The Earl of Morrey (The League of Rogues #13) - Lauren Smith Page 0,70

a babe?”

“Ye are still healing, ye daft fool!” Baird shot back. “Ye want to end up back in bed?”

Letty tensed as Tyburn gently removed her hold on his arm and then walked toward the trio. He held out a hand to take Angus’s sword, and the two brothers moved back to let their father face Adam.Letty stood next to Angus and Baird and did her best not to panic. She didn’t like Adam trying to fight so soon.

“I willna go easy on ye, laddie,” Tyburn promised. “Let’s see what ye are made of.”

Adam lunged for him, and the two met in a ringing clash of steel. Tyburn pressed on, blow after blow striking Adam’s sword until Adam stumbled and fell. Tyburn held the blunt blade to Adam’s throat.

“Ye need to give yerself time, laddie.” He offered a hand to Adam.Letty noted the look of pained resignation on her husband’s face.

“I don’t have time, Uncle. You know that.” Adam accepted his help, and Tyburn pulled him to his feet.

“A smart man knows ’tis better to heal than to train through pain.”

Adam sighed, his shoulders drooping. When he saw Letty, he flinched. She empathized with his reaction. Tyburn had been counseling her on what Adam was going through, how he had suffered and felt so weak, not just in body, but in spirit. Letty hated that he felt that way. All she could see was his strength.

“Baird, Angus, let Adam have some rest. The man should have some time with his wife.” Tyburn shot them a knowing look, and the three vanished into the gardens.

Letty stopped next to Adam, who idly swung his dull practice blade at his feet.“How did they do that?”

“Do what?” Adam asked.

“That vanishing thing. I swear it’s some sort of Highland magic. They seem to just vanish at will.”

Adam chuckled, and the sound warmed her heart. She hadn’t heard that sound in quite some time.

“They have trained themselves to move that way, to use their surroundings to hide.”

“Well, I would certainly enjoy that talent if I had it,” she said, then put her arm on his shoulder. “You are doing so well, truly. I know you are frustrated, but you mustn’t be.”

He shrugged, his smile vanishing. “Not well enough for my liking.”

“If I had been hurt the way you had, I would likely still be lying in bed and moaning dreadfully.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said quite meaningfully.

“No? How do you know that?” she asked.

Adam gently caught her by the waist with one hand and touched her arm, the one that had its own angry red scar.

“Because you took a bullet and kept riding. I doubt you would have been in bed long.”

Letty reached up, her fingers brushing his where the scar lay beneath her gown’s sleeve. “It was only a scratch. I thought a tree had hit me—”

He was smiling again. “Yet it was a bullet, lady wife. Just accept your heroic actions.”

She pretended to grumble at this, but secretly she was delighted at his playful response.

They walked through the gardens in silence until they found their way into a maze of hedgerows at one end of the courtyard. Over the last two weeks, they’d found themselves in a new dynamic as husband and wife. After all that had happened, there had grown a deep foundation of trust between them, a kinship born from shared danger and sacrifice. Each night she had lain beside him in bed, her body pressed close to his, comforted by his presence. But he hadn’t touched her, not in the way a man touches his wife when he wishes to make love to her. He was still healing, of course, but she feared that perhaps something was holding him back. She didn’t want anything between them, not ever again.

“Adam . . . ,” Letty began uncertainly.

“Yes?”

“It’s been three weeks since, well . . . We . . .” Even after all she’d been through with him, she was still too embarrassed to discuss sex.

“Since what?” A soft, knowing light in his eyes coyly mocked her.

“Since we made love.” There, she’d said it. “I know you have been healing and that you still are. I . . . Heavens, I guess what I wish to say is that when you feel better, I am ready to resume such activities.” That didn’t sound nearly so romantic as she had hoped—it sounded practically contractual. She still wasn’t sure how to speak of such things.

He turned her face toward him, and she tilted her head back to look