Page 50 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

The scent of him enveloped her instantly. Woodsmoke, cured leather, and that sharp, intoxicating musk of fresh Highland earth.

She fixed her eyes straight ahead, her spine turning to iron.

“Relax, lass,” his gravelly voice whispered, his breath stirring the loose hairs at the nape of her neck.

Her entire body became, in that exact instant, utterly incapable of compliance.

The dapple-gray mare shifted beneath them, her iron shoes clinking against the cobblestones. At a shout from the wall, the massive iron-studded gates of Castle O’Brien groaned open, revealing a path to the wilderness.

The Scottish Highlands unfolded before them in every direction. A vast, stunning sea of jagged gray peaks, ancient stone cliffs, and rolling valleys of gold and purple heather, all shimmering beneath the rising morning mist.

Chloe kept her chin high, her eyes locked on the horizon as the horse broke into a steady, rhythmic walk.

As the shadow of the fortress walls fell away behind them, she felt rather than heard a long, low exhale leave the man at her back. It was not a sigh of weariness; it was the deep, shuddering release of a prisoner stepping into the sun.

She wondered how many months he had been suffocating inside that stone tomb. She said absolutely nothing, leaning fractionally back into his heat, and watched the mist dance through the deep green glen below.

15

Chloe heard a low humming vibration rolling up the glen, and the murmurs of people going about a hundred shifting tasks at once. A metallic strike of a blacksmith’s hammer, the agonizing creak of ungreased cart wheels.

She sat straighter against Edward’s chest, turning her head toward the sound.

Then Beira crested the final ridge and the village unfolded below them, and Chloe pulled a sharp, involuntary breath into her lungs.

It bore no resemblance to the tidy, stagnant settlements surrounding Lady Jenny’s low country estate. This was a different breed of civilization entirely. The stone-and-timber buildings cascaded down toward the crashing water in chaotic, uneven rows. Thick, gray smoke billowed from a dozen chimneys, and the central artery of the village was choked with people, livestock, and the frantic, productive friction of a place that never truly slept.

“It is enormous,” she breathed, her eyes darting across the sprawl.

“It is modest,” Edward’s gravelly voice corrected from directly behind her ear, his chest vibrating against her shoulder blades. “By the standards of the coast.”

“I do nae possess coast standards, me Laird.”

She felt the subtle, muscular shift in his torso as he adjusted his grip on the leather reins. “Nay,” he murmured, his tone softening by a fraction. “I suppose ye do nae. They are fishermen,” Edward explained, his voice low, a rare note of pride threading the gravel. “The majority of them occupy the cottages within a quarter mile of the stone harbor. The silver they pull from these waters sustains three full inland villages through the depths of winter.”

She was barely processing his words. Her eyes were drunk on the horizon.

“I have never looked upon it,” she whispered.

“The harbor?”

“The sea.” She shook her head slightly, her gaze glued to the crashing waves, a profound awe softening the sharp lines of her face. “In all me years… I have never seen the sea.”

He fell silent instantly. Behind her, she became acutely aware of the sudden change in his breathing, the sharp hitch in his chest, and the heavy shift of his weight. She knew he had stopped looking at the harbor; now he was looking at her, translating the raw, childlike wonder across her face.

“I will take ye to it,” he said.

Chloe turned her head sharply. His face was agonizingly close, his pale blue eyes level with hers. The distance between their lips was less than a breath. The look he gave her was not his calculated, political armor. It was not the defensive sneer of the Laird. It was something entirely simpler. It was a quiet, undefended vulnerability.

“We’ll see the shore,” Edward clarified, his voice dropping into a rough, intimate register that sent a shiver straight down her spine. “Properly. Nae the normal filth of the harbor. The open shore, where the wild water breaks against the earth.”

“Aye,” she whispered, her voice failing her, her brown eyes locking onto his. “I would like that.”

He held her gaze for a heartbeat too long, the current between them snapping tight and hot. Then, abruptly breaking the spell, he swung his massive leg over the saddle and dismounted onto the muddy stones.

The village was infinitely louder on foot. The stone lane felt narrower, the air thick with the shouting of merchants and the smell of roasting fish from the market stalls lining the harbor wall.

Edward pushed his way through the crowd. Chloe stayed close to his side, her boots slipping now and then on the uneven flagstones. The rocks were slippery from the morning’s heavy rain, worn smooth as glass by years of iron-shod traffic, and made completely dangerous by the layer of wet mud.