“We will be down shortly.”
“Now!” the captain commanded and knocked again. “’Tis rude to make them wait.”
Tristan opened his eyes and cast his ready wife a regretful look. “Aye, we are gettin’ oot of bed now.”
He pushed off her and after a quick wash in the basin, they dressed and left the room holding hands.
Tristan wasn’t surprised at how perfectly her hand fit into his. Everything about her fit perfectly into him.
“Good morning,” everyone greeted.
“How was your bed?” the governor asked. “Did you sleep well?”
They all agreed that they did. Mary blushed the hardest.
“You four must be positively famished,” Emma remarked and then giggled.
Rose was. She ate to her fill and then Emma showed her around the grounds.
“I had such plans for us, Rose. When we got home, I wept every day for a fortnight about you being sick. I never knew about my father hiring Tristan MacPherson to kill your father. To tell you the truth, I do not know what I would have done if I had known.”
When they were done walking, they turned back for the house. Three of the governor’s guards walked with them under Emma’s order but the gates were locked. No one could get in.
That was why she was so stunned when an arrow thumped into one of the guards’ chest. Emma screamed and dashed away. An arrow was shot through her skirts. It missed her body. Rose shouted, “Father, do not shoot Emma!” She knew the arrows were coming from behind the stables.
Horrified, Rose realized that her father hadn’t left the grounds last eve. But Tristan had scouted the area and found nothing.
Her father was clever. “Do you hear me? Emma has done you no harm, Father.”
“Come closer to me, Daughter,” he called out, “and I will not kill her.”
Rose took a step forward. She heard Emma whimper.
“Closer, Rose!”
She could only see a small part of his face. The rest was hidden behind the wall of the stable.
Emma’s remaining two guards hadn’t moved but her father shot one down with an arrow anyway. The last guard took off after him, his sword raised high. But her father was quicker and before the guard reached him, an arrow in the eye took his life.
“You are evil,” Rose cried, unable to look away from the dead men. “Why did you have Neill kill my mother and Jonetta?”
Her father stepped out from behind the wall. His bow was raised, and his arrow nocked and ready to fly at Emma.
“Your mother was going to meet her lover in Lockerbie. She wanted to bring you, but I would not let her. I knew she was never going to return.”
Because if she escaped him, she would never return? Or because he knew she would die before the end of the night?
“I let her take Jonetta, so she was not alone,” he continued with a satisfied smile. “’Twas also a perfect way to exact punishment on your mother and Estrid, since your mother would not let me kill her after the fire, for leaving you alone.”
“You killed them for something Neill had done at your command six years earlier,” Rose said with horror and sadness. She held her belly that was twisting and knotting. She was going to be ill.
She heard a commotion at the doors to the manor house. She saw Tristan, and the captain, and her uncle with his remaining men.
She held up her palm to stop their advance. Then she stepped in front of Emma. Her father threw her a smirk. “You were saying about my mother?” she addressed her father.
“Was I?” his smirk hardened. “She was a slut. Just ask my brother.” He smiled when Uncle Richard paled and gave her another penitent look. “I wanted to get her away from him before he killed her.”
“Forget them, Rose,” her father commanded, dragging back her attention. “This has always been about you, Daughter. After Neill killed them and set them on fire, I knew one thing for certain. Your brother was too dangerous and could not be around you. What if he turned on you…or me?
“I told everyone at the castle that once the gates were shut no one could leave, so if they wanted to go, they should leave when they could. Almost everyone left.”
Rose shook her head “I have been alone all these years because you wanted to keep a killer you created from me.”
Her father nodded. “He knew what you mean to me, Rose. He wanted to take you away from me. I could not let him do that. That is why I could not let you marry just any lord. Your husband had to be able to protect you from Neill. That was my first requirement.”
“But you fell in love with a man who was sent to kill me.” He peered over to Tristan and smiled slightly. “There were many times when I feared for my soul. I could not imagine who would have hired MacPherson, but the fact was, he was coming to kill me. I did not imagine my brother was guilty of sending him, but it all makes perfect sense now.”
He pulled the bow taut and changed his aim. It took him no time at all to hit her uncle but before he could nock another arrow, Tristan was moving.
Rose refused to call out or to look. Her father, though she still loved him, had chosen his path. She ran to her uncle lying on the ground with an arrow in his shoulder.
Her father was scrambling to get his last arrow nocked when Tristan called out to him, walking toward him. “Come on!”
Rose could tell her husband was furious in the way his muscles danced over his jaw—and the roiling seas in his eyes.
Tristan reached him first and smacked the bow and arrow out of his hands. He leaned in and said something to her father, but the earl refused. Tristan shrugged his strong shoulders and then hauled back and punched the earl in the
