Page 112 of The Scot Beds His Wife
First, the new Countess of Thorne was the bravest woman alive, to stand up to her husband in such a state.
Second, she was pregnant, a fact that had been snarled at her by her husband in front of God and everyone.
And third… Gavin St. James was in love with his wife.
Beneath all of Lord Thorne’s brutish bluster lived a terror only understood by a man who’d survived a loss which he’d been helpless to avoid.
Well, the winds of alteration and revelation. They were never wrong…
After Thorne had ascertained that Sam—and the baby—was all right, he’d ordered her to stay at Inverthorne in a,granted, needlessly stern manner. Any sane man would have known a woman with spirit wouldn’t have responded favorably.
But Eammon had noted that Thorne’s usually golden skin had taken on a ghostly shade. His nostrils wouldn’t cease flaring, and when he shoved his finger at his wife and ordered her to bed, his hands had trembled violently.
Sam seemed not to have noticed, because she’d resisted him up until the moment he’d threatened to decapitate any man who allowed her on a horse with a blunt sword before riding away fast enough for her curses not to blister his backside.
Aye, that was love for you.
Eammon studied Sam, and wondered if she knew it. If they’d said the words. If she realized that Thorne would ride harder, work longer, and suffer more physical labor because the demon inside him would be whispering what ifs in his ear all the day long.
“Lysander, here, threw you good and far,” he ventured, patting the animal on the rump before shutting the stall door behind him. “Thorne was right to mention that such a topple puts you and your child in danger. I’d be wary of these beasts until the wee one’s arrived.”
“We weren’t going to tell anyone about my condition for a few weeks yet…,” she groused. His new lady was in no great habit of capitulation, but she puffed out her cheeks in that way of hers and muttered, “But I suppose you’re… not wrong.”
“And that’s almost like being right.” He chuckled.
“Don’t push it.”
A sparkle of humor underscored her churlish scowl, before she bent to investigate the saddle blanket. “I just don’t understand. I prepared and saddled Lysander, myself. I’m certain I’d have noticed a thistle of this size.”
Eammon was fair certain of that, as well. Though he knew that pregnancy often took its toll on a woman’s focus. He’d also lived long enough to know better than to mention it.
“Since you’re home today, why don’t you tell Lady Eleanor the good news? She’ll probably be a bit hurt if she hears it from someone other than you, and word of these things tends to spread quickly through a castle.”
In a gesture as old as time, Lady Thorne spread her fingers over her womb and nodded. “Thank you, Eammon,” she said, and turned to drift through the courtyard, her dark braid almost catching in the iron gate to Inverthorne as she secured it behind her.
The thistle troubled Eammon well into the afternoon. It’d been chaos in the stables and the courtyard this morning. Nearly a score more carpenters, craftsmen, and laborers had shown up in search of work at Erradale. Between that and the men who’d arrived from the bustling ranch to escort the horses back over Gresham Peak, he’d lost track of everyone tramping in and out of Inverthorne lands.
Was it possible someone had deliberately placed the thistle beneath the countess’s saddle blanket?
Barely more than a month had passed since Lady Sam’s enemies had attacked Erradale, and all had been quiet in the Highlands since. Though her wound had healed, she and Thorne both comported themselves with a certain amount of wariness. Gates were locked at all times, the keep secured as though expecting a Viking siege at any moment.
No one had exactly been told why, but all the necessary precautions had been taken, in any case.
As Eammon finally set his stables to rights, he made up his mind. If a detail niggled at him this much then itwas obviously important. He should hie himself to Erradale and talk to Thorne about—
He turned and froze. How in the world had he allowed himself to be caught unawares? He’d been so deep inside his own mind, he’d never even registered that he wasn’t alone.
“M-my lady,” he breathed.
The dowager tilted her graceful neck in his direction from where she stood stroking the neck of a kind mare who’d come to the stall door to greet her. Eleanor was a vision in lavender silk embroidered with small green leaves the color of her eyes.
Would her beauty never fade? He almost wished it would. Then maybe to look at her with the rare golden late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the wide stable doors would not do the same thing to his lungs as did a horse’s hoof to the chest.
“I didn’t think to find any horses left in the stables today. It was my understanding that my son took them all to Erradale.”
Eammon closed his eyes and prepared for another polite, nonsensical discussion with the woman he’d worshiped for the better part of two decades.
She washere, he told himself. She’d come to the stables without Thorne. Without Alice, even. And that was something. It wasn’t hope. But… something.
