Page 69 of The Highlander's Auctioned Wife
“Nay, he willnae,” Gordon hissed.
“I found him hidin’ out in a huntin’ cabin outside Morden,” David continued, his tone more anxious than Gordon had ever heard it as if he, too, understood the enormity of the moment. “Nay one in the village would say aught, but the fortune-teller gave him away. Said she owed it to the Lady.”
The bairn with sandy hair and eyes like the sea…Gordon hadn’t forgotten the crone’s words, so opposite to the portraits on the wall in the domed gallery. Nor had he forgotten that woman’s insistence that Anna should stay with the light, away from shadow. And what was he if not something dark and twisted and terrible?
“He willnae need much interrogation,” David said, “but I thought I’d leave it to ye anyway.”
Gordon turned the blade over and struck it with the hammer, wanting to pummel it to ash. “He’s spoken already, then?”
“Aye, M’Laird.” David cleared his throat, coughing a little from the smoke that wafted through the room. “He was understandably desperate to spare his own life. Couldnae get him tostoptalkin’, truth be told. Said he needed money, that henever meant to be disloyal to ye, but an offer was made to him and a few other lads to…”
“To what?” Gordon snarled, when David didn’t continue.
“He was meant to kill Lady Anna that day, M’Laird,” David replied, almost reluctantly. “He was meant to first put poison in her drink, but he said he couldnae find a moment to do it. Then, he was instructed to hunt the pair of ye down, and had arrows to do it, but he lost sight of ye. He was tryin’ to find yer tracks again when ye hurled that rock at him, and after that, he lost his nerve. Accordin’ to him, he was hidin’ from the man who employed him.”
Gordon gripped the hammer until his knuckles were bone white. “And these other lads?”
“Given the same mission, M’Laird,” David answered. “They were instructed to sneak in and kill her tonight. Failin’ that, to make it a spectacle tomorrow.”
“Is she… safe?” Gordon’s voice hitched for a split-second, his heart cracking as if he had just brought the hammer down on it instead of the blade.
David’s footsteps drew closer. “Aye, M’Laird. Her braither is with her now, and I’ve got four of our best stationed in the hallway outside her chambers.” He set a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “But I’m nae so idle as that, M’Laird. Ye ought to ken me better by now.”
“Speak,” Gordon repeated, unable to form any other words.
“I found the other lads. Our wee one-eyed archer gave them up. They’re in the dungeon with him, under the promise that they’ll be paid more than what they were offered,” David explained. “I told ‘em they’d have to stay there ‘til the weddin’ was over, and they dinnae seem to mind. Of course, they willnae be seein’ a single coin but?—”
“But?” Gordon rasped, shaking David’s hand off his shoulder.
David sighed heavily. “They’re just desperate men, M’Laird. Young, foolish, fallen on difficult times, most of ‘em with more than a monetary debt to pay. I’m nae sayin’ their actions should go unpunished, but… maybe ye might be lenient.” He paused. “After all, they gave me a name.Thename, M’Laird.”
Gordon froze. At long last, he was about to find out who had orchestrated all of this, from that dreadful night twenty years ago, to the kidnap that had cost him his eye.
“The weddin’,” he said instead, delaying the moment. “Are ye certain it willnae be compromised?”
David snorted, as though insulted. “Aye, M’Laird. I’ve made arrangements for Lady Anna to be escorted to the chapel, and nay one will be permitted inside save for yer family and hers. To be doubly certain, the gates are locked and I have two of our men takin’ names now—anyone who shouldnae be here will be thrown out.”
“Who is it?” Gordon finally asked. “Give me the name.”
David cleared his throat, bracing to reply, when a breathy gasp cut through the thick air like a sharpened blade. Before Gordon could think, or remember that he wasn’t wearing his eye patch, he turned to see who had made that startling sound.
And when he saw the fear, the horror in his betrothed’s eyes, transforming her face into a pale, open-mouthed mask of shock, he realized too late his mistake.
Indeed, in that moment, he wished he had never met her… for as she stood there staring at him, he understood with a jarring pain what someone was trying to take from him. Rather, what he had almost lost, and might still.
Anna couldn’t take her eyes off Gordon, her heart pounding in her chest at the sight of him, bare-chested and majestic, wielding that blacksmith’s hammer as if it were as light as a twig.
If she had a lifetime to draw him, she doubted she would ever be able to map the defined lines and contours and intricacies of his flexing, tempting, exquisite muscles, moving with the formidable strength he possessed.
It wasn’t even the first time she had seen him like this, but the novelty was equally compelling.Thistime, he glistened with the sweat of his toil, all that hard muscle slicked and gleaming,his dark, damp hair swept back off his face, his one eye glittering in the light of the forge. She had never seen anyone so extraordinary before, and if these were his fires of Hell, she was only too happy to burn for him.
In truth, it took her a second to realize that he wasn’t wearing his eye patch.Oh… so that’s what was hidden beneath…
Of everything she had imagined and pictured, she couldn’t have been more wrong. His eye was gone, there was no escaping that fact, but it almost looked like he had closed it to aim his bow. Not horrifying or ghoulish, just a closed eye that happened to be covered in scars, the skin around it silvery and dappled with an array of angry hues, from the lightest pink to the darkest purple. Akin to an eyepatch beneath his actual eyepatch.
He glared at her with his good eye. “Leave us.”
“Nay, I’m nae leavin’,” Anna replied, remembering why she was there.
