Page 22 of Claimed by the Obsessed Laird (Highland Bride Hunt #1)

Chapter Sixteen

Isla roused herself slowly the next morning, unwilling to pull herself from the comfortable warmth that she had found while she had slept in her husband’s arms.

They had made no effort to return to dining with Robert last night, nor to explain their absence.

In fact, Camron seemed completely uninterested in anything other than proving to her that he truly cared for her, a gift she had not known she’d needed until that moment.

She had spilled herself to him, let him see all the doubts and insecurities that had been nagging at her for so long, and, instead of turning his back, he had pulled her closer.

She reached over to his side of the bed, expecting to feel his body beneath her touch, but was, instead, surprised to find it empty.

She frowned, lifting her head from the pillow, wondering what could have taken his attention so soon, only to find him leaning in the doorway, already dressed in riding gear, a grin on his face that looked fit to split in two.

“Good morning,” she mumbled to him as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, her voice still a little throaty. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Aye, and ye’re coming with me,” he replied, gesturing to her riding clothes, which were laid out on the top of her trunk. “Come. Get dressed.”

“Dinnae want to keep the Laird waiting now, do I?” she laughed as she slipped out of bed to get changed.

“Aye, I’ve heard he can be quite a beast,” he joked back.

At one time, she might have taken him at his word on such a matter, but she knew it was nothing more than a jest on his part. She had seen those softer sides of him the night before, and even now, the thought of them warmed her through like a blazing fire after a day in the snow.

Once she was dressed, he led her downstairs, where two horses had been readied for them. His horse had a pack draped over the back, heavy with food that had presumably been packed by the maids.

“Where exactly are we going?” she asked, somewhat confused, though not in any great rush to do anything about it.

“I dinnae ken yet,” he replied, his voice light.

She stared at him, still baffled. “But we…”

“We can go anywhere you want,” he replied, grinning at her. “I have no plans today. I thought we could spend the day together.”

Her chest bloomed with excitement at his words.

She could not recall a time when they had been together that had not come with some other meaning behind it, whether that was the trip to the village or the meeting with Robert.

But she would take it, of course she would.

She could think of nothing she wanted more than to get to know this man better.

Though they were married, she was sure there were depths to him that she had not yet plummeted to, and she was keen to find out just how far they went.

The two of them rode away from the Keep at a good pace, the sun beaming down upon them and the breeze whooshing through her hair.

She felt lighter than she had before, as though she had left something heavy in the room they had lain together in last night.

Now that she knew what he wanted from her.

She understood a little more clearly that he was not waiting for her to declare her pregnancy and be done with it.

She could see how this place could be beautiful instead of the prison she had initially viewed it as.

The hills rolled out in every direction, and, when she took a right turn onto a small path that led around the bottom of one, she caught sight of the same burn they had followed down to the village before.

“How far does it go?” she called to him, over the sound of the hooves cantering below them.

“Come,” he called back as he tugged on the reins, guiding his steed. “I’ll show ye.”

She did her best to keep pace with him and just about managed to.

Though she nearly slipped from the saddle a few times, she laughed it off with good humor and managed to catch up with him as he followed the twisting run of the burn along the hill.

In every direction, it seemed to her that the landscape stretched on for an eternity.

She knew there to be other residents of this place—she had seen them with her own two eyes—but she could not help but entertain the rather appealing notion that this place existed only for them.

He drew his horse to a halt beside a small pool, not unlike the one that they had stopped off at before when he had taken her out to ride the first time.

He lifted her with ease from the saddle, the powerful grip of his hands at her waist making the hair on the back of her neck raise in delicious anticipation.

“Ye must be starving,” he remarked as he tugged at the parcel on the horse’s back. “I had the maids pack us some breakfast. Here, lay down this blanket.”

Soon, they had settled themselves on the soft earth, the only noise around them that of the trickle of the burn into the pool and the slight breeze through the large oak beside them. She popped another mouthful of the oatcakes and leaned back on her elbows, glancing around as she took the place in.

