Page 5

A husband?

Keira felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment. Did he really say he would find her a husband?

“Ye ken all about me, do ye nae?”

Evander cocked his head. “I dinnae understand.”

Keira refused to say anything further. She didn’t want to voice the numerous thoughts racing through her mind to this man—who, for all intents and purposes, was still a stranger to her, no matter how hard he tried to make her castle his.

He was assertive, the kind of man to remain rooted in his convictions. The last thing anyone would ever try to do was sway Evander Sloan, and she was beginning to see that rather quickly.

Letting the sound of his men’s footsteps drown her thoughts, she turned around and walked away, not sparing him a backward glance.

Evander watched her retreating figure for a moment, trying hard to keep an eye on her. But he couldn’t. Not for long.

He was brought back to the present by the grunts of the men carrying some of his things into the castle.

There were not a lot of things he was able to recover as his castle burned to the ground.

They were able to save the horses, most of the animals that lingered around the courtyard, some of his study items—which he had transferred to a shed by the fence when the fire had reached his room—and just a few other things he did not see himself needing.

But the look on Lady Blythe’s face made everything worth it.

“Oi!” he called to one of the men carrying what looked like a specially designed table into the castle—although he was doing it recklessly. “Did ye nae learn to carry a proper table in yer village? Ye lift from the bottom.”

The man, who couldn’t be older than five-and-twenty, looked up at him, a nervous expression on his face. “The bottom is charred, M’Laird.”

“Find something or someone to aid ye, then. That table holds a lot of importance. I would hate to see it perish. Or ye with it.”

Evander could tell that his words sent a shiver down the man’s spine because he unclasped his hands from the top and walked away, his eyes peeled for someone to help him, as was ordered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lady Blythe making her way out of the courtyard and away from the large fence that surrounded the castle.

Where was she going? She had no place to go, that much was obvious. Or was she conning him? Did she have a plan to get him thrown away before he could even settle in?

He dismissed those thoughts almost as soon as they had come.

If there was anything he had learned so far about Keira Elliot—he knew her name thanks to his man-at-arms—it was that she remained firm and steady in what she believed in.

She had sounded incredibly sincere as well, so if there truly was anything she was hiding from him, one way or another, he would find out.

He let himself wonder again where she could possibly be going as she disappeared into the distance. Was she heading to speak with her servants?

From the distance, she looked rather ethereal. Her dress fluttered gently in the breeze, and the sun illuminated the parts that further accentuated her curves.

“M’Laird?” Rory’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.

Evander turned around. His man-at-arms stood before him, his arms wrapped around a giant, recognizable trunk. His own. At least the only trunk he was able to save from the fire before the castle got razed to the ground.

“Where is this going?”

Rory shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I was going to ask ye that. I talked to the maids, and they said that Lady Blythe had indeed prepared a spare room. Would ye be open to?—”

“A spare room?” Evander cut him off, furrowing his brow.

“Aye, M’Laird.”

“Rory, a spare room is usually reserved for visitors or people who dinnae plan to stay long in a castle, am I right?”

Rory nodded gently. “Aye, M’Laird.”

“Tell me, am I a visitor?”

“Nay.”

“Have I come here to stay for a short time before returning?”

“Nay.”

“So why the devil would I need a spare room? No matter Lady Blythe’s theatrics, it would do ye well to remember that I am, in fact, the Laird of this castle. And would a laird sleep in a spare room?”

“Nay, M’Laird. He would sleep in the Laird’s quarters.”

“Good. Take the trunk there, then.”

Rory opened his mouth, about to say something else, but then he closed it. Evander was not sure if it was the look on his face or the tense air about him, but his man-at-arms kept his words to himself anyway.

“Anything else?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“Yer sister-in-law and Tommy will arrive by the end of the week. I have arranged lodgings for them in the village,” Rory elaborated.

“Where will they be staying?”

“In her maither’s house. She said they will stay there till the end of the week.”

Evander nodded. That was fair. The last thing he needed was to subject them to the drama in the castle before he got everything sorted out.

“Good, good,” he muttered, his voice coarse.

The young man who had left his table to look for aid returned with another young man. Evander watched them lift the table from the bottom and turn to him expectantly. He gave them a nod of approval and watched them both make their way into the castle.

“In the meantime, I need to tame the lady of the castle. That may take some work… She’s proving a bit more difficult than I thought.”

Rory nodded, executed a bow, and turned around, carrying the trunk into the castle and up what Evander imagined to be a narrow flight of spiral stairs.

He was left to his thoughts again. The crowd in the courtyard began to thin, and so did most of his things. Before the sun dipped below the horizon, everything would be in the castle, and there would be one less problem he had to deal with.

His mind returned to Keira as he made his way toward the castle a while later. She may be a pain, but he did know how to handle her—how to rid the castle of her as soon as possible. He had told her what he planned to do as well. He promised to find her a husband.

So why didn’t the mere thought of her with another man sit as well with him as he thought it would?

The moon illuminated the dirt path as Keira made her way back to the castle. She had gone to the village that afternoon after her rather unsettling conversation with Evander. She needed to see something else, something except his face, but she also needed to speak with the villagers.

Hudson had informed her that they had a lot of questions and would love to talk to her and see what they could do about these intruders encroaching on her land.

So she had gone to talk to them. To appease them and let them know that this was only temporary, even though she was struggling to believe that herself.

She had promised to find the councilman who had gone against her and decided to hand over the castle to the stranger, instead of inviting him to negotiate as initially planned.

But she had also insisted that they needed to be kind to the newcomers and treat them as their own—for now.

“I promise ye, we will come out victorious in the end.”

The resounding applause and roars of agreement that had followed her words continued to ring in her ears as she walked past the fence and into the courtyard. The walk in the dark had quelled some of her boiling anger, and she only had her people to thank for it.

The castle was a bit darker than usual, and it proved to be a challenge when she stepped into the Great Hall and tried to find her way to her room.

While the moon did provide ample illumination, the walls blocked most of the light, and she had to be more careful as she felt her way up to her quarters.

“Bloody candles,” she whispered to herself, remembering that Stella had in fact mentioned something earlier about the castle running out of candles.

She made a mental note to order more candles the next day as she stumbled over a step in her path. For now, she would have to deal with the darkness.

Finding her quarters wasn’t exactly hard. It was the only room on the entire floor, as the other spare room served as a study and also a place where she sometimes held rather secretive meetings with her councilmen.

She pushed her door open, the familiar creak sending relief down her spine.

It was all quiet, so quiet that she let herself wonder if the stranger had left with his people again. She was not na?ve enough to believe that anyway.

She took off her dress, the weight of it suddenly registering as she hung it in her wardrobe. She resolved to deal with it all properly tomorrow and walked to her bed.

On days like this, the moon didn’t do much, as it was on the other side of the castle. This meant less light in her room. It also meant she had to sleep in the darkness.

She climbed into her bed and lowered her head to her pillow, all the stress and troubles that had clung to her during the day disappearing one after the other.

In this brief respite, she only had her sleep to worry about.

She didn’t have to think about Evander or his men or his obnoxiously pretentious household items or even his?—

Wait. What is that?

She could barely feel it before the question came to her mind. Her back was pressed against something. Something firm. Hard. Something she had never once felt before.

Her hand reached out to whatever it was, meaning to push it off the bed and reclaim her space, but then she felt hair and warm skin. She jerked awake, and her eyes snapped open.

Someone was in her bed.

She sat up almost immediately and reached for the closest candle. “What the?—”

Her mouth dropped open as she brought the light close to the strange object in her bed. The one who was staring back at her with utter amusement in his eyes.

Evander.