Page 17 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"It feels remarkably similar."

"I imagine it does." He didn't argue further. Arguing the point wouldn't change how it felt to her, and he was beginning, against his better judgment, to think her feelings on the matter deserved more consideration than he'd given them a week ago. "I'll bring the food."

He carried the tray up himself, past Grubb's raised eyebrows and one of his own men's poorly hidden smirk, and found her exactly where he'd left her, sitting very upright on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap like a woman posed for a portrait she hadn't consented to sit for.

"Ye're still watching the window," he said, setting the tray on the small table.

"I'm watching everything." She looked at the bread, the stew, the single cup of watered wine. "Is this how ye treat all yer captives, MacKinnon? Fires and suppers and locked doors that bolt from the inside?"

He pulled the room's one chair around and sat, because he didn’t want to stand ocer her while she ate, and found that he did want to sit wirh her, which was its own small problem he chose not to examine. "I have a contracted bride who keeps trying tae leave."

"Because I am one."

"Because ye're a person," he said, "who's had a great many decisions made about her without her consent in the space of two days, and I've nae particular interest in adding tae that number more than the Accord already requires."

She looked at him for a long moment, spoon halfway to the bowl, and he watched her recalibrate something behind her eyes.

"That's a strange thing for an enemy tae say."

"Is it."

He held her gaze. "Being ruthless in war and cruel tae a woman under my own roof are nae the same thing, and I'll thank ye nae tae assume they are simply because it would be tidier for ye if they were."

Her mouth almost shaped into a smile. "Tidier."

"Aye. Easier tae hate a man who's monstrous in every direction than one who's only monstrous in some of them."

"And which is more true of ye?"

"I'll let ye work that out." He nodded at the bowl. "Eat before it's cold. Ye've had nothing since MacRath's, and I'd rather nae carry ye the rest of the way tae my land unconscious."

"Ye wouldnae have to carry me. I'm capable of riding."

"Ye're capable of a great many things ye shouldnae still be attempting tonight." He watched her eat in small, deliberate bites, the careful economy of a woman determined not to look as hungry as she felt and something in his chest tightened at the sight of it, low and unwelcome and entirely inconvenient given everything he'd told himself about what this arrangement was and wasn't permitted to become. "How's the shoulder."

She stilled. "Ye noticed that."

"I notice most things." He nodded at her collarbone, at the darkening scrape the torn edge of her gown didn't quite cover. "Ye favored it dismounting."

"It's nothing."

"It's stone-scraped and it'll bruise ugly by morning, and ye'll tell me if it's worse than that because I'd rather know now than discover it's broken somewhere I cannae easily fix it." His voice had gone rougher than he intended. He heard it happen and didn't entirely regret it.

She studied him with an expression he couldn't fully read—something between suspicion and the surprise of a person handed evidence that contradicted a story she'd been told to believe.

"It's a scrape," she said finally. "Nae more."

"Good."

They ate in something that wasn't quite silence and wasn't quite conversation, the tension between them present but banked, the way a fire is banked for the night rather than allowed to go out.

He found himself watching the firelight on her hair more than was wise and thinking about the stubbornness required to run at a locked gate and thinking, with real and treacherous clarity, that he would rather sit in this small warm room across from an enemy's sister who despised him on principle than anywhere else he could presently name.

He did not say that.

He was not entirely a fool.

"MacKinnon."