Page 19 of Claimed by the Obsessed Laird (Highland Bride Hunt #1)

Chapter Fourteen

Isla was sitting in front of her vanity, having just dismissed the maid who had dressed her and done her hair.

When Camron came storming into the room, his brow furrowed, it seemed to Isla as though he brought a storm cloud with him.

She lifted her gaze from the embroidery she had been working on and met him with a confused stare.

“What is?—”

“We have a visitor,” he muttered, glancing out of the window. She could faintly make out the rumble of a carriage’s wheels.

“A visitor?”

“An old friend of my father’s. His name is Robert Carlisle,” he replied.

By the way he spoke his name, it was clear that he held little warmth for the man, and Isla shivered slightly at the thought.

“Ye take issue with him?” she asked as she rose to her feet, going to her husband’s side so she could look down upon the new arrival.

Camron didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to. The look on his face told her all that she needed to know. Which plagued her, as it was the first time she had seen him in such a mood since they had arrived back from the inn the week before.

After they had spent the night there, trussed up in bed with one another, it seemed as though a barrier had come down between them.

Now, when she teased him with some level of disobedience, he would flash her a grin, and she would know at once where his mind had drifted to—all the ways that he could undo her as soon as he got the chance.

It might have been a relatively new truce, but she was glad to have found it, especially when it came with as many pleasurable privileges as it had so far.

“A friend of yer father’s?” she prompted, trying to get a little more out of him, but before she could, he turned and made for the doorway of their chambers.

“Ye’ll be expected fer dinner,” he told her. “Be ready in an hour. I’ll introduce ye then.” And, with that, just as quickly as he had arrived, he was gone.

She stared at the spot he had been standing for a moment, wondering if she had imagined his presence there entirely.

Putting aside her embroidery with a sigh, she went to rummage through her clothes and find something that she could deem suitable for such a meeting.

If his reaction was anything to go by, then she’d need to make sure she looked unassailable.

Once she was dressed, in a soft crimson robe with a matching ribbon around her neck, she made her way downstairs to the dining hall, which was already laden with food.

Camron sat at the head of the table, one hand wrapped around a cup of ale and the other draped on his chair, while Archie made conversation with the new guest. The man, who looked old enough that she doubted he should have been travelling at all, rose to his feet when he saw her, offering her a pointed bow.

“And this must be the new Lady of the Keep,” he remarked, and she stepped towards him, offering him a hand.

“Aye, this is Camron’s wife, Isla,” Archie cut in, before Camron could speak.

She could sense her husband bristling out of the corner of her eye at Archie’s introduction, but she hoped he would not find a reason to turn this into a fight.

“And she’s quite capable of introducing herself,” she replied lightly, as she curtsied and nodded in greeting. “A pleasure to meet ye, sir. Camron told me you were a friend of his father’s.”

“Aye, I was,” Robert replied, easing himself back into his seat with a slight grunt of discomfort.

“And I’m sure he’d have been glad to see his son take such a beautiful young bride,” Archie cut in, as Isla reached across the table to take Camron’s hand. She managed a slightly pinched laugh in return, but it seemed enough to stoke his commentary further.

“Ye know, Robert,” he continued. “Camron took her as a wife before they’d so much as had a real conversation. But I cannae say it surprises me. If I had seen a beauty such as her, well, I couldnae have resisted, either.”

She forced a smile for Archie, silently willing him to shut his mouth before he commented any further on what he thought of her appearance. Camron’s grip tightened on her hand, and Archie’s gaze flicked to it for a moment, as though pleased that his words had had some kind of impact.

“So, Robert,” Camron began, turning the conversation to the matter at hand. “What brings ye to the Keep at such short notice?”

“To meet yer wife, of course,” Robert replied, letting out a bark of laughter as though it should have been obvious.

He had a harsh way about him, Isla noticed. Camron might have been straightforward with his words, but Robert seemed different, as though he rather enjoyed forcing everyone to pay him attention.

“Well, here I am,” Isla replied, doing her best to diffuse the tension, though she was sure it would not be so easy to get rid of.

“Aye, and here ye are,” Robert remarked, flicking his gaze up and down her for a moment.

“No trouble in yer lands, I hope,” Camron pressed, clearly sensing that there was more to his arrival here than met the eye.

Robert grimaced slightly, shaking his head. “No, no’ in my neck of the woods,” he replied. “But I’ve heard some tell of problems wi’ the farmers in the village. Looking for more coin for their crops, it seems.”

Camron lifted his cup to his lips, not replying. Upon not getting an answer, Robert continued, and Isla fidgeted with the ribbon around her neck, the tension in the air almost more than she could take.

