His mouth pressed down on hers, and she felt the full weight of his certainty in it. She made a sound she had not planned—something small and undone—swallowed immediately between them. Her hands moved to his shirt before she even decided to put them there, fingers twisting in the fabric, pulling. Hishand found her waist through the thin linen, palm wide and hot against her ribs, and he pulled her toward him. The chair scraped back across the stone with a sound she barely registered.
She felt a tingle of heat streak through her core and gasped, panting for air.
His other hand moved to her jaw, fingers curling behind it, tilting her face up. His mouth was hard and demanding, tasting of woodsmoke and fresh air. The chemise was nothing, less than nothing—her ribs felt the heat of his palm through it. She sensed each of his fingers distinctly, the exact spread, the ridge of his knuckles, the warmth of his palm, and the gentle pressure as he drew her closer.
Her back arched into him. She could not have stopped it.
His hand moved from her jaw to her hair, fingers closing in it, and his mouth tilted against hers. She kissed him back with the same intensity because there was no other way to respond, and the low sound he made against her lips traveled through her chest and her throat, settling somewhere in the pit of her stomach and not leaving.
His fingers trembled. Once. Against her waist, a small involuntary shudder, and she felt it more than anything else—more than the heat, the pressure, or the demanding certainty of his mouth—and she broke apart at it, completely and without permission, every careful thing she had been holding together suddenly coming loose.
Then he stepped back. One sharp, sudden step, his hands dropping. He created space between them and stood in it, his chest rising and falling faster than usual, with storm-dark eyes and his mouth pressed tight.
“Enough,” he said. The word came out clipped and hard and Isobel blinked rapidly, momentarily stunned by the sudden distance that separated them.
He looked at her for a second, with something raw behind his eyes, then turned and walked out. The door closed behind him, not quite a slam and not gentle either.
Isobel stayed in her place. Her hands remained curled.. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. The fire had nearly burned out, and the rain tapped steadily against the windows. The room was dim, quiet, and plain, except that she could still feel his mouth, his hands, and the low sound he made against her lips that echoed through her chest like a struck bell.
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
Her fingers were shaking. She could feel her own pulse in them.
“Right,” she said aloud, to nobody, to the moon in its window.
She picked up her garments and shrugged them on. Wound the scarf back around her throat. Tied the ribbon twice because her hands were not cooperating. She straightened the chair. She set the folklore book back on the shelf, spine out, neat.
She looked at the desk. The surface dust held the pale impressions of his palms where he had pressed them flat against the wood.
She looked at them a moment longer than she should have.
Then she went to bed and prayed that come morning, after her mind had time to process what had just happened between them, she would understand why the Laird had pulled her closer only to shove away again.
Chapter Thirteen
She was at the stables before the castle had properly woken up.
The sky to the west was the color of a bruise, heavy and low, and the wind coming off the glens had a bite to it that had not been there yesterday. She noticed both of these things and decided they were not her problem. She needed air. She needed space and speed and the particular mercy of a horizon that did not have walls around it, and she needed it before she had to sit across a table from anyone and perform composure she did not currently possess.
“I want a horse,” she told the stable hand. “The gray mare, if she is available.”
The stable hand, a boy of about fifteen, glanced at the sky and then back at her. “There’s weather comin’, me Lady.”
“I can see that.”
“Donal said this mornin’ it’d be a bad one.”
“I will be back before it breaks,” she said in the tone that ended conversations, and the boy went to saddle the mare.
She was checking the girth herself when she heard Jane’s voice behind her, slightly out of breath, which meant she had walked faster than her usual pace.
“Ye’re nae goin’ out in that weather,” Jane said.
“I am.”
“The clouds are black to the west.”
“I have seen clouds before.”