What if Neill had taken the earl? Rose seemed to be sharing his thoughts. Why? Why did Neill wish to cause him such harm?
“My Rose,” her uncle lamented softly. “I wish that your father had told you all this years ago.”
“Told me what?” she asked, moving closer to Tristan.
He took her hand, having a feeling that whatever her uncle told her now would be difficult.
“Uncle Richard, what should my father have told me? As it is, I am having a difficult time believing you.”
“Very well, then.” He sat up straighter on the stair. “Before you were born, before he was even married, your father was in love with a serving girl named Eunice. She was lovely, I will admit. Long waves of pale golden locks, eyes as blue as summer sky. They had a child—”
“No,” Rose covered her mouth to keep silent.
“—a boy.”
Neill, Tristan thought, glancing at his wife. She was engrossed in his tale, though she wore a horrified look on her face while she listened.
“He was a peculiar boy,” the governor continued. “He liked to burn things.”
“Oh,” was the only thing Rose could utter before she covered her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“Neill,” she wept. “Neill is my brother. All these years, I considered him one of my closest friends.” She threw herself into Tristan’s arms and sobbed against his chest.
Tristan wasn’t angry with her uncle for telling her. She wanted to hear it. But it was difficult for her. He could understand. He expected that being told that the monster that robbed her of so much was her brother, and he was doing her father’s bidding, was a hefty weight to bear. He could do nothing but hold her, so that is what he did.
Everyone was silent while she wept. Then she looked up and slipped away. Her dark eyes seared into Captain Harper. He looked away when she reached him.
“You knew?” she asked, giving him a way out. But he refused it.
He nodded and clenched his jaw, still not looking at her.
She drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face.
Harper moved his head back to its original position, looking down at his boot tips.
“Is all that my uncle says true, Captain?”
“Aye, Lady.” He spoke on the barest of whispers and nodded again.
Her eyes glimmered with tears in the dim light. “Then you are loyal to a monster.”
“Rose, I would have you know I never took part in any of these things. I did not know for certain—”
She said nothing more but turned away toward Tristan. She stopped short of reaching him though, and looked him in the eyes. “You have your answer then. My father is guilty.”
Tristan shook his head. “I willna kill him, Rose.”
He was happy to see her relax a little. He turned to the governor next. “Most of yer money will be returned to ye before I leave here tonight. The rest I will get to ye.”
“Finish your story, Uncle Richard.”
“Rose, if you—”
“Finish please.”
Her uncle drew out a long, deep sigh. “When Neill was a young man of seventeen, Thomas asked him to burn his house down. He’s arranged it to happen on a night he was not home. He’d also convinced you that you wanted to sleep in the servants’ quarters with Jonetta. But the girl grew ill and her mother brought you back home. Your mother left you there alone to go tend to Jonetta. It was to be just for a moment. Neill did not know. He thought your mother was inside the house.
“After that, Neill killed for your father, again including killing your mother.” He told her the rest, how Rose’s father shut the gates to Callanach Castle.
When he was done, Rose leaned against the wall and pressed her hands to her head. “So, everything…everything in my life has been a lie.”
“No, Rose,” the lass from the bed said, hurrying to her. “We love you. We mourned you. That man with the plague fell on you. What was my father to do?”
Rose gave her an understanding smile. Tristan remembered her telling him she understood her uncle’s decision. He caught her eyes now and winked at her.
Her cousin must have seen the warmth in her gaze for she turned around and saw Tristan looking back. She paled and returned her attention to Rose again.
“Do not hate us,” Tristan heard her say before she hurried back to her father.
“Yer life will never be a lie again,” Tristan promised her, drawing her closer. He wanted to protect her from everyone and everything. Starting with her father and her brother.
“Men,” he called out to Harper and Jones, “’tis over here. I have business with the governor and then we will leave—if we all agree?”
Harper nodded as did Jones.
“You kept the truth from me, also,” Rose let her uncle know while Tristan paid him.
“For your sake, Rose. I did not want his name and ours to be soiled by letting you know of his atrocities when you could do nothing to change any of it. I sent MacPherson and got you out of the way. My hope was to give you back your life here in Hamilton. I ask your forgiveness but if you do not give it, I understand.”
She nodded. “I give it,” she said soft softly. “I love my father, but my mother deserves justice. ’Tis overdue.”
“Daughter, I’m disappointed in you.” The earl’s voice filled the large hall.
Every eye turned to the unguarded doors and the earl entering the manor house with Neill and Mary, the captain’s wife held by a man Tristan had seen practicing at Callanach Castle the day Neill attacked.
He held Mary with his knife pointing at her heart.
“Sadly,” the earl announced, looking around at everyone, “only one of you will be leaving here tonight, and it will not be her.”
There was no time to think. In the time it took for her captor to move his hand and stab her hard enough to
