Page 110 of The Laird's Masked Passion

Then she gathered her wrap, took one careful breath against the pain in her ribs, and went down toward the dungeons.

The prisoner had begun to smell of surrender. It clung to the small chamber beneath the sharper odors of damp stone, unwashed flesh, old straw, and the thin broth whichsat untouched near his feet. Hunger hollowed his cheeks. Sleeplessness bruised the skin beneath his eyes, while the cold kept a faint tremor moving through his limbs.

Colin stood before him with one arm held carefully near his wounded side. His shoulder burned. Every beat of his heart drove fresh heat beneath the bandage, but pain was merely another voice demanding attention, and Colin had never possessed much patience for demands.

“Tell me what Munro intends.”

The man lifted his head. The movement appeared to cost him.

“I told ye. I dinnae ken.”

Colin looked at the untouched bowl. “Ye have maintained that lie with admirable devotion.”

“It isnae a lie.”

“Nay?” Colin stepped nearer. “Men attacked me people during a feast. Women bled. Children ran through smoke while arrows fell among them. Me wife was cut open before me eyes.”

The last words emerged differently. The prisoner noticed. Fear sharpened his exhausted face.

Colin bent until little space remained between them. “What daes Munro intend?”

The man swallowed. For several moments, the only sound was water dripping somewhere beyond the wall. Colin counted each fall.

One. Two. Three.

His patience ended at six. He seized the man by the front of his filthy tunic and dragged him upright. Pain tore through Colin’s shoulder, bright enough to whiten the edges of his sight, but he welcomed it. Pain was simple. Pain did not possess Elspeth’s face or her blood upon trembling fingers.

“Speak.”

“He wants the woman!” The prisoner cried out of fatigue and desperation.

The words struck the chamber and seemed to remain there. Colin’s grip tightened.

“What woman?” He needed to be sure.

The man gave a weak, frightened laugh. “Y-yer wife… Lady Elspeth.”

Every part of Colin went still. He saw it and understood too late that silence might have served him better.

“He means tae kill her first,” he hurried on. “That is what he said. Her first, then the others. One man here. A family there. Guards, servants, tenants… anyone who belongs tae ye.”

The torch beside the door hissed. Colin heard it with unnatural clarity.

“Why?”

“So ye suffer.”

The answer was almost a whisper. The prisoner sagged within Colin’s fist, too weak to resist and too frightened to conceal what remained.

“He daesnae want ye dead quickly. He wants tae take them one after another. He wants ye watching yer clan disappear, kenning ye couldnae save them. Then, when there is nay one left tae mourn ye, he will kill ye, too.”

Colin saw the meadow again. Elspeth stood amid trampled fruit and overturned tables, with one hand red at her side. He heard her voice calling his name. He felt the terrible instant in which he believed the blood might be enough to take her from him. Something dark and ancient opened beneath his ribs.

“All because of what?”

The man shook his head.

Colin pulled him closer. “Because of what?”