Alasdair gathered her against him, and she came to him without hesitation. He reclined on the mattress and laid with her head on his chest and her hand flat over his heart. Her breathing slowed.
“If ye’ve got somethin’ to say, Isobel, I’m here to listen.”
She hummed quietly, as if contemplating the matter, then pressed her mouth to his collarbone. He exhaled deeply. His hand moved to her hair and he slowly stroked the tendrils, pushing them back from her face so that he might better see her eyes.
The fire had gone to coals, and the room was amber and still. He laid there and waited for Isobel to speak, but she uttered nary a peep.
She was asleep before he was. He listened to her breath, reflecting on the softness and longing he'd suppressed as liabilities. At seventeen in that castle, he learned to hide his needs and avoid grief, maintaining this for twelve years—until the elders decreed that he must marry a Lowland girl. This Lowland girl…Isobel. She had the heart of a Highlander and Alasdair was proud to call her his own.
She shifted in her sleep and pressed closer to him. Alasdair kept his arm around her and did not let go.
Chapter Eighteen
She was asleep, and he did not move.
The fire had settled into a low, steady burn, and the room was warm and quiet, and he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her breathe. Her color was better now than it had been in the corridor, when he had looked at her face in the smoke-gray light and felt something cold move through him that he had not felt in a very long time.
He reached out and gently pushed a strand of hair back from her face, his fingers trailing along her cheekbone. She did not move. He let his hand rest in her hair for a moment, feeling its warmth, then slowly traced his fingers down her jaw with the lightest touch, checking without letting himself admit it. Her skin was warm. Her breathing was steady. She turned her face very slightly toward his hand in her sleep, and he remained still until she settled.
Stubborn girl, he thought. Impossible, infuriating, stubborn girl who had gone to wait for him in the library because he had asked her to and had been lying on the floor of it when he arrived, and he could not even hold that against her because the asking had been his.
He brushed his fingers through her hair again, slowly and carefully. She made a tiny sound and shifted closer to him on the mattress without waking, her shoulder pressing against his thigh, and he sat there, looking at the fire, not moving.
He had nearly lost her.
She had been in his library for twenty minutes. The smell of smoke had reached him through two corridors and a closed door, and he had run, and he had found her on the floor among the burning shelves with sparks coming down around her and the ceiling beginning to go, and afterward, in the corridor with her coughing against his chest he had held her and had not been able to think past the simple and complete fact of her being alive. That was all he had been able to hold. Just that. She was breathing. She was here.
She shifted again in her sleep, and he placed his hand back in her hair, feeling her settle. He stayed very still, listened to the fire and her breathing, and for a while, did not think of anything at all.
He was still sitting there when the door opened.
Jane came in carrying a basin and a folded cloth, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone accustomed to not disturbing a room. She had taken three steps inside before she looked up and saw him sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed.
She stopped so abruptly that the water sloshed over the rim of the basin.
Her face went red from her collar to her hairline in the space of a breath.
“I… forgive me… I didnae ken ye were…” She was already stepping backward, her eyes fixed at a point somewhere to his left, the basin clutched hard to her chest. “I beg yer pardon, me Laird; I am so terribly sorry. I had nay idea. I’ll come back, I’ll…”
She was through the door before she finished the sentence, pulling it half-closed behind herself. He heard her in the corridor, a low, as she continue to mutter a stream of mortified apologies addressed to no one in particular.
He looked at Isobel.
Still asleep.
He found his shirt on the chair and pulled it on, and a moment later, he strode across the room and flung open the door.
Sure enough, the diligent maid had not abandoned her post.
“Ye may come in now, Jane.”
She returned with her chin held high and her face still flushed; the basin carried with great dignity. She avoided looking at him directly. She placed the basin on the table near the fire and carefully arranged the cloth over the rail beside it, as if she had decided to pretend the previous two minutes never happened.
“Is me Lady well?” she asked.
“Her breathin’ is easier.”
Jane glanced at Isobel, then back at the cloth. “I thought I’d sit with her, in case she wakes and needs somethin’.”