“I wonder if my uncle will tell my father that he left me.”
“He willna tell him because he is cowardly.”
“I have been thinking about it,” she told him lazily, strewn across him. “I do not blame him for wanting to keep his child safe from the sickness.”
“Ye are thoughtful, lass.”
“I understand why he did it,” she said, looking up at him, “but you did not leave me, and I was a stranger to you. Why did you not leave me, Tristan?”
He shook his head. “What am I to say? I dinna know why I stopped to stare at a pile of dead bodies. I had no idea that there was a rose amid them.”
“But I was sick. Surely you thought I would die.”
“Aye, I did.”
“And still, you took care of me.”
He remained silent for a moment and then swallowed. “Aye.”
She stared up into his eyes and smiled at the soft, warm side of him that broke through and showed himself only to her. She loved that she could wipe his frowns clean off his face. People knew his name. Men were afraid of him—men who should be afraid of him. For them, he was a monster. To her…he was everything but that.
“What would your Father Timothy say about this? I believe God sent you to me. Even if I had to be sick to find you. I’m glad I did.”
He lifted her in his arms and kissed her until she felt lightheaded. She clutched fistfuls of his black hair while he ravaged her with his tongue inside her mouth.
Slowly, he kissed and licked his way down her chin, across her throat, taking his time to smell her skin, to breathe her in. She didn’t know what he was doing to her but the nipples on her breasts felt tight and hard. A spot below her belly began to ache.
“I feel odd,” she said, pulling away in his lap. “What is coming over me?”
“Desire,” he said in a slow, salacious voice. “’Tis comin’ over me as well. But—”
“But?”
“We must resist it. I am no rogue. I willna take advantage of ye and ravish ye after what ye have been through.”
“What if I want to be ravished by you?” she asked him. She thought she heard a little groan escape him.
“I dinna even know if ye are in yer right mind after havin’ the plague. As much as I want to be with ye, I dinna think ’tis wise to take this further until we have spent more time together.”
“Oh? Do you want to spend more time with me, then? Do you think you can win my father’s favor?” she asked when he nodded his head. “I told you he is very protective after my mother and her young maid were killed on the road to Lockerbie. It happened six years ago, but you would think in his mind ’twas only yesterday. He takes every precaution to see to my safety.”
He smiled and looked as if he were going to say something, but then stopped. His smiled faded.
“Six years ago? Her young maid?”
“Aye,” she told him, trusting him with her father’s secret that it was not she who died. “They were on their way to a large market. They were killed and set on fire. Everyone assumed Jonetta was me. My father let them believe it in the hope that the one who wanted to kill us would cease if they thought I was dead. Tristan?” She sat up and felt him for fever. He’d gone a sickly shade of gray. “Are you feeling ill?”
“Rose,” he managed. “I dinna think ye ever told me who yer father is.”
Why would he care about that now? “He is Thomas Callanach, the Earl of Dumfries Are you going to tell me if you are feeling ill? You look—”
He stopped his horse and closed his eyes. “Go to yer own horse, lass.”
She wasn’t sure what had come over him, but she did as he asked and watched him pass her in silence.
Chapter Eight
She couldn’t be the daughter of the man he was riding to Dumfries to kill. But he knew it was true. Callanach was the earl barricaded in his castle, the only one no one could get to.
Aye. Aye. He wanted to tell her he was ill. Deathly ill.
The Earl of Dumfries had killed his wife and daughter in Lockerbie six years ago. But how could this be? His daughter wasn’t dead! The girl in the carriage wasn’t her!
He had to think. She had told him her father had secluded her because someone lit their home on fire and later killed her mother and burned her to ashes. But there had been another body. The serving girl.
Someone had been trying to kill the earl’s family. Tristan understood why Dumfries let the world think his daughter was the other body and built the wall to protect her.
But what if there was another explanation? Whose idea was it that the serving girl, Jonetta, should accompany the earl’s wife? Why had Rose stayed home? Why did it matter? He was paid to kill the earl. So what if Dumfries didn’t kill his daughter? Someone believed he was responsible for the deaths in that carriage.
His daughter. What would Tristan do with her? He had to stop whatever was happening between them before it went any further. He’d been paid to kill her father.
Should he tell her? He couldn’t take her back to her father’s castle and then cut his throat in front of her. If he told her, she would beg him not to do it. Could he resist her? If so, she would hate him. What did she think about her father being accused of killing her mother? Did she believe him
