Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,40
palm to her head and closed her eyes for a moment with impatience. “What are you talking about, Captain?”
“We received two missives, Lady. One from your uncle and one from the Baron of Ayr informing your father that a very dangerous killer has been paid to murder him.”
Rose felt the air leaving her body. She thought she might faint. She hoped she would. For then she wouldn’t have to hear Tristan’s name come from the captain’s mouth. She wouldn’t have to explain why she was traveling with him.
“He is called Tristan MacPherson,” the captain said, stilling Rose’s heart. She felt faint. She went to her horse and leaned against it.
“I know that you travel with him.”
Her knees almost buckled beneath her. She may as well have been speaking to her father, for whatever she told the captain, he would tell the earl. “I did not know he was coming to kill my father until recently. He also did not know who I was, for I never told him. He was escorting me home because he wanted me safe.” She looked him in the eyes, hoping he could sense that she was no longer going to wait. “He saved my life, and more than once. He saved me from being set on fire after I was thrown atop a pile of the dead.”
His expression had collapsed, and his light blue eyes filled with tears as she told him what had happened to her and his ten comrades.
“I should have gone,” he lamented.
“Then you, too, would be dead,” she told him. He was her friend, one of the only friends she had ever had. She’d taught him how to read and he taught her how to shoot an arrow. He was the husband of a woman whom Rose loved and admired. He was loyal to the death to her father—which could be a very big problem for her now.
“I must get this medicine to him or he could die.”
Something terrible seemed to dawn on him and his eyes widened with…regret?
“I will escort you to him and then I must take you home to your father.”
“Do you think I am a fool, Captain? The moment you see him, you will kill him. You think he is a threat to my father.”
“He is not?”
She shook her head then stopped. “I will explain it all when I return to you. Please, give me—”
“Lady, I’m not leaving you again,” he told her. “Let us proceed to wherever ’tis you are going. The sooner we get there, the sooner—”
“Just a moment,” she cut him off and held up her palm. “How do you know I travel with him?” She stared at him for a moment and then brought her hand to her head. “’Twas you who shot him!”
When he didn’t deny her charge, she clenched her jaw. “’Tis your fault he is sick right now.”
If he didn’t move out of her way, she would stab him.
“Does that please you, Captain?”
He shook his head. “No, it does not, but I’m still coming with you.”
She mounted her horse and rode away. He followed her. She couldn’t get rid of him. When they finally reached the village…the inn, she stopped and dismounted.
When he did the same, she held her hand up in front of him to stop him. She hated what she was about to say, for she loved the captain. She spent more time with him and Mary than with anyone else besides her father since she was fourteen. But she had no choice. She wouldn’t let him finish what he started. “If you so much as come near the door, I will tell my father that you raped me, and that is why you did not bring me back sooner. Do you understand, Captain?”
She thought he looked quite stunned at her threat. A fortnight ago, she would never have been so bold, but she’d changed. She had almost died. She had watched ten of her father’s men die, unable to do anything to help them. She had been rescued by a man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And though the captain’s expression soon changed from surprise to sorrow at her terrible threat, he was making her leave Tristan. She was not about to bring more danger to Tristan.
He nodded and she hurried inside the inn.
She saw Nel first and handed her the vessel. “Take care of him, please. You have done so much already, but please do not let him die.”
Nel graced her