Thom barely lifted his head before another blow followed, this one to the gut, causing him to groan and double over.
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Douglas jerked him up to hit him again. “She’s my sister. How could you...”
Thom didn’t know what to say—what could he? Nor did he try to defend himself from the pummeling. Maybe part of him felt it was deserved.
“Jamie, no! Stop, you’ll kill him.”
“Good!”
Elizabeth’s attempt to get in front of him roused Thom enough to block the next blow and try to keep her out of the way. “Stay out of this, Ella.”
“No!” she shouted furiously, tears streaming down her face. “No!”
She turned on her brother and screamed at him to stop. James was beyond hearing, however, and it wasn’t until she threw herself between the two men that Douglas swore and stopped swinging. “Get out of the way, Ella, this is between me and MacGowan.”
“No, it’s not,” she bellowed back at him just as angrily. “This is whatIwanted. I’m going to marry him.”
“The hell you are,” Douglas said in a deadly voice that left no room for argument.
To her credit, Elizabeth didn’t flinch before the man whose formidable “black” rage inspired epitaphs and nightmares on the other side of the border. “Once you calm down enough to listen to reason, you’ll realize that there is no other choice. It’s too late.”
She didn’t need to explain what she meant by that. Douglas’s face turned so dark Thom thought he would strike him again and readied himself for the blow.
Douglas’s entire body seemed to be shaking and he spoke in chillingly clear words to his sister. “If you think I’ll reward him for seducing and dishonoring you, you are out of your damned mind. I don’t care what happened here.”
Her confidence faltered just a little. She paled slightly before lifting her stubbornly set chin a hair higher. “He didn’t seduce me; I seduced him!”
Despite his fury, Douglas took one look at her and laughed. “Which only proves how innocent you are. MacGowan has been waiting for his chance to take advantage of you since you were sixteen. No matter what he let you think, this has always been his damned plan. He wants you and nothing will stop him. Not even his precious honor.”
Thom could stand silent no longer. Douglas had a right to his anger, but Thom wasn’t the boy with soot on his face who had to keep his mouth closed and accede to his bidding. He was a skilled warrior—soon to be among the best—with more than enough land to provide for her.
“Whether you believe me or not, I did not intend for this to happen. I made a mistake. I forgot my honor. But perhaps I am not alone in doing so?”
The pointed reminder to a battle between them a few years ago when the situation was reversed—when Thom was defending Joanna’s honor—made Douglas flush with anger. “This is not about me, damn it!”
“Isn’t it?” The anger and resentment that Thom had buried for years emerged. “Isn’t it you who sent her away when she was sixteen to keep us apart? Isn’t it you who has never thought I was good enough for her? Isn’t it you who betrothed her to another man when you knew she didn’t love him?”
Douglas’s teeth clenched, his eyes narrowed and feral. “I will not apologize for doing what I think is best to protect my sister.”
“Nor should you. But what are you trying to protect her from? I may not have Randolph’s wealth, but neither am I just a village lad anymore. I can protect and provide for her. I’ll have lands of my own and be fighting with the best warriors—”
Douglas laughed in his face. “Not if I have anything to say about it. When I let it be known what has happened here, you’ll be lucky to have a hammer left to take back to the forge. You seduced the woman who is betrothed to the king’s nephew.”
“Was betrothed,” Elizabeth interjected, though they both ignored her.
“How do you think they’ll react?” Jamie continued. “You’ll be lucky if Bruce doesn’t have you strung up and Randolph doesn’t challenge you. You are done, MacGowan, done.”
Struck cold by the threat that he knew wasn’t a threat, Thom felt as if everything he’d worked for over the last three years, and all the happiness, all the hope, all the promise of the past few hours, had just been crushed—flattened—obliterated in one cruel blow.
Thom didn’t doubt Douglas would do it; in fact, he knew he would.
In forgetting his honor, in taking her innocence, Thom had handed Douglas the sword to destroy him. One word and everything he’d fought for the past few years, everything he’d earned, would be gone. His knighthood, his barony, and most important of all, his place among the best warriors in Christendom.
But it wasn’t until Thom glanced at Elizabeth that the full extent of the destruction struck him. In the horror of her expression, in the bloodless pallor of her skin, in the bleakness of her gaze, Thom knew that he’d lost everything. He’d lost her.
She was frantic. Desperate. “No, Jamie! You can’t! I won’t let you do that. Please, you have to listen...”
But Jamie wasn’t listening to anything. He was dragging her out the door.
