He recognized her instantly.
“That bloody bastard!” Tavish hissed, kicking Goliath into a gallop to reach her.
He threw himself from the saddle before the enormous hunter had fully stopped.
Damn Grayburn and his cold, black heart.
“Isla.” He crouched in front of her, pulling her hands from her face. “Love. Darling. What’s happened?”
She lifted her head, tears clinging to her lashes, strands of blonde hair hanging limply beside her jaw. She had never looked more miserable or more heartbreakingly beautiful.
“Isla,” he whispered again, a hand raising to thumb away her tears. Anything to offer her comfort.
However, she didn’t lean into his palm or sigh with relief to see him.
Instead, her lovely face contorted in rage.
She placed both palms on his chest and shoved. Hard.
Tavish toppled backward, landing on his bottom in the dirt with anoof.
Isla stood and stomped down the road, away from him.
Ross swung from his saddle beside Tavish, taking Goliath’s reins in his hand.
Tavish rolled to his feet, brushing off his buckskins as Isla strode away. She made it about twenty feet before stopping in the middle of the road, her bonneted head turned away, her hands balled into fists. She stood there for several seconds before tipping her head back . . .
. . . and letting loose a heart-rending scream.
The sound came from deep within her chest—harsh, desperate, and so anguished. To Tavish’s ears, it was the sound of every lady abandoned by a lover. Every mother who learned of her son’s death on a battlefield. Every woman who suffered the impotence and rage of what it so often meant to be female.
Tavish closed the distance between them, stopping at her side.
She glanced at him, silently daring him to curb her actions.
As if he would ever clip her wings.
She screamed again. That gut-wrenching noise he had once taught her.
And Tavish . . . did nothing. He stood and let her unleash pain.
Isla roared several times, her bonnet slipping from her head and hanging down her back, before turning toward him. Tavish reached for her, but again, she rejected his help.
Instead, with a sob, she beat her fists against his ribs. He tightened his muscles and let her vent her rage.
Becausesheknew: Unlike every other man in her life, Tavish would bear her fury. He would let her expend it on his body and would hold her in the aftermath.
Becauseheknew that her anger was actually grief and pain in disguise.
Because their minds, as ever, were uncannily attuned.
The anger in her fists decreased with each strike, until slowly, she crumpled—slumping into him, her hands balled against his chest. Shegreited, forehead pressed to his collarbones.
“He c-cast m-me out, Tavish,” she hiccupped. “He s-said he was d-done. That y-you were c-coming behind us, and I w-was yours to d-deal with now.”
Tavish pulled her against him, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “He’s an arse-headed blackguard, Isla, and I should have plowed my fist into his face last night.”
If Tavish thought his words would help, he was mistaken. Shecollapsed into dreadful wracking sobs that sounded as if her very being were coming undone.
