At his back he could feel the heat of the growing flames but from the corner of his eye he caught sight of Hero pulling the bed curtains down, intent on slowing the fire’s progress. Bloody hell, he needed to get her out of here. “Damn it, Hero, leave them! Go!”
“No,” she shouted, pulling the blanket off the bed and throwing it on top of the burning curtains to smother the flames. A rush of reluctant pride filled Ian at her ingenuity.
A rush of footsteps announced the arrival of the servants, and secure in the knowledge that Hero would be safe, Ian turned back to the man whose shirt he still held tightly in his fist. The man was holding his bloodied nose in both hands. “Who sent you?” Ian demanded once more, determined this time to have the answers he needed.
“Bugger off!” he spat, spraying blood.
“Wrong answer,” Ian ground out and hit him again, driving the man to the floor. “Who?”
The man gasped in pain and finally said, “A lady.”
“What lady?” With a snarl, Ian hauled the man upright in preparation for another go round, but the man held out his bloody hands in submission.
“Stop, me lord, I beg ye,” he pleaded. “Her man came about looking for someone to do a job. I never met her. Only saw her once from a distance. I dinnae ken who she was, I swear.”
“You’re lying.”
Banging him against the wall once more, impotent fury surged through his veins. He needed an answer. Bloody hell, he’d thought they were done with this!
“My lord!”
Ian turned to find his two hired guards, Burr and McCaffey, behind him. A glance beyond showed a handful of servants helping Hero douse the flames with pitchers of water probably drawn from his bath. The air was thick with smoke. His bed was nearly destroyed, all the linens devoured by the fire. If they had been asleep in it, the flames would have swallowed them whole.
“Where the bloody hell were you?” he demanded furiously of the guards as he lifted the arsonist and threw him bodily toward the men. “How did he get in here?”
“I dinnae ken how this happened, my lord,” McCaffey said defensively. “We were out in the hall all night. Cannae see how he got by us.”
“One thing I needed you to do was keep her safe.”
Rage and fear wracked him. Despite all his precautions someone had gotten that close. Too close. Bloody fucking hell! Swallowing his fury, Ian looked around the room once more, taking in the servants. Boyle, Dickson, Mandy, and a half dozen others in his room all stopped, staring at him. Hero was as well. “The door was locked.”
“Aye,” Burr nodded. “Yer man, Boyle, had to let us in.”
Boyle had let them in?Ian frowned and pointed to the bloodied criminal at their feet. “Lock him up and make sure he doesn’t get away.”
“Where would you have us put him, me lord?”
He smiled darkly. “The dungeons, of course.”
Turning, he strode across the room and caught Hero by the elbow and pulled her out of the room, ignoring her squeal of protest. Once they were in his wardrobe, he released his grip and shared his residual temper with her. “I told you to get back.”
Hands on her hips, she frowned in return. “And let the fire burn down the entire castle?”
“That’s what the servants are for,” he argued, grasping her around her upper arms but resisting the urge to shake her silly.
“I’m not incapable.” She thrust out her impudent chin. “And it would have engulfed the room before they arrived if I hadn’t done something.”
Swallowing a groan, he looked to the ceiling seeking some divine intervention. “Good God, yer a stubborn lass.”
“Really?” She punctuated the sarcasm by crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you think you’re the only one who gets to be intractable?”
His eyes ran the length of her, searching for injury. Her hair and face were sooty, her dressing gown ruined, but she didn’t seem to have gotten hurt. For that he was thankful, but it did not ease the frustration borne of fear for her life. Bloody hell, he needed to rid their lives of the threat against them before those machinations reached a deadly crescendo. He drew her into his embrace. “You could have been killed, lass. Please, just listen to me in the future, Hero. I could not bear to see you harmed. I only want you safe, protected…”
“Cosseted like a child?”
He stroked her hair with a chuckle of defeat. “Perhaps.”
“I’ll be sorry to disappoint again and again in the years to come.” Finally she leaned in to hug him back. “What is going on? Who was that man? You seem more angry at all this than surprised. Just as you were the other day when Papa’s saddle broke. What aren’t you telling me?”
