Page 60 of The Laird who Craved her

"Ye shouldnae be tendin' me," he said finally, low.

"I’m sure ye’ve tended to yer men’s wounds before," she said, not looking up. "I imagine I can manage a few cuts."

"That was different."

"Was it?" She pressed the damp linen carefully along the worst of the gash, and felt him flinch, though he made no sound. "You take care of everyone in this keep, Finn. The messenger boy. Your men in the training yard. Half the servants, if Mrs. Campbell is to be believed. When was the last time anyone took care of you?"

He didn't answer that. She hadn't really expected him to.

She worked in silence for a while, the fire crackling low, the wind still throwing itself against the shutters somewhere above them, and gradually she felt the tension bleed out of his hand beneath hers, one degree at a time, the way ice loosens its grip on a window when the sun finally climbs high enough to reach it.

"I am afraid," he said at last, so quietly she nearly missed it beneath the fire's crackle.

She looked up.

"Ye asked once if I ever won," he said, staring past her into the flames. "I told ye I only survive the round. That was true enough for the trainin' yard. But this…" he gestured with his free hand at the shattered glass, the map table, the whole dark night, "…this isnae a round I ken how to survive. A man inside me own walls sellin' me people to the men who mean to burn them. Me council pushin' me toward a marriage built on a lie. Me best men bleedin' in the dark because I cannae see the enemy standin' beside me at me own table."

"Finn…"

"I have spent ten years tellin' myself that as long as I was hard enough, careful enough, strong enough, I could keep them all breathin'." His jaw worked. "And tonight I stood over Fergus while Mrs. Campbell dug an arrowhead out of his shoulder, and all I could think was that I have failed every single one of them. My father. My clan. Ye."

"You have nae failed me," she said, fierce and immediate.

"I am sendin' ye away."

"To keep me alive. That is nae failure, Finn, that's…" She stopped, searching for the word, and settled on the truest one she had. "That's caring, however much both of us refuse to call it by its name."

He looked at her then, and something in his green eyes cracked open, some final wall giving way that she suspected he'd been holding since he was a boy of one-and-twenty standing over his father's body in the mud.

"Your clan already loves you," she said softly, setting the linen aside, her hands still cradling his. "I have seen it, Finn. In the way they follow ye into a downpour without question. In the way Douglas stands outside this door at two in the morning, refusing to leave you alone with your own grief. In the way Fergus, half-dead from an arrow, likely asked after yer safety before his own. They daenae need ye to be perfect. They need ye exactly as you are."

His breath left him in something that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob, rough and low in his chest.

"How do ye do that,?" he murmured.

"Do what?"

"See the parts of me even I cannae find some days."

She had no answer for that, not one she trusted her voice to carry, so she said nothing at all. And into that silence, slowly, as though he were reaching for something he'd told himself for years he had no right to touch, Finn lifted his uninjured hand and cupped it against her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw with a gentleness that seemed at odds with the size and violence of him.

"Ye have become the only thing that quiets the war in me head, lass," he said, so low it was barely more than breath. "I dinnae ken what to do with that. I dinnae ken what to do with ye."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

She had no answer for that either, not one she trusted her voice to carry. "Ye daenae have to ken," she whispered, leaning, almost without meaning to, into the warmth of his palm. "Nae tonight."

His thumb stilled against her cheekbone. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she felt the whole of the world narrow down to only them, the fire's low crackle, the last of the storm dying against the glass, the two of them kneeling together amid broken glass and blood and every careful wall either of them had ever built.

"Ye should ken, Claire," Finn started, "that I wrote to Leo MacSween meself this morning to arrange yer departure."

"Ye wrote to him? Without telling me?" Claire asked, the warmth of the previous night’s closeness evaporating into a sudden, stinging cold.

"I asked him to send an armed escort," Finn continued, still refusing to turn around and face her. "Ye are nae safe here anymore. After the ambush, after the betrayal... I daenae ken who to trust in these lands, and I cannae allow ye to be a target."

"Ye can hardly wait to be rid of me," Claire challenged him softly, her voice trembling with hurt.

Finn finally went perfectly still. He turned slowly, his green eyes darkening as he took in the sight of her standing in the doorway, his expression guarded.