Page 22 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

Angela looked back at him with the serene expression of someone who had crafted a mischievous plan and was watching it unfold perfectly.

“I will leave ye both to it,” she said, already turning. “The air is very good today. Very restorative. For everyone.”

“Angela.” The tone he put to her name had enough weight to stop most people. Not his sister.

She waved a hand over her shoulder without breaking her stride and walked back through the door, pulling it shut behind her.

The courtyard went quiet.

Edward stood where he was. Chloe was still on the grass, one hand braced behind her, looking at the closed door with the expression of a woman calculating whether she could reach it before he did.

He looked at the grass. At the wall. At the door Angela had disappeared through. Nowhere in the courtyard offered him anything useful. He had walked into this without seeing it coming, and now he was standing in a corner of his own castle with nothing to do about it.

Chloe leaned back on the grass, her face looking upward. Edward watched her do it, his arms folded, and said nothing. She settled herself with complete composure, tucked her skirts around her legs, and turned her face back up toward the sun as though he were not standing four feet away with nowhere to be and no idea what to do about it.

The silence between them stretched, thick with the remnants of her temper, until she finally cut through it.

“What do ye want, Edward?” she asked, her tone clipped but polite. The perfect shield of a woman trying to force herself to be composed.

Edward shifted his weight, his arms tightening across his chest. “I didnae realize I was hinderin’ ye.”

“Aye. Ye are blockin’ the light,” she murmured.

He shifted an inch, a muscle ticking in his jaw, but he did not leave.

Letting out a slow breath, Chloe let her head drop back fully, training her gaze back on the drifting clouds above.

“Do ye never just rest?” she asked, looking at the sky.

“I rest.”

She opened one eye and turned slightly in his direction. “When?”

“I make me own dram.” He said it before he’d decided to. “I brew me own. It takes time. Patience.”

She considered this. Something shifted at the corner of her mouth. “That is still work.”

“It is craft.”

“Mm.” She turned back, closing her eyes once again. She patted the grass beside her. “Lie down.”

He looked at the patch of ground she had indicated. Then at her. “I am nae lyin’ on the ground.”

“Just for a moment.”

“I am the Laird of⁠—”

“Edward.” She said his name so directly that the sound startled him. “Lie down.”

He stood there for another moment, out of principle. Then he crossed the grass and lowered himself beside her, keeping a careful distance between them. He stared up at the sky, preparing his mind to endure the moment and escape as soon as possible. He only stayed because he knew his sister. If whatever she had planned here did not satisfy her, she would be up to mischief again before nightfall.

He stared again. This time, he saw that the sky was very blue. He did not know what to do with that.

Beside him, Chloe lifted her right hand and held it above her face, fingers spread. “Hold yer hand up,” she told him. “Like this. Now move yer fingers slowly.”

He looked at her hand. Then at her.

“I am nae here to play some children’s game with ye,” he growled. But nothing was intimidating Chloe at the moment. She did not even pretend to hear him.