Rose hoped it was Tristan attacking the other camp and not a random bunch of thieves. Could Tristan take on all of these men? He would have to take both camps to get to her. She remembered what he’d done before, and she smiled. Also, he would no doubt have the captain with him by now. They would find her, and then they would have to go back and find her father before Neill’s men found him.

  “You are afraid of him,” Rose said in front of him. “’Tis immensely satisfying.”

  He yanked her closer and breathed against her ear. “That is the same thing I will tell you when I set him on fire.”

  Her mouth went dry. Could he do it? He was a monster. A giant, merciless monster. Could he stop Tristan? She had to do something before Tristan arrived. She wouldn’t let Neill kill everyone she loved.

  “You should be grateful to me for getting you away from your home. You do not know the evil that lurks there, Rose. Or what I have done for you. Instead, you revile me, making me sorry I saved you. I did not have to. He never said to me, Neill, you may not kill Rose. No.”

  Her uncle. She wanted to scream and not stop. Her uncle was responsible for all this. She could not comprehend it. “I do not understand. If my uncle hates my father so much, why continue to visit?”

  “You will have to ask him.”

  “I have no intentions on ever speaking to him again,” she retorted.

  He relented and rode on in silence.

  She heard a sound, like the growl of a bear coming from their left. She looked that way.

  Neill heard it, too, and held his blade to her throat. “You should not have let yourself care, MacPherson!” he called out into the trees, knowing they were being followed.

  “Pity more for ye that I did.” Came a voice, deep and rich—and from above. Not heaven, but the treetops.

  Hanging upside down, Tristan appeared, and having just one opportunity to get it right, he snatched the knife from Neill’s fingers and smashed him in the temple with the hard hilt.

  Rose’s captor slipped from the saddle.

  Rose and Tristan were next, jumping to their feet and leaping into each other’s arms. She let him hold her for a long time, neither one saying a word until Jones, who was the one who provided the bear-like growl, rode toward them from the trees.

  Tristan had come for her again. She hadn’t doubted he would.

  “All right now, you two,” said Mr. Jones, reaching them.

  Rose turned, flushed, and then smiled at him. What was Mr. Jones doing with Tristan? A wave of horror rolled over her when she thought of what Neill had done before he left. Was everything gone? Her heart sank. “Mary?”

  “Mary is safe, lass.” Tristan told her, bending to lift the unresponsive Neill over his shoulder. “Come, before he awakens, and I have to kill him.”

  Jones dismounted and punched Neill in the face to make certain he didn’t wake up too soon and threw Neill over the saddle before regaining his place.

  They agreed that Rose would ride back with Tristan and they would meet up with Jones on the road beyond the bend.

  Tristan’s horse was waiting for them deeper in the woods. He had dismounted and climbed the trees in the dark and then traveled through them.

  They had never heard him coming in the treetops.

  Oh, she thrilled in the scent of him—leather and virility. She wanted to fall into his strong arms and give herself to him. She wanted him to possess her, become one with her.

  He was holding her hand and it made her want to possess him, to hold his unbridled heart. She wanted to be the only one who could.

  “Thank you for coming for me. When did you know the captain and I were—did you save the captain, Tristan?”

  He turned to her as they reached Perceval and helped her mount. “Aye. He is well and tendin’ to his wife. He wished to come fight fer ye, but Jones convinced him that his wife needed to see him and that he could relinquish yer care to me.”

  He fit his foot into the stirrup and tossed his leg over the horse then spread his thighs on either side of her.

  Her body shook for him. She fought her scandalous desires and tried to focus on what she needed to know. “You said the captain is tending to his wife. Is Mary here? With you?”

  “Aye,” he told her, happily at first, and then his smiled faded. “She is all that is left of yer home, I’m afraid.”

  She leaned her head on his chest behind her. Poor Alana and Steven, the others who had returned home when she had. She wanted to weep over them.

  He held her close to him. She felt his heart beating hard against her ear.

  “’Tis good news aboot Mary, but there is even more, my love.” His velvety voice resonated through her.

  His love?

  “Yer father is also with us.”

  She sat up and stared at him, forgetting for a moment what he had just called her. “You met my father?”

  Tristan nodded, offering her a reassuring smile.

  “And he is well?”

  “He is well.”

  She couldn’t stop smiling. “You will tell me everything, but first…” she snuggled even deeper against him. When she spoke, her voice sounded like the purr of a satisfied cat. “I want you to know that I have been thinking of ways to thank you for all you have done for me.”

  “Ye dinna need to thank me, lass.”

  “I think I have come up with something.”

  “Oh?” A simple word spoken on a husky whisper. “What have ye come up with?”

  Her smile deepened. She doubted he could see it.

  “I cannot tell you, as you are not my husband.”

  She was certain she heard him growl.

  “Do you not wish to wed?” she asked, afraid of his answer.

  “Rose.”

  “Aye?”

  “I want to be wed but only if ye are to be my wife. If we find a priest, we could be married by tomorrow.”

  She felt a wave of excitement at the idea of it and nodded her approval. She frowned though a moment later.

