Page 43 of The Scot’s Secret

“I ran back from the secret passageway. They were everywhere by then. They’d breached the walls, and as soon as I pushed open the door in the floor and climbed up through it, I knew I’d made a mistake. But I was never afraid.”

Alex lifted her shirt over her bare shoulder and rubbed it, listening.

“I would have been,” she amended. “But there was no time. The man who walked up behind my father saw me. His face was helmed, but I always imagined his sneer behind it. He lifted the knife and plunged it into my father’s neck beneath his helm before I could even call out. He slumped to the ground.”

She turned, her face streaked with tears, and looked at him.

“’Twas the last I ever saw of him.”

She blinked and returned to her previous position on his chest. Which was just as well. The pain in her eyes was something no words, no gesture of comfort, could ever take away. He felt helpless and inadequate in the face of it.

“How did you get out?”

Clara’s father had been killed in the hall of the castle where she’d lived. Her description of the secret passageway confirmed something he’d suspected. She was an English noblewoman. One who was lucky to be alive.

“I could hear his voice, yelling at me to get to safety. Then the man. . . he saw me. Sometimes, in the dream, my father is still alive—lying on the ground, telling me to get out.” She swallowed. “That night. . . whether the man who saw me was killed or simply never bothered to chase me, I do not know.”

She’d stopped crying. Taking a deep breath, she finished her story. “He was so angry that I’d gone back. I remember him emerging from the trees and pulling on my hand. . . Much of the rest is a blur.”

“And then started your life as a lad.”

She moved away from him as if she’d only then realized the intimacy of their position.

“Nay. The idea came to Gilbert later, when he realized that while peasant’s clothes could hide my identity, they did not keep me from another kind of danger.”

“Another kind of danger?” The words had hardly left his mouth before he already understood.

“Men are not quite as discreet in their attentions to a woman in my new station.”

He could imagine as much. Anger at the unknown, faceless men welled inside him.

“Gilbert joked that ’twas as much for his safety as mine.”

“When I asked you to remain as a woman, you feared being recognized.”

Clara jumped up so fast, Alex didn’t have time to grab her. She fled from the tent, and he did not attempt to stop her.

She’d clearly not expected to reveal so much. But though he knew part of her story, he still had so many questions. Why had they been attacked? Why did she still hide her identity? Could she not attempt to reclaim her rightful inheritance? Who was Clara, the most enticing, innocently fierce lass he’d ever met?

Clara’s scream pierced his soul. In one fluid movement, Alex grabbed his sword and pulled back the tent flap.

An overpowering rage coursed through his body at the sight before him.

12

He would kill them both.

One man held his hand over Clara’s mouth while the other reached for her. Reivers by the looks of them. English or Scottish, he couldn’t tell. Nor did it matter. Both would die.

“Hold or she’s—”

Alex would do no such thing. Not giving either man time to recover from the shock of seeing him emerge from the tent, he moved on them so fast that his thoughts never caught up to his actions. He removed the most imminent threat first, the dagger wielded by the man who held Clara. Kicking it from the man’s hand, Alex ran his sword through the blackguard so quickly that his only reaction was to fall backward on the cold ground where he would remain.

The second reiver was already upon him, but Alex had watched his movements from the corner of his eye and easily ducked the thrust of his lance. Alex spun to the left, away from Clara, and held up his sword in defense. Now fully prepared for a fight, the reiver came toward him once again. As he’d done to the man’s companion, Alex quickly found the exposed area beneath his leather jerkin. With one thrust of his sword, the man fell backward. But unlike his companion, this one did not die immediately.

“We just wanted a turn with the wee lass,” he foolishly croaked up at them.

Scottish. For today, at least. Though some reivers were honorable, others simply lived to prey on the instability of the border, making a living from others’ hard work. Scottish one day. . . English the next. . . whenever it suited them.