“And yer father would have been quick to put a stop to it,” he remarked. “I recall when there was a similar problem in his time as Laird when he?—”

“Aye, I’m aware of what my father did,” Camron replied, voice pulled taut.

Isla flicked her gaze to him. What exactly had his father done?

“And you’d be wise to do the same thing,” Robert pressed. “He would have put them down in no time. Made them pay for daring to stand against him.”

Before she could stop herself, Isla interjected.

“Should a Laird be so quick to punish his people if they have problems that need to be addressed?” she asked.

Robert’s eyes roved to her, a brow cocking, clearly not entirely convinced that he needed to hear her point of view on this.

“What do ye?—”

“I think ye should meet with them, Camron,” she remarked, turning to her husband. “If they take issue with the way things are, it would be a better idea to try to make them right than to make an example of them, would it not?”

Robert snorted loudly before Camron could reply.

“I see ye’ve still no’ disciplined yer birde, Camron,” he remarked. “Yer father would never have stood for a woman talking fer him in such a way.”

“Good thing his father is not the one I’m married to,” Isla shot back.

She glanced at Camron again, imploring him to say something—anything—to undercut the words that this man had said to her, but he just stared at his ale, clearly not interested in getting involved.

“Aye, he would never have allowed ye at a meeting for men such as this,” Robert replied, his lip curling up into a sneer.

If Isla thought she could have gotten away with it, she would have landed a slap on his face right then and there. But, instead, she rose to her feet.

“I ken where I’m no’ wanted,” she snapped at him, and she lifted her skirts and swept towards the door, putting as much distance between herself and that man as she could.

She hated that she had given Robert what he wanted, but if Camron was not going to leap in to defend her, she had no intention of staying any longer than she needed to.

But she had hardly caught her breath out in the hall before she heard footsteps behind her. She turned, expecting to see Camron closing the distance towards her, but instead, his cousin was approaching, a worried furrow in his brow, a look of genuine concern on his face.

“Isla,” he murmured, as he laid a hand on her arm. “Are ye alright?”

She drew her gaze away from him, stepping back. She was too furious to have a conversation at that moment, let alone with Archie.

“I’m sorry ye had to hear such a thing fae Robert,” he remarked, lowering his voice.

Her fury was still flickering inside of her, so intense she was sure she could feel steam pouring from her ears, no matter how much she tried to contain it.

“But it’s better that ye ken now the kind of person my uncle was,” Archie went on, without waiting for a reply. “His manner of thinking about women, about what they were good for and what they should be involved in… I cannae believe for a moment that Camron is free from it.”

She flicked her gaze to his, not speaking, but indicating that he could go on. Archie had offered her friendship in this place when nobody else had, after all. Perhaps it was worth listening to him, at least to find out what kind of man she had truly taken as a husband.

“His silence speaks volumes, I’m sure ye’ll agree,” he continued, his voice lowering as he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that they were not interrupted. “His father raised him to see women as little more than chattel, good fer what he can use them for and nothing else. I…”

He hesitated. Her instincts were telling her there was something rather practiced in his voice, as though he knew how he sounded and what she wanted to hear from him, but she was not sure if she should trust her intuition on this one.

“I didnae want to say anything when ye first took him as a husband,” he admitted.

“I had hoped that whatever his father had left in him, it would not cause you trouble. But I cannae stand by and let him treat ye as his father treated his mother, as nothing more than a thing he could shape into whatever he wants. That darkness… it’s in him, in his blood, and I cannae promise that he will not turn it on you one day. ”

Her heart pounded in her chest at the sound of those words. A few weeks ago, she would have believed them outright, given the way that he had treated her, snatching her from her life and bringing her to his with no warning. His sudden taking to her had seemed rather abrupt and yet intense.

But now… now, after everything they had shared, it was hard for her to believe that there were no depths to him that she had not yet seen, even if they might have been hard for her to make sense of.

When he held her, when he kissed her, she felt something real there, something he wouldn’t have been able to invent if he truly saw her as nothing more than a piece on the board.

“I’ll do what I can to protect ye,” Archie promised her, closing the distance between them. “Whatever I can, Isla, ye have my word.”

And all at once, he was in front of her, standing so near she could almost feel the heat from his body.

But she did not respond to it, she was not sure if she even could.

No matter what Archie told her, she could not entirely believe that his cousin would have been capable of harming her in such a way; of treating her as nothing more than a trinket to be set on a shelf and forgotten about.

Camron laid hands on her like she was the most precious person in the world. Even when they were alone together, and she could not imagine him finding some way to fake it, nor could she see a reason to, when?—

And then, a shadow crossed the light emerging from the sconce behind them. She looked past Archie to see Camron standing there, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes so dark they looked like burned-out coals.

And, in an instant, the flint of his fury sparked into life, and he strode towards them.