the plague. As much as I want to be with ye, I dinna think ’tis wise to take this further until we have spent more time together.”
“Oh? Do you want to spend more time with me, then? Do you think you can win my father’s favor?” she asked when he nodded his head. “I told you he is very protective after my mother and her young maid were killed on the road to Lockerbie. It happened six years ago, but you would think in his mind ’twas only yesterday. He takes every precaution to see to my safety.”
He smiled and looked as if he were going to say something, but then stopped. His smiled faded.
“Six years ago? Her young maid?”
“Aye,” she told him, trusting him with her father’s secret that it was not she who died. “They were on their way to a large market. They were killed and set on fire. Everyone assumed Jonetta was me. My father let them believe it in the hope that the one who wanted to kill us would cease if they thought I was dead. Tristan?” She sat up and felt him for fever. He’d gone a sickly shade of gray. “Are you feeling ill?”
“Rose,” he managed. “I dinna think ye ever told me who yer father is.”
Why would he care about that now? “He is Thomas Callanach, the Earl of Dumfries Are you going to tell me if you are feeling ill? You look—”
He stopped his horse and closed his eyes. “Go to yer own horse, lass.”
She wasn’t sure what had come over him, but she did as he asked and watched him pass her in silence.
Chapter Eight
She couldn’t be the daughter of the man he was riding to Dumfries to kill. But he knew it was true. Callanach was the earl barricaded in his castle, the only one no one could get to.
Aye. Aye. He wanted to tell her he was ill. Deathly ill.
The Earl of Dumfries had killed his wife and daughter in Lockerbie six years ago. But how could this be? His daughter wasn’t dead! The girl in the carriage wasn’t her!
He had to think. She had told him her father had secluded her because someone lit their home on fire and later killed her mother and burned her to ashes. But there had been another body. The serving girl.
Someone had been trying to kill the earl’s family. Tristan understood why Dumfries let the world think his daughter was the other body and built the wall to protect her.
But what if there was another explanation? Whose idea was it that the serving girl, Jonetta, should accompany the earl’s wife? Why had Rose stayed home? Why did it matter? He was paid to kill the earl. So what if Dumfries didn’t kill his daughter? Someone believed he was responsible for the deaths in that carriage.
His daughter. What would Tristan do with her? He had to stop whatever was happening between them before it went any further. He’d been paid to kill her father.
Should he tell her? He couldn’t take her back to her father’s castle and then cut his throat in front of her. If he told her, she would beg him not to do it. Could he resist her? If so, she would hate him. What did she think about her father being accused of killing her mother? Did she believe him innocent? Aye. She spoke of him with love. Her father was her protector. He had saved her from the fire.
Tristan felt ill. How was he to do it? He cursed inwardly and shook his head. This was precisely why he should never have become attached to her! Why he should not have allowed himself to care for her!
He had been paid four hundred pounds to kill the earl. It had apparently taken the man who had paid him almost four years to get the money.
Tristan didn’t care how long it took. Men of nobility cost more to kill. They usually had more barriers, including more guards for him to have to go through. If he was caught killing anyone of nobility, or a man of the cloth—like the evil bishop he killed last year, he would hang.
None of them ever had a daughter who almost died in his arms, one who reached straight into his heart, grabbed hold of it, and shook him to his very core. To never see her again would mean the end of him.
What could he do?
“Tristan, will you tell me what has