“How did ye know about this?” she wondered aloud.

She could feel his eyes on her, and there was something almost worshipful about them, as though he could see her in a whole new light. He shrugged.

“My mother used to bring me down to fish here when I was a lad."

She raised her eyebrows. It was the first mention of his mother he had ever really made to her, and she probed a little further, sensing a chance to learn more about him.

“Yer mother taught you to fish?”

He nodded.

“Aye, she was from a fishing family herself, on the coast,” he explained. “Didnae know much about inland life until she met my father, and she was certain that I’d learn everything she had when she was growing up.”

“How did your father meet her if she was from so far away?”

“He went looking for someone,” he replied, his voice taking on a slightly harder edge. “Someone he could… someone who had not learned the ins and outs of a place like this. Someone he could mold, I suppose, into what he wanted for her.”

There was a note of bitterness to his tone as he spoke, and her heart twisted in her chest, partly out of sadness for his mother.

She could not imagine what it must have been like to be pulled from all that she knew and deposited in this place with no warning and no reason, stuck at the side of a man who, by all accounts, did not treat anyone with much in the way of care.

She could picture her bringing her little boy out here, trying to pass on to him the few pieces of herself she still had left after all this time, and it made her heart ache just to think of it.

“See? She carved this into the tree,” he continued, as he reached behind her to the oak that towered above them.

She glanced around, and sure enough, there was a slightly weathered crest carved into the wood.

He trailed his fingers over it, as though he could recall all too well the day that he had come here with his mother and watched her put her mark on this place.

Without thinking, she brushed her fingertips along it, feeling the roughness of it, and a small smile creased her lips.

Their hands touched, just for the briefest moment, and she wondered if he could feel the same start of energy pass between them at the sensation of their touch.

He folded his fingers around hers, interlinking their hands for a moment.

And it struck her that he was not touching her in such a way because he wanted someone else to see it or because he was trying to make a statement to his cousin, but because he wanted to.

Because touching her seemed to be the most important thing in the world to him in that instant, and she did not want to let it slip through her fingers for a moment.

“Come,” he murmured as he tugged her towards the small pool that glistened beneath the sunshine. “This is where I used to sit with my mother, and we’d try to catch fish to bring back to the Keep.”

“For food?” she replied, raising her eyebrows. He chuckled.

“I liked to tell myself that it was for food, and the kitchen staff were kind enough to let me believe it,” he replied. “But I dinnae think I was exactly keeping the place stocked.”

“A Laird has to provide for his people,” she joked back lightly. “Only right that ye do what ye can to look after them.”

“Aye, something like that,” he agreed. “Though I’m no’ sure how far the minnows would go in providing for them.”

“I’m sure ye made a fine fisherman,” she remarked, and he stole a glance at her out of the corner of her eye.

“Are ye making fun of me, lass?”

“Why, I would never do such a thing,” she replied, widening her eyes as though it was the most scandalous thing she had ever heard. “Making fun of my own husband, the Laird of the Keep?”

“Aye, ye’d be a fool to,” he murmured.

But, before she could shoot back with a response, he drew her close, his hand on the small of her back as he pressed her close to him. His lips found hers, silencing whatever wit she had on the tip of her tongue, and she smiled into the embrace.

There was something softer, almost sweeter, about the way he kissed her now, out of sight, now that they had already tasted and drunk deep from one another.

She waited for the same overheated passion that had risen the last few times he had kissed her to follow, but she found that the usual overwhelming flames were not consuming her as they had before.

No, to her surprise, the warmth that filled her was more like embers, a crackling heat that spread to every corner of her being, burning in a steady rhythm rather than a destructive blaze.

When he pulled back, she knew that he could feel it, too, the sweetness of it.

“You should eat,” he remarked as he glanced back towards their picnic blanket. “It’s a long ride back, and ye dinnae want to be short on food.”