Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,68
over the years, and after he returned from a post in Wales, I began to fear him. In truth, he terrified me. He still does.”
“Why?” Tristan asked, though he knew what her father was going to say.
“Because I believe he killed my wife and her handmaiden.”
Aye. “More ye didna tell me,” Tristan growled.
“’Tis damning, I understand.”
“Aye,” Tristan agreed. “Whose idea was it to keep Rose from traveling that day with her mother?”
“Neill told me my wife loved another and was meeting him in Lockerbie. If she had Rose with her, nothing would stop her from never coming back. I did not want to lose them, so I kept Rose. My wife did not want to travel alone and asked for Jonetta instead. I…I asked Neill to follow Christina and find out who her lover was. I never told him to kill her!” He covered his face in his hands. “I live with this every day. I live with fear and guilt.”
Tristan did not comfort him and shook his head at Jones when he began to rise from his place. Jones sat back down.
“When I learned of what had befallen Christina, I was afraid Neill had done it. And because he burned them, I feared he had also set my home on fire and burned Rose. I was blind with rage and terror and shut the gates against him.
“Now, he has returned, and he has my daughter.”
“I will get her back,” Tristan said without hesitation.
“And Neill?”
“He will die by my hand.”
“What will you do with me?” her father asked.
Tristan kept his gaze on the flames of the fire. “Yer story seems believable, but there is one more thing. Why did ye want the world to think she had died?”
“That was not my plan. Neill knew she lived so why would I start such rumors that she had perished. When I learned that everyone outside the walls thought her dead, it did not matter to me. In fact, it made keeping her safe easier, so I used it. Besides, what was I to tell her, that her dearest friend was the monster she had always feared? ’Twas always about Neill.”
Tristan thought about it and nodded.
“So, you believe that I am innocent then?” the earl asked.
Mary had joined them with Jones. They were ready to leave.
“I dinna remember sayin’ that,” Tristan told him, going to the fire to help put it out.
“You would have killed me already if you did not believe it.”
Would he have? Tristan truly did not know. He didn’t think Dumfries killed his wife or set fire to his first house, but that didn’t mean Tristan trusted him.
“You could have tried to kill her to get to me,” her father told him, trying to strike up some awkward kind of conversation with him. Tristan went along for Rose’s sake.
“I dinna work that way,” Tristan replied.
“My daughter told me as much. She thinks very highly of you.”
Tristan had the mad urge to smile while he rolled up his blanket and shoved it into his saddlebag. His shoulder pained him as did the wound Captain Harper, whose wife he’d saved, had inflicted on him. But he liked that Rose had spoken highly of him.
“Tell me aboot yer captain. Jones tells me there is no one ye trust more than him with Rose’s life.”
“No one. He will protect her to the death and if he could do more he would.”
Tristan remembered Rose telling him a little about the captain. He was loyal to the earl more than to Rose.
“Why was Captain Harper not among the ten men who escorted Rose to Hamilton with yer brother?”
“Mary has recently suffered their third miscarried child. He wanted to remain with his wife.”
Tristan turned back and found Mary, readying to ride with Jones and looking out at the hills. He was glad he had saved her. He shook his head in sheer amazement. What was he becoming?
“And ye?” Tristan asked soberly, trying to think clearly and not about what was happening to him because of a lass. “Why did ye not go?”
The earl turned away and hung his head. “I was afraid of being found by Neill. I forbade him from coming home and took him from my daughter. I fear him now. I fear that when we find him, he will kill me.”
“’Tis all right. I willna let him kill my future father-in-law.”
A thin rivulet of perspiration formed above the earl’s grey brow when he turned back to narrow his eyes on Tristan.
“I did not give