Page 111 of The Laird's Masked Passion
“Yer… faither.”
The word entered him like a blade finding an old wound. “What did he dae?”
“I dinnae ken.”
“Ye expect me tae believe Munro would slaughter women and children over a grievance ye cannae name?”
“I swear it!” The prisoner’s voice cracked. “He never told us. Only that yer faither took something from him. That the MacKenzies owed him blood. That ye would pay what yer faither escaped paying.”
Colin stared at him.
His father… always his father.
The dead man had left cruelty behind as other men left land, silver, or respectable family names. Colin had spent his lifegoverning what that man ruined, burying what he had killed, and proving by every measured decision that blood did not command character.
Yet Elspeth’s life now stood in the shadow of sins Colin could not even name.
The man’s mouth moved again. “Munro said she would beg before?—”
Colin struck him. His fist met bone with a sickening crack. The prisoner’s head snapped sideways, with blood springing bright from his mouth.
Colin struck him again. He prisoner collapsed against the wall, but Colin caught his tunic and hauled him forward. Rage moved through him without reason or boundary.
It demanded pain. It demanded payment. It demanded that someone feel the terror that had seized him when he saw Elspeth bleeding.
He drew back his fist, but then, a gasp came from the doorway. It was small and shocked… it wasfamiliar.
Colin froze. Elspeth was standing beyond the iron threshold in her loose wrap and slippers, with one hand pressed protectively against her injured ribs. Torchlight caught the loosened fall of her hair and the pallor of her face.
Her gaze moved from the prisoner’s blood to Colin’s raised fist. The rage abandoned him so swiftly it left sickness behind.
He released the prisoner. The man fell heavily into the straw.
Colin looked down at his own hand. Blood darkened the knuckles. For one dreadful instant, it was not his hand at all. It was his father’s.
“Elspeth…”
He could not endure the expression in her eyes long enough to discover whether it was fear.
Colin crossed the chamber at once. He did not touch her. He did not trust the blood upon his hands, nor the violence still beating beneath his skin.
He passed her without another word and left the prisoner behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Elspeth watched Colin disappear into the passage.
“Colin!”
He did not stop. Elspeth gathered her wrap and followed, ignoring the sharp complaint beneath the bandage at her ribs.
“Colin!”
This time, he stopped. He did not turn immediately. His head lowered, and his uninjured hand closed into a fist at his side.
“Go back tae yer chamber.”
“Ourchamber,” she corrected, breathless from pursuing him.