  “You said you have met my father. What if—”

  “I have already told yer father that I intend to wed ye. He has accepted it.”

  Rose’s eyes opened wider. “You told him, and he accepted it?”

  He nodded. She wouldn’t believe it until she heard her father say it with his own mouth.

  “What could you have told him that would change his mind?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Mayhap he changed his mind because of Mary, or because I didna use ye to get to him.”

  “What does Mary have to do with anything?

  “I saved her.”

  “What do you mean you saved her, Tristan?”

  He began to tell her how he’d climbed the trees outside the castle, but they met Mr. Jones on the road. Neill was still unresponsive, and it was nice for Rose to see him in the same position she was in earlier.

  They continued on with Tristan and Mr. Jones occasionally telling her everything that had happened at the castle.

  Tristan reluctantly admitted to being at Callanach, hiding in the trees and watching her.

  Rose wished she had known he was there. She found that she liked the idea of him watching her—but only because she loved him. She wanted to tell him. It would have to wait.

  “I awoke to everythin’ burnin’. I heard Mary in her cottage. The door had been barred on the outside.”

  “I’m so thankful you saved Mary. The captain loves her very much.”

  “The captain was grateful,” he let her know. “He and I spoke briefly. But we will speak again.”

  “He admires you,” Rose shared. “He knows many things about you from studying you for so long.”

  He scowled. “I didna know he studied me.”

  “Are you not flattered?”

  “Flattered that the captain of an earl’s guard knows more aboot me than I do? ’Tis odd.”

  “Why?” she asked. “You are well known. He agrees with what you do.”

  “Is that why he didna kill me?”

  Rose nodded and then was silent when they reached the camp where she’d been a prisoner not so long ago.

  Bodies were strewn everywhere. No one had been left alive. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for the souls of the dead.

  A few minutes later, they passed another camp. It was the camp that the captain had been taken to. All the men there were dead, too.

  “Tristan,” she said on a quavering breath. “Did you do all this?”

  His silence blended with the eerie stillness of the night.

  “Nae, I am not that skilled. Jones and Captain Harper were with me.”

  “Aye, you are that skilled,” she countered.

  “You are,” Jones added in agreement.

  “I’m wounded.” He continued to try to dissuade any compliments. “Mayhap when my shoulder isna throbbin’, I could fight more, but I am thankful fer the help I had tonight.”

  “And he wants no praise.”

  “Only God is deservin’ of praise, Jones.”

  “He was raised with a priest,” Rose explained to Jones when he stared after Tristan with a perplexed look on his face.

  “A man who kills for a living was raised with a priest.” Jones shook his head at it all.

  “He wouldna approve if he knew what I was doin’,” Tristan let them both know. “He thinks I’m helpin’ my cousin rebuild the life of a small village in England.”

  Rose heard the regret in his voice. She wanted to talk to him about it, and about her uncle being involved in all this, but they were already approaching another campsite and she wanted to speak to her father first.

  Rose’s gaze fell on her friends, the captain and his wife, and then her heart leaped within her. Her gaze moved over a hooded figure. Was it—?

  He turned at hearing the riders and his hood fell back when he leaped to his feet and ran to her.

  “Father!” she rejoiced, seeing him. Did Tristan save him, too? She jumped from Perceval and collided in her father’s arms. “I was so frightened for you,” she cried then pulled back. “Look! Tristan has captured Neill! Do you remember Neill, Father? ’Twas him all along. ’Twas Neill! The monster’s reign of terror is over.” Already a prick hooked her guts. She had to tell him about his brother.

  “I was so frightened for you also, Daughter. Neill is mad. He went mad years ago. I had to keep him out.”

  “Then you know he killed mother?”

  His gaze flicked to Tristan. She turned to Tristan to see if he had anything to say. He didn’t. He kept his eyes on the earl.

  “I feared it,” her father admitted, looking away, “because they were burned, and I had asked Neill to follow your mother.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Why?”

  He told her about Neill suspecting her mother of adultery. Aye, Neill had tried to tell her the same story. She didn’t want to hear it from him or from her father.

  “And you believed him.” It was not a question, but more of an accusation.

  “I was not—”

  “You had Neill follow her. You did not believe her.”

  “I was mistaken not to believe her,” her father said with sadness straining his voice. “It cost her her life. I did not want to make the same error with you.”

  She narrowed her eyes on him. “What do you mean?”

  He gave her the slightest of smiles. “On your word, I put all my hope in Tristan MacPherson. Imagine that. He said he could bring you back and I believed him.” He turned to Tristan. “Thank you, yet again.”

  “Aye,” Rose agreed. “I feel the same way.”

  Tristan winked at her over the firelight and her knees turned to honey.

  “Now,” her father said, circling Neill. “What am I to do with him?”

  “I saved him fer ye to kill,” Tristan told him. “Ye lost almost as much as Rose did at his hands.”

  Rose tossed him a scowl that she was sure he could see over the crackling wood and glowing flames. “Then why am I not being given the chance to decide what I want to do with him? He burned me and scarred my body. He killed my mother and robbed me of my freedom.”

