When she turned toward Callum, the moonlight hit her face, which glistened from the tears streaming down her cheeks. She brushed past him, two daggers and a sword crushed to her chest, leaving Lucan groaning on the ground. Callum watched her, hips swaying attractively, despite her determined march. He was certain she would pause, turn, and offer some explanation, but when she started up the hill he had descended not long before, he understood she had no intention of saying anything else.
He turned to Lucan. “I’m letting ye live, though I doubt ye’ll make it out of here alive. But hear me now. If ye do somehow live and think to come after me or Marsaili, I’ll nae be so generous as I am at this moment. If ye try to take her again, or threaten her in any way, I will rip out yer heart with my bare hands.”
“I look forward to ye trying,” Lucan called to Callum’s back, for he had already started after Marsaili.
He overtook her on the other side of the rocky ledge where a stream meandered through the thick woods. She didn’t pause in her stride or acknowledge his presence. “Marsaili,” he said, thinking she would surely stop.
“Aye?” Her tone was cool.
“Ye are going the wrong way. My home is to the north.”
“I’m nae heading to yer home,” she replied, quickening her pace.
“Do ye nae wish to return for yer friend before I take ye to Dunvegan.”
She came to an abrupt stop. “Ye?”
“Aye. I’ve decided to take ye myself.”
She gave him a wary look. “Nay. I dunnae have time to return for Maria.”
He frowned. “To where do ye flee in such a rush that ye would leave yer friend behind?”
“She will ken,” Marsaili replied and turned away to continue her flight. He grabbed her arm, sending the sword and one of the daggers she had been holding to the ground between them. Something inside him jolted with the contact, and he was fairly certain it was his heart. She did not try to pull away, but perhaps she sensed he would not let her go. His resistance to Marsaili was nearly nonexistent, and he could not afford for that to be so. His greatest defense would be to allow her to depart as she wished, but no force on Earth, even his position as laird, would compel him to abandon her when she was in such danger. The admission was dredged from a place beyond logic and reason.
Marsaili was strong, yet when faced with the enemies that were hounds on her heels, she was very vulnerable. And whatever secrets she was hiding from him, for he saw that she was in the depths of her gaze, they must have weighed on her most terribly to cry for a man who had seized her twice. No, Callum could not part with her. The best he could hope for was to keep his guard up and not allow himself to be drawn to her so much that he once again forgot his responsibilities. Yet, in order to help her, he needed to know the truth, or as much as he could persuade her to tell him.
“What the devil are ye about, Marsaili? Maria told me ye share the same mother with the MacLeods, and she mentioned that ye once believing me honorable cost ye much. I’d stake my life on the fact that ye dunnae have any intention, nor did ye likely ever, of traveling to Dunvegan Castle.” An outraged look crossed her face, but it did so a breath after her eyes had widened to the size of saucers. “Dunnae bother to deny it,” he growled. “Yer guilt shows in yer eyes. Why did ye tell me ye were going there to a certain MacLeod? And surely ye have nae been at yer Campbell home these whole three years? Where have ye been? Running from yer father? Did ye flee to the MacLeods?”
She immediately cast her gaze from him and set out untying rope at her calf and moving it to her waist where she put her remaining dagger. “Ye dunnae have the right to demand answers from me,” she said, the words rough, as if she’d ground them between her teeth before spitting them out. “I dunnae hold importance to ye.”
A thousand denials came to his lips and froze there. Nothing he wanted to say was possible to do so without revealing how he really felt. There had never been a woman more important to him than she had been, and there never would be again. He wanted to reach out and caress her cheek, bridge the distance that his duty required he keep from her. But he could do none of that. He curled his hands into fists, his desire for her thicker than the blood in his veins. “I may nae have the right to demand answers of ye, but as yer protector, I’m taking the right, mine or nae.”
“Ye’re nae my protector!” she said, her horror at the notion all too clear.
He would have been offended, but he wondered suddenly if she, too, was still drawn to him as she had once been and was fighting it. God’s blood, he was a fool to even ponder such a thing. It was more likely that she simply detested him and did not want to be around him because she believed him dishonorable. Yet around him she would be, whether she liked it or not.
“I am yer protector from this moment forward,” he said.
“By whose authority?” she demanded.
“By the authority given by God to all honorable men when a woman foolishly means to put her life in peril,” he growled, wincing the moment the belittling words left his mouth.
She whipped up the dagger that she had sheathed and pointed it at him. “Release me, or I’ll stab ye.”
“Ye would nae,” he countered, though he was prepared to block a thrust of her dagger with his forearm in the event that he was misjudging just how vexed she was.
She blew out a frustrated breath, which allowed him to exhale his own pent-up one. “Release me, Callum. Ye dunnae have a claim on me.”
Her words punctured his heart like so many well-placed arrows. “I dunnae, ye speak the truth, but I intend to see ye to where ye wish to travel, and I’ll nae be parting ways with ye until I am certain ye are safe. So ye can tell me where it is ye truly are heading, or I will simply throw ye on my horse and take ye back to my castle where I ken ye will be safe.”
“I imagine yer future wife would have a few things to say about that,” Marsaili said, sarcasm heavy in her tone.
“I imagine she would,” he agreed, not caring one bit in this moment.
“I kinnae return to yer home,” she murmured, almost as if distracted by her thoughts.
He looked down at her, her brown hair in wild disarray, dirt and traces of blood from branch scratches smudging her cheeks. None of it mattered. Her beauty radiated from within and made him want to weep shamefully like a bairn. He swallowed, keenly aware the battle to resist her was raging already.
