Page 48 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

He wants this.

The truth settled quietly into her chest. He wanted to take her out of these stone walls. He had wanted it long before she stormed his study, perhaps even before he had given his word at the distillery.

“I possess no garments suitable for ridin’,” she said instead, gesturing to her heavy gray skirts.

“Angela’s old trunks are stored in the east wardrobe,” Edward said, already striding toward the door. “She is near yer height. Ye have half an hour to prepare - for riding with me, nae for a lesson. That still comes later.”

“Half an hour?” She spun around, but his massive frame was already turning the corner into the corridor. “Edward!”

He stopped, his dark head pivoting back into the frame.

“Next time,” Chloe said, her voice laced with a quiet, daring challenge, “ye could simply knock on me door.”

Edward held her gaze across the distance, a dangerous, simmering heat flaring in his blue eyes for a beat too long.

“Aye,” he growled low. “Perhaps I will.”

He vanished down the gallery.

Chloe stood alone in the sudden silence of the study, her breath catching in her throat. She looked at the stone bench under the window. At the rumpled fur. At the lonely pillow. Then she looked out the arrow slit at the gray morning light, which was finally, incrementally, beginning to break through the mist.

Half an hour.

She turned and marched off to plunder Angela’s wardrobe.

The beast Edward had selected for her was a massive, dapple-gray mare with a back as broad as a tavern table. The mare stood perfectly still in the muddy yard as Chloe approached, accepting the cautious press of Chloe’s fingers against her velvet nose.

“Her name is Beira,” Edward’s voice rumbled from directly behind her shoulder.

“After the queen of winter?” Chloe asked, turning her head slightly.

Edward looked down at her, a fractional recalibration passing through his pale eyes. “Ye ken the old lore?”

“Lady Jenny possessed an extensive library,” she said, returning her hand to the mare’s snout, enjoying the blast of warm, sweet breath against her knuckles. “I read every volume she permitted.”

He was quiet for a beat, his eyes tracking the vibrant red of her hair against the dark green wool of the riding habit she had salvaged from Angela’s trunk. The jacket fit her snugly, pinning her waist and accentuating the swell of her hips.

“She is steady,” Edward murmured, clearing his throat. “She willnae throw ye.”

“I am nae particularly terrified of hittin’ the dirt.”

“Ye should be. The glen rocks are unyieldin’.”

She snapped her gaze to his face. He met her eyes with absolute, deadpan neutrality, but she caught the tiny glint of light in his iris. It was the closest the man would ever come to a jest. A small smile tugged at her lips as she turned back to Beira.

“Before ye go any further,” Edward said, moving to stand at Beira’s left shoulder, “ye’ll learn to mount her yerself.”

Chloe looked at the stirrup. Then, at the distance between the stirrup and the ground. Then back at him. “Now?”

“Ye’d prefer to learn once we’re already in the glen?”

She gathered her skirts and put her left foot in the iron. She pushed up, got halfway, and the saddle shifted. She came back down.

“Again,” Edward said.

She tried again. The same result.

“Yer weight is goin’ forward,” he said. He stepped in behind her without ceremony, one hand coming to her waist and the other to her knee, adjusting her position before she had time to register the contact. “Push through the heel. Nae the toe.”