Page 9 of The Merciless Laird
She turned and looked at him.
He was standing in the center of her chamber, looking around it with those assessing eyes. He was reading the room— quickly, thoroughly, already deciding.
"Ye'll get it," she repeated.
"Aye."
“So ye’ll get me chemise if it’s what I need?”
“Aye. Try me.”
"Ye dinnae ken where anything is."
"Then tell me." He looked at her steadily. "Ye're bleedin’ through yer stockin’. Sit."
She looked down. He was right, a thin dark stain, not dramatic but undeniably real. She sat.
"The chest under the window," she said. "The green wrap on top. Under it there's a leather satchel, bring the whole thing, dinnae open it. The book on the table by the candle. The blue cloak on the hook by the door. The small wooden box on the shelf."
"This one?" He held it up.
"Aye. That one."
She watched him move through her chamber, collecting her things with a brisk efficiency that should have felt intrusive and somehow didn't quite manage it.
He handled the satchel without opening it. He tucked the book under his arm.
He unhooked the cloak, glanced at it, folded it once, and added it to the pile.
"The candle," she said.
He stopped. "What?"
"The candle on the table. I need it."
A pause. "It's half-burned."
"I ken that it is. I need it."
He looked at her for a moment. Not with pity, not with that careful softness she had spent years dreading, just a brief direct attention, and then he picked up the candle and added it to the pile without another word.
"Is that everything?" he said.
“Aye. That's everything."
He carried her back down the stairs.
She should have hated it. Every instinct she'd spent years carefully building told her she should. The closeness of it, the lack of control, the simple physical fact of being held by a man she'd known for less than an hour.
Her body had made a study of threat for eight years. It catalogued proximity and grip and the weight of another person's hands without being asked.
It was not cataloguing anything right now.
That was, in its own way, more unsettling than if it had.
She was aware of the warmth of him. The steadiness. The way he carried her without any of the performance she might have expected. No flexing of effort, no expected gratitude.
He was simply moving down a staircase with her in his arms.
