Page 50 of The Iron Earl
Escape. An escape if she should ever need it.
Her eyes narrowed at him. “Can Domnall swear it to me as well?”
“I can bring him over here directly to swear to it, if it will ease your mind.”
Evalyn half nodded, half shook her head. She wasn’t sure which inclination was winning over the other, for promises held such little weight in her world.
Except she wasn’t in her world anymore.
She was in Lachlan’s.
“I don’t think I can accept promises, Lachlan.”
The edges of his lips pulled down as his look narrowed at her. “If I’m never afforded the chance to prove the value of my promises, how will you ever know for certain if I’m worthy of them?” He leaned forward, his fingers along her ankle slipping under her leg, pressing into her bare calf. “I just may be the one person that you need to trust, Eva.”
“Or the one I never should.”
A light sparked in his eye. A gleam of triumph, possibly. Or hope. Or lust.
“Aye. But how will you ever find out if you do not chance it?”
{ Chapter 12 }
Lachlan followed the coaching inn maid that had brought up a wide platter of food across their room to the door. She exited and he clicked the heavy wooden door closed.
He paused for a moment, staring at the long grain lines of the oak door. It was late and he needed to be moving this along. It had already taken far too long to cross the border and travel to Moffat that day, and they’d had to squeeze in the blacksmith wedding once on Scottish soil.
It had been perfunctory. Their hands joined over the anvil. Horace, the blacksmith, performing the ceremony with as few words as possible. Domnall was the only one to dismount and come in to witness the vows.
Not that Evalyn appeared to mind. If anything, her look kept twitching to him, almost as though she were expecting him to pull away at the last second. Bracing herself to be abandoned at the smithy. Set adrift on her own.
The dumbstruck look on her face when they left the heat of the blacksmith’s fires and stepped into the waning light was laughable.
Laughable, if she hadn’t been so positive that this whole affair was a cruel joke on her.
His gut tightened. That her blackguard of a stepfather had put such distrust in her eyes—in her every motion—set aflame a primal rage in his belly that took him aback.
It no longer mattered that she was related to the man, she’d suffered for years as the prime victim of the man’s cruelty.
His look still centered on the back of the door, he debated for another moment. Food or maidenhead first?
Lachlan turned away from the door only to find his answer.
Her back toward him, Evalyn was already by the bed, the scraps of her boots absent, though the bandages still wrapped her feet. Her arms awkwardly bent to reach her upper spine, her fingers freeing the top buttons of her dress.
Sex it was, then.
He squinted in the low light that the fireplace afforded the room. Her fingers were shaking, slipping on the buttons as she popped them free. Straining, her elbow high, she could reach no more buttons.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, her look quickly scurrying to the corner by the fireplace. “If you would be so kind?”
He stepped across the room, stopping behind her. His hands lifted to the row of black buttons, popping them free, one by one, watching her profile, trying to figure her. Of all things, he hadn’t guessed she would be so willing to beguile him into the marital bed.
“Are you not hungry, Evalyn?”
She looked to the table, then shook her head. “Not particularly—not at the moment.”
“Are you tired?”