small tavern two villages away.
After making sure they hadn’t been followed, Tristan dismounted. He waited for Rose and Eleanor to do the same, and then paid two stable hands to take the horses.
“We will be waitin’ fer Davey MacDonnell,” he told the women as he brought them to the tavern and pushed open the door. “MacDonnell fought at my side in many battles. I trust him with my life. He will take ye home to yer kin, Eleanor.”
She nodded and wiped her eyes as they sat at a small table. “Who are you, Tristan MacPherson? Why did you come to save me from the governor?
Rose smiled when his gaze slanted to hers. He’d saved this woman, as he had saved her.
He didn’t smile back.
“Yer Uncle James paid me to kill Walters and take ye back,” he told her woodenly then ordered three ales. “He awaits ye in Selkirk and will take ye home from there.”
Eleanor wept and repeated her eternal thanks for saving her from her captor.
“He beat me every day. He expected me to serve and please him after he…he killed Jamie.”
Rose pulled Eleanor into her embrace and held the woman while she wept.
When MacDonnell finally arrived, he and Tristan shared a quick embrace and some talk about what had happened at the governor’s place.
“Och, ye are a wily bastard, MacPherson. I would wager they didna even know ye were in the house until ’twas too late.”
Rose thought how correct Davey was. Tristan was silent and efficient. He’d saved Eleanor. He’d delivered her safely to MacDonnell.
But he was correct in telling her that what he did was hard to live with. He’d killed Trevor without a second thought. He’d killed the governor as easily as if he were petting the village dog. He didn’t look at his victims or acknowledge them at all when they cried for mercy.
It would be hard to live with…knowing he did it.
She sighed, afraid that she would never be able to let him go.
As she suspected, he was angry with her for showing up in the middle of everything. She could have been killed or gotten him killed. She shivered at the thought.
He’d barely spoken a word to her and when he looked at her, he furrowed his brows. Rose doubted he knew he was doing it.
She longed to speak with him, to be closer to him and soften his hardest resolve. She knew she could. He liked her. She’d teased him about it, but it was true. Perhaps he didn’t like many, but he liked her. She could see it in the way his beautiful, green eyes shone from deep within when she said something that made him smile, which started out as a rare occurrence and was happening more often.
For a man who showed no mercy, it was the very first thing he’d given her. She would never forget it. She would forgive him anything because of it.
Chapter Seven
They left the tavern before the sun went down and parted ways with MacDonnell and Eleanor.
The instant they were alone, Tristan turned to Rose with an angry scowl that rivaled anything he’d given her yet. “Ye could have been killed. You could have gotten Eleanor killed. What did ye think ye were goin’ to do to help me, Rose?” He didn’t want to let it sink in that she was coming to mean too much to him. He’d nearly lost his mind when he heard her warning shout. When he left the governor’s house with Eleanor and saw her at the gate with the guard, he doubted his skill to save her. His knife would come close to her. If she moved…for an instant, he’d lost sight of everything but her. Killing the governor, rescuing Eleanor, getting out alive, nothing mattered but Rose.
“I do not know,” she told him honestly. “I just know that I could not wait without so much as a dropped bowl echoing from a window. I thought for certain they had killed you.” Were those tears misting her eyes over him?
His brows knit over his eyes. No. He couldn’t show her pity. What she did was reckless and dangerous. He would never allow it with his men on the field, and she wasn’t even a man! “Not only is yer lack of confidence in me insultin’, but if I was dead, d’ye know what those men would likely have done to ye, findin’ ye at the gate fer the takin’?” He didn’t give her time to answer. His eyes grew