Page 16 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“And this is the Laird’s chamber.”

He delivered the words with amusement, his mouth curling into a smile as if he was deliberately trying to annoy her, while he rested his large hands on the mattress. He did not lean forward to emphasize the point, nor did he glance to see how she reacted.

“Unless ye’ve decided to accept me proposal. In which case, the sleepin’ arrangements become considerably more straightforward.”

The audacity of it reached her one full second after the words did.

“Unless… yer proposal was a convenient excuse to get me into yer bed.”

* * *

She was furious.

Sebastian could see it in every line of her. The set of her jaw, the grip she had on the blanket, the way she held his gaze because looking away would feel like conceding ground, and she would not concede anything, not at midnight, not in her own bed, not to him.

She was livid, her hair loose, sitting on the bed in nothing but what she wore under her dress, with both hands wrapped around a blanket like a shield. Sebastian was working much harder than he should have to concentrate on what she was actually saying.

He stood from the bed. He reached for the shirt draped over the chair back and held it without putting it on. He crossed toward her slowly, giving her room to step back if she wanted to.

She did not step back.

“Ye think very highly of yerself, Lady Alba,” he said.

“And ye daenae?” The color across her cheekbones had deepened. Her breath had changed, not the pace of it, she was managing that deliberately and doing it well, but the depth of each one. Shorter. Shallower. Her body formed opinions her composure had not approved. “Ye invade me home. Ye steal me chambers. Ye take me bed. And ye expect me to believe ye’ve honorable intentions?”

“Honorable?” He stopped in front of her, close enough to see the candlelight moving in the darkness of her eyes. “I am tryin’ very hard to have honorable intentions.”

She made a sharp, humorless sound of pure disbelief, short and sharp, and he found it unreasonably entertaining. He kept that off his face.

“I’d rather throw meself from the tower,” she said.

“Which one?”

She blinked. “What?”

“There are four.” He tilted his head slightly. “Which one?”

“Ye’re…” She stopped. A muscle moved in her jaw. He watched her locate the response she wanted, discard it twice, then find the one that fit. “Get out of me chamber!”

“It’smechamber.”

“It wasyerchamber for approximately one day. It has beenmechamber for longer.”

“Aye,” he said. “And yet here we both are.”

Her chin dipped slightly, and her eyes narrowed as they traced a slow, deliberate line from his chin to the collarbone where his shirt was bunched in his hand. Her fingers stopped their restless twitching against the blanket, curling tightly into the wool as a tiny, sharp crease formed right between her eyebrows.

She did not blink; she just watched him, her gaze flicking once toward the iron latch of the door and back to his face, her jaw set as she timed the rhythm of his breathing.

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and pressed her lips into a tight, flat line, her chest rising and falling in quick, uneven jerks as each argument died before reaching her tongue.

“I will take the chair,” he said.

The offer landed. He watched something momentarily loosen in her expression. She tightened it again almost immediately.

“Ye’ll take the corridor,” she said.

“The chair. It’s the Laird’s chamber.” He let that sit one breath. “Ye’re welcome to think of it as a gesture of goodwill.”