knotting. She was going to be ill.
She heard a commotion at the doors to the manor house. She saw Tristan, and the captain, and her uncle with his remaining men.
She held up her palm to stop their advance. Then she stepped in front of Emma. Her father threw her a smirk. “You were saying about my mother?” she addressed her father.
“Was I?” his smirk hardened. “She was a slut. Just ask my brother.” He smiled when Uncle Richard paled and gave her another penitent look. “I wanted to get her away from him before he killed her.”
“Forget them, Rose,” her father commanded, dragging back her attention. “This has always been about you, Daughter. After Neill killed them and set them on fire, I knew one thing for certain. Your brother was too dangerous and could not be around you. What if he turned on you…or me?
“I told everyone at the castle that once the gates were shut no one could leave, so if they wanted to go, they should leave when they could. Almost everyone left.”
Rose shook her head “I have been alone all these years because you wanted to keep a killer you created from me.”
Her father nodded. “He knew what you mean to me, Rose. He wanted to take you away from me. I could not let him do that. That is why I could not let you marry just any lord. Your husband had to be able to protect you from Neill. That was my first requirement.”
“But you fell in love with a man who was sent to kill me.” He peered over to Tristan and smiled slightly. “There were many times when I feared for my soul. I could not imagine who would have hired MacPherson, but the fact was, he was coming to kill me. I did not imagine my brother was guilty of sending him, but it all makes perfect sense now.”
He pulled the bow taut and changed his aim. It took him no time at all to hit her uncle but before he could nock another arrow, Tristan was moving.
Rose refused to call out or to look. Her father, though she still loved him, had chosen his path. She ran to her uncle lying on the ground with an arrow in his shoulder.
Her father was scrambling to get his last arrow nocked when Tristan called out to him, walking toward him. “Come on!”
Rose could tell her husband was furious in the way his muscles danced over his jaw—and the roiling seas in his eyes.
Tristan reached him first and smacked the bow and arrow out of his hands. He leaned in and said something to her father, but the earl refused. Tristan shrugged his strong shoulders and then hauled back and punched the earl in the face, breaking his jaw.
The earl screamed and held his hands over his face.
“Where is Jones?” Tristan demanded.
Her father glared at him and pointed to the stables. The captain sprinted there and went around the side. He returned a few moments later, shaking his head. “He is badly hurt. Stabbed in the belly, but he’s a tough bastard and I think he will live.”
Tristan set his pained gaze on Rose, but she held him to his promise not to kill her father.
For the space of a breath, no one was looking at Thomas Callanach. That was all the time it took for him to rip a small dagger from a fold in his cloak and turn toward Tristan.
Captain Harper pulled a dagger from his belt and hurled it at the earl a moment before Dumfries flung his knife into Tristan’s back. Harper’s dagger met its target and sank into the earl’s eye.
Rose didn’t scream. She placed her hands over her mouth and turned to the captain.
“Rose,” he paused, looking at a loss for words. He tried anyway. “Forgive me. I wish I did not have to—”
“Forgive you for saving Tristan’s life?” She was horrified that she felt a little relief. Her father would have rotted in a prison or he could have gone free again like he had the first time. He would have definitely come for her. The captain saved her life. It was heartbreaking that he had to do so against her father.
They waited at the manor house until her father and Neill were buried and Mr. Jones could travel.
Rose took a few moments to pray over her father and to bid him farewell. She wasn’t sure how long she should pray for his soul. His deeds