“So you have family troubles?”
She placed a hand on her breast and tried to quell the bitter laugh rising in her throat. Unfortunately, she failed, though she did turn aside in an attempt to disguise it as a cough.
“I have more troubles than I could list,” she said, seeing no reason to be less than honest. “The most pressing is that someone is trying to kill me.”
~*~
Lucian stared at her. Surely he’d misunderstood. Regrettably, the seriousness of her expression said that he hadn’t.
“That cannae be so.”
“It is. I am to be murdered.”
Lucian felt his chest tighten, heard a rushing in his ears.
How could anyone wish to harm such a bright and lovely young woman? Even a grasping stepmother after a fortune – if the rumors were true that Lady Melissa’s father had bequeathed her a more than tidy sum. Monies the gossipmongers said she planned to spend on aged coach horses, if he recalled correctly.
Still, to attempt cold-blooded murder?
It was madness.
“Lass, tell me I didnae hear you correctly. I cannae believe-”
“It’s quite true,” she said, looking as serene as if they were speaking of the weather. “A footbridge I use daily fell apart beneath me several weeks ago. Not long after that, a decorative rooftop urn crashed down onto Cranleigh’s terrace, missing me by a hair. I might have my mother’s Scottish spirit, even her belief in faeries, but I assure you my fanciful mind did not conjure such threats.”
Lucian pushed away from the table, pulled a hand down over his chin.
He did not like this.
Not at all.
Someone is trying to kill me.
Her words burned into him, searing across his mind, scorching their way down to his heart, and finally reaching into the depths of his soul to ignite all the inherent, raging fury a Highlander feels to see an innocent harmed, especially when that someone is a woman.
He couldn’t bear it.
And he’d do something about it.
Now.
Stepping closer to her, he ignored civilities and gripped her by the waist, looked deep into her eyes.
“You do not believe these incidents were accidents?”
She shook her head. “I do not believe in coincidence.”
“Neither do I.”
He frowned, the rage inside him blazing ever hotter.
“Do you have proof?” He kept his voice level, not wanting to unsettle her.
Again, she shook her head. “No, but when the footbridge collapsed I did think one or two of the cracked planks looked as if they’d been freshly sawed in places. I was more concerned with making certain I hadn’t broken any bones, scrambling out of the gorge-”
“A gorge?”
“I didn’t fall to the bottom. I only tumbled a way down its side.”
