Liam’s face drained of color. “Nay, ye are dead!”
She smirked, glad that she had surprised him at least. “Nay, I am not. Ye may have tried tae kill me, but I am still alive and well, no thanks tae ye, Brother.”
The laird collected himself, his face forming a sneer. “Well then, it seems the dead do come back tae haunt us.” He pushed through his warriors until his horse was standing before hers. “Ye look well, Ainslee.”
She made a great show of eyeing him up and down. “Ye dinnae look so well, Liam.”
A few of his warriors snickered; her brother’s face grew mottled from anger. “Get off yer horse, Sister.”
Ainslee did as he asked, holding her hands out before her. “What will ye do?”
He grinned, and Ainslee felt the blow before her world went black.
Ainslee awoke to the smell of a woodfire, and for a moment, she wondered if she was the one who was being cooked.
But there was no pain, at least not from a fire, that she could tell.
Flickering her eyes opened, she groaned as her head started to pound something fierce. There was a roughness at her back, and Ainslee realized she was tied to a tree around her waist, her hands tied before her in her lap instead of behind her back.
Her ankles were also tied together, the ropes cutting into her skin right above her boots.
It seemed her brother was taking no chances in her escape.
Warriors littered the clearing, the path she had been on nowhere in sight. Instead, they were covered by trees at all sides, blocking her sight of where she might be.
Not that she would recognize any of her surroundings. She had only traveled this path one time before and had spent the majority of it glaring at Arran’s back.
Arran. Ainslee looked up, noting that twilight had fallen while she had been out. Either her husband had decided not to come after her, or her brother had hidden them so well in the woods that he had not found them.
She hoped he had let her be, though in her heart, Ainslee knew he would come after her.
“Well, now ye are awake.”
Ainslee watched as her brother squatted in front of her, a leering grin on his face. “I never in mah days thought I would see ye again,” he said. “Yet here ye are, no worse for wear.”
Ainslee lifted her chin, meeting her brother’s gaze head on. “Aye. I did survive.”
“How?” he asked, looking as if he were genuinely interested.
“Did ye not think it was odd that ye didnae have a body?” she challenged. She had hidden in plain sight for years in fear that he would find her and kill her, but no longer.
She was not afraid of Liam.
He chuckled. “That bastard.”
Ainslee gave him a slow smile. Not only had her nursemaid helped her escape, but also the guard that he had sent to get rid of her body. He had been a sympathizer of hers for years and had gotten them out of the keep without her brother seeing before disappearing himself. Ainslee often wondered in those first few years what had happened to him, but she was happy to know that her brother had not figured it out.
“Tell me what else I have mistaken,” he continued. “Who have ye been with, dear sister?”
Ainslee couldn’t wait to tell him what she had been doing since he had attempted to kill her that evening. “I’ve been yer healer, Liam.”
The surprise on his face was something that she would revel until she met her own death. “Wot?”
“Agatha died years ago. I took her spot,” she replied evenly, a small twinge of pain as she remembered how she had given Agatha the funeral she wanted. The old woman had a touch of Viking in her, or at least that was what she had stated, so she wanted a funeral pyre. Ainslee had gone deep into the woods to do so, sending her mentor’s ashes to the sky.
Liam shook his head. “But I would have known.”
“I’m vera good at hiding.”
