Page 38 of Ruthless, But for Her

Ashton resisted rolling his eyes, even though Roland likely couldn’t see him. The light of their lantern illuminated little, and the moon even less.

He’d had enough of the man’s games.

“You name extortion, and coin, and misunderstanding,” Ashton said. “We’ve named none of those things.”

“It is you who play games. I know each and every one of you,” Roland said, his perfect veneer continuing to crack. “Including your captain.”

Leif had come only as an extra hand, in case one was needed. He would never speak to Roland. He’d brought a rule down from the north and he’d never broken it… He would not offer words to Englishmen. He’d led men against them once, and buried too many of his own, to spend breath on one now.

Roland didn’t take Leif’s silence well.

“Either demand your price or be done with it. Either way, I would have my wife returned.”

He looked past the brothers to Cassia then, as though the matter were settled and only the moving of her remained.

“Come here,” he said to her.

Cassia had been looking at her feet on the wet stone for most of the walk down. She looked up now.

“No,” she said.

She didn’t raise her voice but simply stated the word.

“I will not,” she added.

His brothers closed rank around her. That, more than her abduction apparently, angered Roland, whose face showed the first signs of cracking since they gathered.

The tide swirled at the stones below them. Behind Roland, the coble knocked once against the end of the landing and went quiet.

Ashton tensed, the thought of Roland’s claim on her maddening.

Roland crossed the last of the stone. He took hold of Cassia’s arm and pulled, meaning to have her whether she’d come or not.

She twisted away from him.

It was a small thing—a woman keeping her feet under her, refusing the hand of a man who thought he owned her. Roland stepped to keep his grip, but that step was onto the black and slick weed, which gave him nothing to hold. Ashton reached for Cassia’s other forearm before Roland slipped into the water. Whether she’d have been able to hold her footing mattered little. Ashton was taking no chances.

Roland went into the water, the dark swirls closing over him.

Ashton released Cassia, calling for Ryker to steady her as Roland’s men started forward. Sorren stepped into their path, and they held. He bent down, searching the dark water. Roland came up, close to the edge, close to where Ashton knelt. The deputy warden’s hand shot out of the water reaching. For the stone. For anything he could grab onto.

Ashton looked at it, but didn’t move.

Roland went under a second time and came up lower, his mouth already full of the sea. His clothes had him. The water was cold and deep and cared nothing for Roland’s newly appointed position.

His men stood too far back to reach him, and the sea was faster than they were.

No one moved.

Not the brothers. Not Roland’s men, who watched their master’s hand go under a third time and did not so much as reach for the line on the coble. Whatever they’d been paid, it hadn’t been enough.

The water took the last of him.

Cassia stared at the place where her husband had been, and then at Ashton. She glanced at his hand, still at his side.

He waited for the question.

But it didn’t come.