Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,49

outside the chamber then stepped back inside the room.

“I almost forgot.” Alana pointed to a small basin atop a vertical chest. “I brought you water for bathing.”

Rose went to it. The water was cold. She picked up the cloth dangling off to the side and dipped it into the water.

She washed herself, unwilling that Alana should touch her. She was angry and she didn’t know why. She said nothing. She never did. She had always thought that if she just kept quiet, they would like her. It hadn’t worked. She’d never told her father how she felt or how she was treated. Everyone treated her well when her father was near.

She thought that mayhap it was time to tell him.

When she finished cleaning herself, she let Alana help her dress and do her hair. She wore it swept up atop her head in thick curls with scarlet ribbons entwined throughout.

She felt older. She wanted to look it.

She left the chamber with Alana behind her and turned to her. “Do not have the dress burned, only cleaned.”

“I think—” the maid began, looking as if she were about to scold Rose.

“Cleaned, Alana. Not burned.”

She kept walking, passing Alana and closed her eyes.

Oh, Emma would be proud of her. She’d told her over and over while she visited that Rose was too much of a mouse with her servants. That was why they treated her so poorly.

Mayhap Emma was correct. Rose didn’t know but she kept walking, down the stairs, to the great hall, where she knew her father would be.

There was no servant to open the heavy doors, so Rose did it herself.

She blew her stray lock of hair off her eye and stepped inside.

Her father bolted from a chair where he sat with Captain Harper and hurried to her.

“My love! It cheers my soul to see you alive and looking so well. Come and sit. Captain Harper was just telling me some of what you have been through.

“Oh?” She slipped her dark gaze to the captain. “What have you told him?”

She wanted to know if he’d mentioned Tristan. She wanted to be the one to tell her father. She should not have fallen asleep last evening—

“I told him you were sick with the men and tossed onto a pile of the dead to be burned.”

“Did you tell him how I was saved?”

“No, lady, that is for you to tell.”

“He saved you,” her father guessed. “MacPherson saved you.”

“Aye, Father. Soldiers were about to set me on fire. I could not move because I was so sick with the pestilence, but I knew I was going to burn. He fought them off. He could have left me there alone to die, but instead, he wrapped me in his plaid and carried me away on his horse.” She wept as she retold what Tristan had done for her. She told him how she had been taken by a band of twelve miscreants with satisfying their lustful passions on their minds. “He killed them all.”

At the end of her words her father shared a concerning look with the captain.

“I owe him much,” her father breathed out. “Rose, I feel as if I will go mad when I think of what you went through. I wish you had never left the castle. Even if the pestilence did not kill you, dozens of other things could have.”

“He saved me, Father.”

“And in all this time, and all this saving, he never asked who you were?”

“He did not want to even know my name. I told him it was Rose and he never asked for more. Why would he? He was not thinking he had just saved the Earl of Dumfries’ daughter, who was alone in Crawford.”

“She is correct, Thomas,” the captain told him. “He did not suspect who she was or use her to get to you.”

“How do I know that, William?” her father asked. “Why would any man risk his life getting the terrible sickness for no gain?”

“He is not afraid of the Black Death,” Rose told them.

They both exchanged another look, this time it was a bit more fearful.

“He told me he was paid by a governor to kill you,” Rose told them. “He does not know who, but he was paid four hundred pounds.”

Her father shook his head. “Why? William tells me ’tis for killing your mother and Jonetta—”

“And me,” she corrected. “They believe you killed me, as well.”

“It makes no sense!” her father exclaimed with hands held high. “Who is this governor who paid