‘Would you meet your maker with this on your conscience, and meet him you will, my friend? Your back is broken, and your companions are gone. I can finish this quickly or leave you out here to linger. It will be a bad end when the wolves come at night. So speak.’
‘Jasper. Have mercy,’ said Rowenna.
‘They would have raped you and then slit your throat,’ he said. His words were chilling. ‘These men did not come upon us by chance. They were sent to kill me, and they would have if not for you. You heard what they were going to do with you. Why should I show this dog any mercy?’ Jasper stared down into the man’s face. ‘Who sent you?’ he snarled.
‘You know who, and he will get his way,’ he panted between groans of agony. ‘He wants you reiving bastards gone for good. You are already dead, Glendenning, as dead as me.’ The man’s head lolled sideways. ‘Ah, I am fading.’ He grasped Jasper’s jacket and held on. ‘I must say my words before I go to my maker. Hear my confession.’
Jasper lowered his head to the man’s ear. There was a whispered exchange, which Rowenna could not catch.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. Just nonsense. I could not make out most of it. Look away, lass.’
‘Jasper, no.’
His voice was fierce. ‘I said, look away, or else this will haunt your dreams for years to come. Do it.’
Rowenna turned around and stared at the clumps of bluebells carpeting the woods. A horrible gurgling told her that Jasper had slit the man’s throat. Was it mercy, or was Jasper the ruthless savage she had always thought him to be?
‘Jasper. The third man?’ she said, not daring to turn around.
‘He is long gone. With any luck, he will bleed out before he reaches his master.’
‘And who is that?’
Sir Henry Harclaw, the new Lord Warden of the Marches.’
***
A good while later, they sat before a roaring fire, with Rowenna squinting at a bloody gape of sliced flesh.
‘By all that is holy, woman. Can you not be gentle?’ snarled Jasper, whose mood had darkened considerably.
‘The wound is deep. It has to be stitched, and you must sit still.’
He had turned a little pale, so Rowenna made the next stitch as gentle as she could manage. The curse she got for her troubles made her glad that she had lived around coarse men all her life, yet still, it made her blush. Jasper’s eyes on her made her skin take fire, too. As they had ridden back to Kransmuir, he had explained why the new Lord Warden might want him dead along with other lairds. King James regarded the Scots as a scourge on the borders – villains all. He wanted to stamp them out like vermin.
Jasper had been talking about murder and intrigue, but in some strange way, there had been intimacy in sharing his peril and vulnerability. It was like a savage lurcher rolling over and showing its soft underbelly. But since their frank exchange, he had been watching her like a hawk. Was it because her life had been threatened, or did he regret spilling his secrets and wish to take them back?
‘A couple more stitches, and we will be done,’ said Rowenna.
‘That is a shame, for then I have no excuse to get you up close and stare at you.’
Jasper’s steady regard made Rowenna’s heart thump. ‘You should count yourself lucky you are alive instead of wasting your time staring at me when I would rather you did not.’
‘But I will do it all the same, for I am only alive because of your courage. There is much to admire in you, Rowenna MacCreadie.’
‘My skill at killing a man, you mean. It was an awful thing. I never want to do it again.’
‘If you have to do it often enough, it gets easier,’ he said flatly.
There it was again - the ruthlessness that gave her pause. Yet Rowenna’s heart had leapt when she thought he might be lying dead in Slayfell Woods. What madness had come upon her? She had only to show him enough regard to gain her brother’s freedom and to stop her father from being thrown off his land. She did not want this soft feeling when she looked at Jasper. Nor did she like the pulse of desire deep in her belly when she looked at his rough hands and imagined them all over her body.
‘How do you know how to heal, lass?’ he said, startling her from her unclean thoughts.
‘I stitched my brother up many times. He is always getting into fights he cannot win.’
She met his eyes. Not a flicker of guilt crossed Jasper’s face at the mention of Bran locked in his fetid dungeon. He looked away first and said, ‘Your hands are shaking? Did my stolen kiss in the woods move you so much?’
