to be asleep, Rose?”
It was Neill’s voice! His legs she’d been tossed over! She thought about continuing to pretend, but she couldn’t. “What would you have me say thrown over your lap, facing the ground?”
“You are prideful.” His soft laughter twisted her belly into a knot.
“And you are a monster,” she replied.
“How so?”
She didn’t want to speak to him, but she had much to say and she wouldn’t do this in her position.
With new determination, she pushed up and sat sideways in the saddle and looked him straight in the eyes. “You burned down the captain’s house with his wife in it—”
“Just a moment,” he protested. “I was told that everyone had left. Was I not?”
Rose stopped. He had, indeed, been told that. “Neill,” she wept. “The captain’s wife was in their home. He will never forgive you for this.”
“What can I say?” he went on, sounding only slightly penitent.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with burning down my house when I was eight.”
He couldn’t maintain eye contact with her and finally gave up and shook his head. “I cannot tell you that.”
“What do you mean you cannot tell me that?” she asked, grabbing his arm and growing hysterical. “Neill, why would you? I…I almost died!”
He shook his head. “No! I saved you, Rose. Not your Father. ’Twas I who ran inside and saved you.”
What? No. Her father saved her. “I do not believe you!”
“I set the fire. I was there first. I heard you screaming long before he did.”
Rose’s head was spinning. He set the fire. He set the fire.
“Why did you never tell me the truth?”
“It did not matter to me, as long as you were safe.”
He loved her then. She didn’t care. She only cared about one thing. “Did you kill my mother?”
He exhaled, looking into her eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. Rose watched and waited for him to answer, utterly horrified by his reluctance.
He’d killed her mother.
A sob burst through her lips and shook her whole body.
He moved and tried to comfort her, but she drew back her arm then let her hand fly. It cracked him across the face and turned his head fast enough to pop his neck.
The men around her gaped at her and then drew blades. Neill’s hand in the air stopped them.
“Did you set her on fire while she lived?” Rose shouted at him.
“No,” he said and took hold of her wrists.
“You are a monster!” she screamed at him, trying to break free of his grip.
She heard the captain moan somewhere close by. She looked around and quickly saw him sprawled across the lap of one of Neill’s men. He was waking up. She looked behind them at the black, billowing smoke rising to the sky from where their homes had been.
Where his wife had been. Rose wanted to weep for him.
“No!” his voice rang out. Heart wrenching and anguished from someplace only a few knew.
“Mary! My wife! Let me go! I will kill—”
A low thump sounded and then silence. They hit him again.
Rose cried out for him, but he was quiet.
“Rose,” Neill said softly, pulling her attention back to him. “You have me quite wrong.”
She couldn’t believe he was talking about himself when he had just heard a man crying for his wife, a wife he had killed.
“I was young when I burned your house down,” he continued, oblivious to any pain going on around him. “I did not know you would be there. I hadn’t meant to hurt you and I have been sorry for it for many years. With your mother, well, it had been time. It was duty, not personal.”
She hated him. He spoke about killing her mother as if it were nothing at all. “You destroyed lives. You destroy them still without a care. How did I never see through your façade?”
“There was never a façade with you, Rose.”
She refused to be reminded of their friendship when he had lived within the gates of Callanach Castle.
“You said killing my mother was your duty. To who?”
“Ah, now that is the important question. One I intend to have answered for you very soon.”
She didn’t want to wait.
“Who paid you?” Was it the same man who paid Tristan to kill her father? “Was it a governor?” If not, just how many people wanted Thomas Callanach killed? And for what?
She had to find out.
“A governor?” He seemed genuinely perplexed then shook his head. “Who is this governor?”
“I only know that he paid Tristan MacPherson to kill my