Chapter 27 #2
A thought echoed in her mind over and over.
Who is this man?
Lachlan glanced at her, worried. “Stay behind me,” he urged.
“I will stand where I must,” she answered. Her voice came steady, and she was grateful for that.
Neil stepped through the arch first. He moved like a blade lifting from its sheath, and his hand settled on the hilt of his sword. His focus zeroed in on the cluster of men at the far side of the courtyard.
Kristen had seen him angry, confused, and in pain. She had never seen him like this—steady and quiet, every muscle coiled.
Her mind tried to flash back to the study and failed. The corridor had swallowed that memory so quickly that she couldn’t believe she could ever retrieve it.
All of that could wait. For now, she needed to be as alert. If whatever Lachlan had come to report was as urgent as the air made it feel, the clan would need her to be clear-headed as well.
They followed him down the last set of steps, and the stone turned to packed earth under her shoes.
The crowd opened a little as the Laird advanced. Faces swam up and away, and torches spat and hissed. Kristen kept her chin up and her hands loose, the way she had learned to do when fear wanted to overtake her.
The ring of people ahead thickened. She saw the flash of a blade lifted in warning. A woman’s cry thinned the air and shivered through the knot of bodies. Kristen’s heart lurched hard enough to make her blink.
She reached for Neil’s sleeve without thinking. Her fingers closed around wool, then loosened. He did not look back or even try to slow down. The heat radiating from him felt like a wall she could stand behind.
“Make way,” Lachlan called.
The line broke, and a path opened, narrow and lined with wide eyes. The three of them stepped together into the tight circle of light.
Neil stepped into the cleared space. In the center stood a man he recognized immediately. He would recognize that crooked smile and those gleaming brown eyes anywhere.
It was him. One of the ten bandits who had kept him captive for five years. The last one.
He was holding a woman by the arm, and he dragged her so quickly that her feet barely touched the ground. Her hair hung in knots, and tears streaked her face. Her whole body shook.
“Recognize her?” he called.
Neil didn’t need to look a second time before recognition dawned on him.
The nurse Kristen had assigned to the children saw it as well, the resemblance. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “It is her,” she choked out. “The bairns’ maither.”
A cold weight sank into Neil’s stomach. Beside him, Kristen’s hand flew to her chest.
“Dear God,” she whispered.
The bandit narrowed his eyes on Neil, and a bitter smile twisted his mouth. “The Pirate’s line,” he boomed. “I suppose it isnae impossible for it nae to ruin honest folks wherever it goes.”
Heads turned toward Neil, their attention tightening like a rope.
He stepped forward, keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“This woman ran off with yer braither,” the bandit continued. He jerked the woman nearer, and she stumbled. “He played the gallant, claimed her, then left her to bear his children with nay name and nay home. When we caught him, he begged like a bairn. Begged to crawl back to ye, Wolf.”
Low murmurs rose in the air.
“Is that true?”
“They say his faither did the same.”
“Leaves a mess for other folks to clean up.”
Neil’s blood simmered. “Ye kidnapped and killed me braither,” he bit out. “How dare ye speak of honor while ye use the maither of his bairns as a shield?”
The bandit laughed, the sound ugly. “All this started with yer braither’s lust and this lass’s folly. I must give it to ye, Laird Drummond. Ye still manage to hold yer braither’s memory like a holy word.”
Kristen made a small sound, hurt and angry. Neil felt the air tilt toward doubt. Not fallen, but wavering.
She stepped forward before he could stop her, her voice clear despite the tremors. “Whatever ye think ye are owed,” she said, her eyes on the bandit’s knife, “it isnae owed by her. She is a maither. Let her go. If ye want vengeance, take it up with men who can meet ye fair.”
“Nay,” he snarled, wrenching the woman close. “It has everything to do with her. It started when she and her sister thought they could take what they pleased. The Laird’s kin killed mine. Why should our women rot while yers eat by warm fires?”
The woman sobbed. “Please, I never wanted this to happen. Ye must understand. Please, me children.”
Neil drew his blade a hand’s breadth. “Let her go.” The words were quiet. The edge in them was not. “Yer problem is with me, nae her.”
The bandit gave a malicious smile. “Ye still daenae get it, do ye?”
“Please,” Kristen called out, her voice shaky.
For a moment, nothing could be heard but silence. The bandit’s eyes quickly searched the crowd, and for that second, Kristen really believed she had gotten through to him.
“’Tis too late.” His voice reverberated in the night.
“No!” Kristen screamed, her eyes wide.
The bandit shot her a cold, hard look before driving his knife into the woman’s belly.
For one stunned heartbeat, there was no sound at all. Then, screams ripped the silence apart.
The woman fell to her knees and clutched at her belly with both hands, blood running warm over her fingers. Someone in the back wailed, and another cried. Torches hissed their distress. People reeled away and then crushed closer, not knowing which way to move.
Neil stepped in front of Kristen and shoved her behind him with his left arm, then his sword came free with a clean scrape. “Stay back,” he ordered.
His eyes never left the bandit.
Lachlan was already driving forward with three guards, their faces contorted with fury. They hit the bandit low and hard, took his legs, and tore the knife from his fist. He spat at them and laughed again, wild.
“Kill him!” a man shouted.
“Make him pay!” another yelled.
“Silence,” Lachlan snapped. He planted a knee on the bandit’s back and bound his wrists. “Nae yet. We can use him. There is more that he kens.”
He lifted his head and found Neil’s eyes across the churned earth, almost like he needed to convince him. “Me Laird, ye ken very well that we need to take him alive.” He was breathing hard. “We throw him in the cells and let him feel what ye had felt for five years.”
Neil’s grip tightened on his sword. White-hot rage flared in his chest and asked for the quickest end. His brother’s face flashed through his mind, and he tried so hard to shove away the image of him begging for his life before the bandits ended it.
The world narrowed to the pulse in his thumb and the man writhing in the dirt.
He forced air into his lungs, then made himself count a slow beat.
“Aye.” The word came out rough. “Take him. Keep him alive.”
Lachlan nodded once, sharp and grim. “Take him away,” he instructed the guards.
They hauled the bandit to his feet, ignoring the way he kicked and spat. Blood flecked his lips, and he hurled even more curses over his shoulder as they dragged him toward the stairs that led to the dungeons. The words bounced off stone, foul and half mad.
Neil did not watch. Instead, he turned around and stood between the fallen woman and Kristen. His chest rose and fell too quickly. His blade hung low by his thigh, and he could feel Kristen trembling behind his shoulder.
The peace that had almost taken root in his study was gone. Nothing of it reached this ground. The woman lay between him and the people he meant to protect, and the man who had made the courtyard a gallows was alive because he had said so.
They would take the bandit to the dungeons, and they would drag the truth out of him. That was the only way. Everything that happened today would make sense later.
He had to believe that, even though he wanted nothing more than to drive his sword into the bandit’s chest.