a constant burden, perhaps she’d walk into Vinehill with a modicum of confidence.
As it was, she feared a lion’s den where she was set to be the hunk of meat.
“That makes you nervous?” Lachlan asked.
She looked to him, her head bobbing in a slow nod. “How did you know that?”
He pointed to her hands.
She had just twisted the strip of cloth in her fingers into a mangled mess.
Her knuckles fell to her lap, her fingers loosening on the cloth. “Yes, I am nervous.” She forced a strained smile. “But I was nervous leaving with your party as well. So I will work through it again, just as before. I asked for this, and I mean to see it through.”
His eyes narrowed slightly at her and for a long breath, his hazel eyes bored into her, appraising her.
“Here.” Lachlan motioned toward her foot. “It’ll be easier if I wrap it.”
“You?” Her eyebrows drew together. He wanted to help wrap her feet?
“Yes, me.” He picked up several strips of cloth that sat on the ground between them and then motioned with his fingers to her leg. “Give me your foot.”
Her mouth slightly agape, she stayed frozen in place.
He shook his head, a crooked smile curving his lips, and he leaned forward to grab her ankle. Pulling it toward him, he settled her heel gently into the cradle of his knees.
After snapping one of the strips in the air to straighten it, he set the end of it under her big toe and wrapped it slowly and evenly about her foot, each overlapping row moving downward toward her heel.
>
“I have a proposal for you, Evalyn.” His focus stayed on her toes, his large fingers managing to be the softest whisper against her raw skin as they wrapped her foot. “Something that will ease the transition to Vinehill.”
“Yes?” Relief filled her chest—she knew enough to accept any and all help he advised.
“Marry me.”
“What?” She jerked her foot away from him.
Any help except that.
His fingers still clutched the strip of cloth and his grip on it made the cloth tighten around her skin, strangling her foot as she yanked her heel from his lap.
“Ouch.”
He dropped the edge of the cloth and snatched her ankle in midair, pulling it back toward him.
Shaking his head, he glared at her. “I’ll need to redo this one.” His concentration went downward and his fingers were quick to unfurl the cloth from her foot and start the whole process again. “And you need to stay still.”
Once he had her foot half wrapped again, he glanced up, his eyes searching her face for a long second. His left hand moved to wrap around her ankle, locking it into place. “I think you heard me correctly before, Evalyn. I am proposing marriage.”
Her foot involuntarily attempted to jerk from him again, but his clamp on her ankle kept her foot securely on his lap. “M—marriage? To me? But—but no. No. You’re betrothed to another. You need to marry that Karta woman.”
Her hands went to her left leg and she gripped her thigh, trying to pull her leg free from his clasp. No success. His grip on her was unbreakable.
“I am betrothed, yes. But that can be broken.”
“No, Lachlan, no. You need do no such thing on my account. You need to marry her for your lands. For your grandfather. For the future. Domnall made that very clear.”
“Domnall likes to pontificate upon subjects he should generally avoid.”
“He sounded quite certain of himself.”
“Of course he did. But what Dom likes to speak of has little influence over what I actually choose to do.”
“Oh.”
His eyebrow lifted. “Does that mean the matter is settled?”
“Settled?” Her head snapped back. “As in I agree to marry you?”
He nodded.
“No—no, it means nothing of the sort. You don’t want to marry me, Lachlan, I am very sure of the fact.”
“Now you think to pontificate on matters you know nothing about?”
“I know I would make you a terrible wife.”
“You do?” His bottom lip jutted up and his head tilted to the side, considering her words. “Interesting. Do tell me how.”
“Well, for starters, I’m English. That will not sit well with your household, an English mistress.”
“Not ideal, but my household will grow accustomed to you, English or not.” He looked down to her foot, releasing his grip on her ankle and grabbing a new strip to continue the wrapping. “What else?” he asked without looking up.
“Well, I only speak one other language—French, my knowledge of running a household is quite limited, and I am only marginal at sewing.”
He didn’t give her so much as a glance. “All things I couldn’t care less about. What else?”
She searched around her, her look frantic on the trees and brook for something—anything to dissuade him from the mad thought he’d latched onto. She caught her blurred reflection in the water.
Her gaze whipped to him. “You—you haven’t seen the scar along my face. I am not what you think I am.”
“Beautiful?”
“I—a—no.” Her fingers twisted together, a heated flush invading her neck.
His fingers paused and he looked up at her, his hazel eyes serious. “Has no one ever told you that you are a beauty, Evalyn?”
She shook her head. “No. Save for my mother, but I was five. And she didn’t know that this”—she pointed at the hair carefully covering her right temple—“would befall me. I will never be beautiful.”
He straightened slightly, his gaze pinning her as his fingers rested lightly on top of her ankle. “Then let me see it.”
“You want to see the scar?”
Her throat collapsed on her. No one—no one ever saw her scar. She made sure of it. That her hair had fallen away from it the other night at the campfire had been a gross oversight on her part. But at least that had been in the darkness with only the campfire—not in the brutal light of day.
