Another small sound answered.
She turned the corner and froze. Katie was pressed against the far stall wall. A thick arm banded across her chest, pinning hersmall hands to her collarbone. Her face was red, and her eyes were wide and shining. Confusion sat larger than fear. Behind her stood Calum.
Erica’s heart sank. It was like seeing the wrong piece of a puzzle.
“Calum.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied it. “What are ye doing?”
He did not shake or even look intimidated by her presence. He turned his head a fraction and studied her like a man checking the sky for rain. “Trying to save ye, me Lady.”
Her breath caught. “Save me?”
“And them,” he added, tipping his chin toward the doorway.
The air whooshed out of her lungs, and she felt her knees wobble. She let her hands hang open at her sides and willed her voice to remain steady.
“Look at me,” she said. “Ye can tell me anything ye like, but do it without hurting the lass.”
Calum frowned, as if she had said the wrong figure at a market stall. “Hurt her?” he asked. “Why would I hurt me own daughter?”
The words hit her like a full hand, and she almost swayed. The stall swam and steadied. She stared at Katie’s small fingers, at the arm across her chest, at the knife.
“Yer… daughter?” The word tasted wrong in her mouth.
Calum sighed in a way that sounded almost kind. “Oh, ye truly have nay idea what is happening, do ye?”
Her thoughts scrambled, hunted for a path, and found none. She kept her hands open and her feet planted, and tried to keep him talking.
“Then tell me. Tell me now. Let the lass breathe.”
Calum eased his hold a hair. Katie drew a thin breath. The knife did not lower.
“I am saving ye,” he said, calm as if he were naming a chore. “From an unhappy marriage.”
Her stomach dropped to her feet.
“I failed the first time,” he said. The arm across Katie’s chest tightened. Her small body jerked with a stifled sound. “I willnae fail again.”
The knife caught the torchlight and flashed.
He turned his face to Erica, patient, almost tender. “I watched ye from the first day,” he said. “I saw how the castle tried to make ye its own. I saw how he tried to make it neat. He cannae marry ye. He will break ye to fit the hole that was left. I willnae allow it.”
“Calum,” Erica said, forcing a breath past the knot in her chest. “Listen to me. Whatever ye think ye are preventing, ye are wrong. Let Katie come to me. We will talk in the yard. We will talk where ye can tell me everything ye want. Where there are more eyes.”
He shook his head once. “Oh, please. Eyes lie. They always have.”
Erica’s mouth felt dry as stone. She lifted her hands higher, her palms bare. “Ye said Katie is yer daughter. If ye love her, daenae hold her so tight that she cannae breathe. Let her stand behind ye. Let her hold yer coat or something. Just pull the knife away. Ye daenae have to do this. There is still time to lay it down.”
Calum tilted his head. “There is nay time. Nae for me. Nae for him. I gave him the chance to choose right. He chose wrong. I will choose for him.”
The knife lifted a fraction.
Erica understood then with terrible clarity that the danger had never been the man in the cloak at the market. It had never been letters or seals or whatever she had thought was keeping her up at night.
It was personal and intimate.And it had been standing guard all along.
CHAPTER 29
Erica did not move.
