Page 64 of Saved By the Cruel Highlander
After that, the cooks turned back and talked more with each other.
“This is me fault,” Holly said.
“Nay,” the Laird insisted.
“I should’ve told ye sooner about Felix. I thought he would be done with me when he kenned I was yers, but he wasnae, was he?”
“What’s done is done, and the important thing is that we are all safe,” Elias said.
“What if he had done somethin’ to Cole, too?” Holly asked. “What if he had found out how attached I am to the bairn and found a way to poison him? I couldnae live with meself.”
“But he didnae,” Elias pointed out. “Cole is safe.”
“Aye, he is.” Holly managed a wry smile. “What will happen to him?”
“To Cole?” Elias asked.
Holly nodded as the tea was brought to them.
“I dinnae ken yet,” Elias admitted.
“Does he nae feel like family?” Holly asked. “I ken I cannae ask anythin’ of ye after everythin’ ye have done for me, but he doesnae have a maither or faither anymore, and ye’ve seen the way he’s grown attached to us.”
“To ye,” Elias corrected.
“Nay, nae only to me. He loves ye, Elias. Did ye see the way he hugged yer leg? He feels safe with ye, and he tries to be more like ye every day.”
“I dinnae want to think about that right now,” Elias said. “I have other things to think about.”
“I ken ye do, but ye have to think about it sometime,” Holly told him. She reached out and took his hand. “We’ll start a family soon, but what if we had a headstart? We could be a family now.”
“Who said I wanted a family?” Elias asked, pulling his hand away.
“Well, of course, we’ll have a family,” Holly said. “That’s why we’re gettin’ married.”
“Nay!” Elias stated, earning some side glances from the cooks nearby. “Nay, the reason we are gettin’ married is because a man wanted to kill ye.”
“Aye, I ken, but it’s more than that now, is it nae?” Holly asked.
“We both lost our families,” Elias said. “What do we ken about family?”
“That doesnae mean anythin’,” Holly told him.
“It doesnae mean anythin’? Yer faither was killed, and so were me parents. Is that the kind of world ye want to bring a child into?”
“It’s nae fair to put it like that,” Holly said. She worried now that everything had been a massive mistake. “We’re nae our parents, and Cole needs someone to love him.”
“Aye, I needed someone to love me, and I ended up murderin’ me braither!”
The kitchen fell silent. Not because the cooks had stopped working and were staring at them, but because they’d all had the good sense to leave.
Holly didn’t know how to respond to that. She stared at him, open-mouthed.
“Aye, I murdered him,” Elias continued. “He murdered me parents, and”—he pointed to the scar above his eye—“gave me this, and I murdered him with me bare hands in return. I took a chair leg in me rage and beat him to death with it to spare meself. Death! That is all me family is. And the more death I cause in the name of protectin’ me clan, the more they call me a monster.”
Holly was silent for a moment before she said, “Nay.”
“Nay?” Elias scoffed. “With the rage inside me, it’s nay wonder they call me a monster.”