She eyed him. Why would he want to see the hideous scar?
A trap.
This had to be a trap of some wild machination. Wanting to see her scar. The suggestion of marriage.
And he held her foot hostage, no matter how lightly his hand on her ankle sat. His fingers only needed to slip down and he’d have her locked in place.
But a trap to what end?
She glanced over her shoulder, looking for help, looking for escape.
“Evalyn?”
Her head swiveled back to him.
His eyebrows lifted.
Trapped.
And there was only one way to get her foot back and flee.
She sighed, then brought her fingers up to her hair and lifted away the smoothed locks from her right temple. She set her stare on the gnarled, bared roots of the tree behind him as she tilted her head slightly toward him, letting him have full view of the scar that marred her face.
It was hideous.
She knew it.
She’d studied the scar for far too long. Too many hours to count. How the flesh had twisted as it healed, not put back together by neat stitches, but by white, tough flesh building upon white, tough flesh until she was whole again.
“There is much pain that exists there.” He moved, lifting a finger to reach out and touch the scar that curled around her temple into the spot where her hair no longer grew.
She snapped backward on the boulder, sending her heel scraping against his trousers. Instant pain she had to swallow. “Please, no.” Her hand dropped from her head, her hair falling back into place.
Scooting forward on the rock, she tried to ease his pull on her foot. Her bottom lip jutted up even as she attempted a smile, her eyes meeting his. “So now you know how ruined I am, in more ways than one. I thank you for your offer, Lachlan. It was very kind of you.”
“The offer still stands, Evalyn.”
“I—it does? But I…but my—” Her hand swept up to press against her temple through her hair.
He didn’t flinch. “You’re no less beautiful now than you were a moment ago.”
“But…but…” Her words trailed, her tongue tangling against the roof of her mouth.
This had to be a trick. It had to be. And Lachlan was not giving up his game.
His head slanted to the side as he stared at her. “Why are you truly refusing me?”
“I…I’m not refusing you.”
“You’re concocting reasons for me to change my mind, then. It is the same as a refusal from your lips.”
He knew the answer. She could see it. But he was going to make her say it. Make her speak it.
She exhaled, long and hard. “You’re trapping me and I don’t know why—what pain is ahead.”
His chin tilted downward in a single nod. Without lifting his head, his hazel eyes pinned her. “What if I swear to you that if you ever feel trapped—ever feel that you need to escape the life that I offer you—Domnall will take you to the Vinehill dower house on the Isle of Bute.”
“A dower house?”
“Yes. No one lives there except for a few staff that maintain it. It would be a simple life and no one would bother you. Me included.” His head tilted, his words pointed. “Far from everything. Hidden.”
Her mind racing, she flipped the thought over and over again in her head.
Escape. An escape if she should ever need it.
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Can Domnall swear it to me as well?”
“I can bring him over here directly to swear to it, if it wi
ll ease your mind.”
Evalyn half nodded, half shook her head. She wasn’t sure which inclination was winning over the other, for promises held such little weight in her world.
Except she wasn’t in her world anymore.
She was in Lachlan’s.
“I don’t think I can accept promises, Lachlan.”
The edges of his lips pulled down as his look narrowed at her. “If I’m never afforded the chance to prove the value of my promises, how will you ever know for certain if I’m worthy of them?” He leaned forward, his fingers along her ankle slipping under her leg, pressing into her bare calf. “I just may be the one person that you need to trust, Eva.”
“Or the one I never should.”
A light sparked in his eye. A gleam of triumph, possibly. Or hope. Or lust.
“Aye. But how will you ever find out if you do not chance it?”
{ Chapter 12 }
Lachlan followed the coaching inn maid that had brought up a wide platter of food across their room to the door. She exited and he clicked the heavy wooden door closed.
He paused for a moment, staring at the long grain lines of the oak door. It was late and he needed to be moving this along. It had already taken far too long to cross the border and travel to Moffat that day, and they’d had to squeeze in the blacksmith wedding once on Scottish soil.
It had been perfunctory. Their hands joined over the anvil. Horace, the blacksmith, performing the ceremony with as few words as possible. Domnall was the only one to dismount and come in to witness the vows.
Not that Evalyn appeared to mind. If anything, her look kept twitching to him, almost as though she were expecting him to pull away at the last second. Bracing herself to be abandoned at the smithy. Set adrift on her own.
The dumbstruck look on her face when they left the heat of the blacksmith’s fires and stepped into the waning light was laughable.
Laughable, if she hadn’t been so positive that this whole affair was a cruel joke on her.
His gut tightened. That her blackguard of a stepfather had put such distrust in her eyes—in her every motion—set aflame a primal rage in his belly that took him aback.
It no longer mattered that she was related to the man, she’d suffered for years as the prime victim of the man’s cruelty.
The Iron Earl Page 11
