“Tristan,” the healer said, “what are ye doin’ back here with me? I had hoped never to see ye again drenched in blood.”
“Alas, Nel, I canna keep arrows from findin’ me.”
“Let us hope this one hasna found yer heart.”
After a long examination of the entrance and exit sites, and the angle of the shaft, Nel announced she did not think any important parts inside were hit. Without saying much else, she picked up a knife and asked how long ago it happened.
“About an hour ago,” Rose answered with a shaky voice and knelt before him.
Nel began cutting his jacket and léine off. He almost faded into black twice while she undressed him. He kept his eyes on a terrified Rose. He’d had arrows pulled out before—from his leg and shoulder. It hurt like hell. This was going to be worse. He didn’t want to think on it.
He wanted to look at her…into her eyes.
She looked quite pale more than a few times and he thought she might faint. But she didn’t. Tears rolled down her cheeks when the innkeeper put a stick between his teeth. She stared into his eyes as the innkeeper moved behind him and his wife, in front. The healer poured whatever was in the flask on his wound and took hold of the short shank below the arrowhead coming from his chest. A moment later, her husband gripped the back of the arrow and cracked the end feathers off.
Tristan grew taut and bit down on the stick. He forgot Rose. He forgot everything but the pain.
Nel yanked on her end, pulling the long arrow through him. Tristan cried out, shivered, and then passed out.
Captain Harper reached Callanach Castle and signaled Jones in the lookout tower to let him through the gates. He thought about what he would tell the earl when he saw him. Should he tell him the truth? That he’d found the Highland outlaw—traveling with the earl’s beloved daughter, Rose?
He felt ill. Why hadn’t he finished the killer and taken the girl? It would be the first thing the earl would ask. It would be the first thing he would ask, were it his daughter.
The captain knew why. He didn’t want to kill him. He thought he could do it, but when he saw him, he froze. When he saw Rose, he truly couldn’t think of anything else. What the hell was she doing with the killer who was coming after her father?
Harper hadn’t wanted to return to the castle with the news. What if the earl tried to kill him? They were friends but Thomas adored his daughter. She came before all else. Everyone knew it.
He heard the bar being lifted on the other side of the door. Cavanaugh pulled the heavy gate opened.
Harper rode his mount inside without any hesitation. When he reached the bailey, he leaped from his saddle and called for one of the men.
“Where is he? Where’s the earl?”
“In the great hall,” George Watley called out from the battlement wall.
Cavanaugh grew closer. “A letter arrived from Hamilton after you left last eve. What is it?” he asked when the captain paused at the news. “What do you know?”
“Get Jones and Watley and meet me in the great hall,” he ordered. Without waiting for any reply, he strode to the great hall. So, the Governor of Hamilton had written about Rose, his niece, had he? The captain wondered what he said. That she had run away with the killer MacPherson? Was it better that Thomas heard it from his brother rather than him?
He found his old friend sitting alone at the long table in the great hall. He’d been crying. He was crying still! The captain went to him. On his way, he noticed a letter in the earl’s hand.
“My lord?” the captain asked softly, “Thomas, what is it?”
But his friend couldn’t say, for his tears choked him. Sorrow overwhelmed him. Instead, he handed the letter to Harper.
My brother, Thomas,
It is with a broken, shattered heart that I must inform you that your…men are dead, victims of the Black Death.
No! No, they couldn’t all be dead! They were his friends, brothers. The captain held on to the back of a chair—there was more. Something that broke and shattered Thomas Callanach’s heart.
With them also, I regret to say, was your daughter. Rose is dead.
I know you have lost everyone, Tom. I cannot express—
What? No. Rose was not dead. “She is not dead, Thomas.” He dropped the letter to the floor and went to his friend. “I saw her! I saw Rose. She is not dead!”
The earl’s eyes opened wide. Hope sparked to life as he took the captain by the arms. “What are you saying? Where is she?”
The captain swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment. He had to tell him the truth. “Rose is alive, my lord. She travels with…with—”
“Aye? Who?”
“MacPherson. She travels with Tristan Mac—”
“No!” the earl lamented and pulled on his hair. “No! Tell me he does not have my Rose!”
“She was not his prisoner.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” the earl roared.
“She wore no binds. She even laughed with him. When I shot him, she was screaming as if I had hit her with my arrow, which I did not.”
The earl looked about to faint. “But you shot him?”
“Aye, my lord,” Harper hadn’t meant to say so much, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words from spilling from his mouth. “I shot him in the heart, but the bastard came after me as if nothing had happened. His horse was faster than mine. He could have caught me, but…he let me go.”
The earl waited a moment, as if to let the shock of it sink in then shook him. “You fled?”
“He would have killed me. And you would