  None of them said a word. Her father, her friends had never heard her use these kinds of words. Tristan thought about leaping into a tree when she turned to him.

  “I didna think ye wanted to kill a man, lass.”

  “You thought incorrectly.” She marched to where Neill lie and stood over his body. Tristan began walking toward her but she bent and yanked Neill’s sword from its sheath.

  “Rose,” Tristan held up his hand. “Ye canna come back from this.”

  She held the hilt in both hands and lifted the sword over her head, blade pointing down.

  “Dinna do it,” Tristan said softly, cautiously, “Twill haunt ye more than what he ever did to ye. If ye kill him, he will always live, here.” She glanced at him to see him pointing to his temple.

  She shook her head. “You kill others for a living, and you mean to tell me not to kill the monster that has taken so much from me? From my father?”

  “Ye reminded me that God is the judge. Does that not include fer ye?”

  She held the sword until her arms shook. Finally, she dropped it on his chest and burst into tears.

  Tristan and her father went to her. “There is something I must tell you, Father,” she wept, looking at him. Oh, the weight of it was too heavy. She couldn’t carry it alone. Her father had to be told the truth so that he could be safe. “He did not execute this alone. He had help.”

  Not a sound was heard save the snapping twigs in the fire.

  “What are you saying?” her father finally asked, as if stricken.

  “It pains me to say this, Father,” she cried.

  He looked around at the faces aglow in firelight. “Something he told you?” he asked, pointing to Neill.

  She nodded, watching him go pale. “Uncle Richard has been behind it all.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Lord Thomas Callanach found a place to sit again around the fire and covered his mouth with his hands, and then he covered his eyes.

  The captain and Jones swore into the night. Tristan stood by the fire, looking into it. Rose wondered what he was thinking, but she couldn’t go to him now, no matter how badly she wanted to.

  She went to her father. She should have waited to tell him. She was behaving rashly and making foolish decisions. She was so tightly wound up. She felt as if she would spring at any moment. Too much had happened in too short a span of time. She blushed thinking of how wanton she’d been with Tristan earlier. It was so unlike her.

  “Father,” she said, rushing to him and wiping her eyes, “forgive me for having to tell you such terrible news. I was stunned and shocked when he told me.”

  “What else did he tell you? Did he tell you why my brother would—” He stopped to let a sob escape him.

  She should have waited until they were alone. She vowed to herself that if she ever had the chance to kill her uncle for breaking her father to pieces, she would take it.

  “He said Uncle Richard loved mother before you—that they were betrothed. Her father owed Uncle Richard a large debt of money and your brother accepted her as payment.”

  Her father shook his head. His gaze was fastened to Neill. “He did not love her. I did.”

  “Of course, he did not love her,” Rose soothed. “He had her killed. That is not love.”

  “Why? Why have her killed? Did he say why?”

  She nodded instead and almost shook with emotion. She thought she might go mad with it. Her father didn’t need to know more gossip about his wife. “Your brother hates you, Father.”

  “He is likely the governor who paid me to kill ye, Lord,” Tristan pointed out.

  Her father agreed.

  Rose had just almost killed a man. She was glad now that Tristan had stopped her, but it wouldn’t change the monster’s outcome.

  “We need to tie him up and keep him alive for now,” she told them. “He will verify to you what I have said and give us any other information we want—and then, one of you who have killed before, please do so again and kill him. Do not make me have to do it, for I will if I must. He…” she paused and began to cry again. She held up her hands to ward off Tristan and her father when they moved to go to her. “He believes he…cares for me. He will never leave me alone. He believes he is helping me by getting me away from you, Father.”

  Her father’s face contorted with pain and then he nodded his head. “I will see to his death. The captain will do it.”

  “Nae,” Tristan told him. “I will kill him in that case, fer all he has taken from Rose.” No one argued with him. “As her husband,” he continued and set his searing green gaze on her. When she smiled at him and nodded, he exhaled and continued, “’Tis my right.”

  “Her husband?” her father croaked out.

  “With yer blessin’ of course, Lord,” Tristan repaired quickly.

  Rose’s father turned to her. “This is what you want?”

  “Aye, ’tis,” she told him with no hesitation.

  Her father stared into her eyes and swallowed. “Forgive me for allowing myself to be so fooled by my brother that I let you suffer for it.”

  “Father, I—”

  “He fooled us all,” Jones interrupted her and said with disgust.

  Rose smiled with affection behind her hand and then kissed her father’s cheek. “’Tis not your fault.”

  He smiled at her and then turned again to Tristan. “Then, of…of course you have my blessing. See that you guard and treasure her or—”

  “I vow it,” Tristan told him and came near. He was smiling at her and held out his hand.

  She let go of her father’s hand and took Tristan’s. He turned to her and touched his free fingers to her face. “In Highland tradition, we can do this right now.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Do what right now?”

  He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment. “I take ye as my wife, Rose.”

  Rose’s heart thumped like a war drum. Was this truly happening? Was she taking Tristan as her husband? In the sight of her father? In the sight of God?