Page 26 of The Scot

Chapter 12

Roysa stepped inside.

Heart hammering in her chest, she listened to the door closing behind her, a barrier that had just been breached. A line that had just been crossed.

He must have felt it too. Was it possible Roysa was alone in this?

When Terric came from around her and stepped back into view, she knew the answer.

Towering over her in nothing more than trewes and an undertunic, the Earl of Dromsley, the chief of Clan Kennaugh, looked at her as a starving man might regard a banquet. No other man had ever given her such a look. She discounted the suitors who’d visited throughout the years. And did not even consider the man she had married. She’d learned, very quickly, Walter had only ever seen her as Lord Stanton’s eldest daughter. A prize to be won. If she had convinced herself otherwise in the beginning, it was only because that’s what she had so desperately wanted.

Just as she desperately wanted Terric to kiss her.

In truth, despite her ire with him, despite the danger they were all in, she’d thought of nothing else these past days.

“Ale,” he said, more a comment than a question.

She nodded, not sure what else to do.

When he turned from her, Roysa let out a breath. Was she really standing here, in nothing but her shift and a robe, in Terric’s solar chamber?

She watched as he filled a second tankard from the carafe on the table.

Like her father’s solar, this one had been prepared to receive visitors. The lord’s solar was a common meeting place, especially in the winter. It was nearly always the warmest chamber in the castle, its walls so covered in tapestries one could barely see the stone behind them.

This one was no exception.

The fireplace was overly large, almost ominous.

Much like the man standing before it.

He wordlessly handed her the tankard. What could either of them say? This was wildly inappropriate. They’d only just made up. She’d been recently widowed. He had a battle or siege to prepare for.

“I thought, at first, you resembled your sister. But there is something very different about you as well.”

His suggestive tone was not what she’d been expecting.

“Some would disagree.”

When he walked toward the chairs arranged in front of the fire, Roysa followed. She sat opposite him, clutching the pewter tankard between both hands. Engraved with roses climbing up from the bottom, it felt as cold as the fire was warm.

“My father brought them from Scotland.”

She looked up.

“He enjoyed having something in nearly every room”—he pointed to the tapestry just behind where she sat—“that reminded him of Scotland.”

She knew so little of his family.

“Tell me of him.”

Even if she hadn’t known his father was no longer with them, Terric’s expression would have given the fact away.

“There was no man, or woman, alive who could offer a bad word about my father. He loved our family nearly as much as he did our clan.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Should it not be just the opposite?”

Terric took a sip of ale. “Not for the chief.”