Page 25 of A Highland Bride Disciplined

But Scarlett had turned his keep into a living place. Had stood between danger and a stranger. Had written him with numbers and facts, not hearts and pleas.

And now, she clung to the idea of this child like it was a shield and a vow all at once.

He should’ve seen this coming.

He should’ve known she wouldn’t let him ignore this.

Kian turned abruptly, stalking toward the door.

“Where are ye goin’?” Scarlett called after him.

“To do what I said I would,” he said without turning. “I’ll find out who she belongs to.”

“And what if she belongs here?”

He paused only for a moment.

Then he wrenched the door open and stepped into the corridor. He muttered a curse under his breath. But it wasn’t anger in his voice. It was something dangerously close to fear, and it drove him mad.

5

Scarlett lay curled on the nursery rug, elbow propped beneath her as baby Elise slept soundly on her chest, warm and soft as a bread loaf fresh from the oven. One of the babe’s fingers had managed to curl into the edge of her bodice lace, and the other twitched every few breaths like she was dreaming of chasing butterflies.

“She sleeps like a wee drunk,” Effie whispered from the rocking chair by the window, where she was pretending to mend a seam and doing it rather badly.

Scarlett raised an eyebrow without looking over. “What sort of drunks are ye familiar with that twitch and drool and fart in their sleep?”

Effie grinned. “Mostly male ones. But she is definitely a gentler sort.”

Elise made a soft snuffling noise. It was somewhere between a hiccup and a sigh, and Scarlett instinctively shifted to rock her.

The fire was steady, the air warm, the stone walls humming with stillness. Outside, boots echoed now and again, indicating the guards changing shifts, but in here, it felt like the world had hit pause.

Her thoughts spun in a tangled and stubborn, endless mess.

Kian.

The bloody man had reappeared like a thundercloud, glowering and growling, making her whole body tense up just by standing in the same room. She should be furious with him still, shewasstill furious, technically, but that didn’t explain the way her breath had caught when he walked through the study door. Or the way her skin remembered the heat of his nearness.

Effie looked up from her crooked seam. “Yer cheeks are pink.”

“They are nae.”

“Theyare. Ye’ve got a whole dreamy look about ye, m’lady. Like ye just remembered somethin’…indecent.”

Scarlett gave her a deadpan look. “Theonlyindecent thing I remember this day is yer mending.”

Effie held up her needlework that was now tangled so badly it resembled a fishing net. “Still counts as progress.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “God help me.”

They sat in companionable quiet for a moment. Effie yawned. Elise shifted in her sleep, face scrunching up like she’d remembered something unpleasant and then changed her mind.

“I like her,” Effie said suddenly, her voice quiet. “The bairn.”

Scarlett looked down at the baby, her soft lashes resting on flushed cheeks. “Aye. So do I.”

“She feels like she belongs. Ye think so?”