Equally quietly, she answered him. “He would have had to kill me eventually.”
His chest rose and fell in an exasperated breath. “I know that, but you would have had a chance for rescue before he figured that out.”
She buried a giggle in his chest in spite of their grim situation. “The price is too high.”
He still sounded annoyed. “What are you talking about, you pigheaded woman?”
She maneuvered until she could kiss his cracked lips. “What would be the point of surviving without the man I love?”
He did not reply, although he kissed her back.
The silence stretched between them for longer than she could bear. “I understand if you can’t say it back to me. But I want you to know that you are the only man I will ever love, and I’m thankful to have the chance to tell you so before we die.”
She swallowed a sob. “When I was afraid Barclay might have killed you already, all I could think was of how stupid I was not to have told you how I felt sooner.”
He rested his cheek on hers. “I don’t deserve you.”
He still hadn’t said he loved her.
To cover her pain, she sat up on the thin pallet. “I’d better get you untied. We have people out looking for you; perhaps someone has trailed Barclay here.”
He adjusted on the pallet so she could slip behind him with a minimum of noise. Then he inhaled softly. “Did you say ‘we?’”
Diantha told Kieran about the Greens’ efforts tofind him as she patiently worked at the rope binding Kieran’s wrists. After what seemed like an eternity, the strands finally loosened. Once he could free his hands, he eased the loops off and untied her bindings.
He told her not to touch his leg bindings. “If Barclay wants the horses ready, he’s taking us somewhere, which means they’ll have to free my legs for sure. If they see those ropes are tampered with, they’ll check our hands. Then we’ll lose our one advantage.”
After they stretched and rubbed the kinks out of each others’ muscles, they stretched out with their arms around each other.
Kieran urged her not to give up hope. “We will find a way out of this, love. If Archie knows, he’s rounding up help, and there’s not a cannier man at Duncarie. And once we get out of this mess, so help me, I will spend my life making sure you never have a moment’s regret for marrying me.”
He might not have said he loved her, but at least he cared for her. Touched, she tightened her arms around him and listened to her husband’s beating heart. She might not get another chance to do so.
By the time MacLeish shoved the panel back they had retied each others’ bonds so that they could free themselves. The servant grabbed Diantha first, crudely running a hand over her breasts in the guise of grabbing her arm. She gritted her teeth and held her wrists together and prayed that Kieran would not do something gallant and stupid.
Barclay, standing nearby with his revolver pointed at them, barked at the man to let her be.
Luckily, enough shadows had gathered in the old building that their retied bonds were not obvious.
As Kieran had predicted, his feet were freed and they assumed his hands remained firmly tied behind his back. She had pulled the loose sleeves of his jumper down as much as she could to disguise his rope.
The two men shoved them outside, where two saddled horses waited. Barclay looked at Diantha and gestured to one of the animals with the pistol. “Mount.” Keeping the pistol trained on her, he turned to MacLeish and ordered him to get Kieran on the other horse.
As she struggled to get into the saddle, her heart leaped into her throat. What if Kier’s wrists came free in the process?
The bruiser shoved him onto the horse. With a grin, he turned to his employer. “What next, sir?”
Barclay lowered his pistol. “I have to tie off a loose end.”
Without warning he lifted the gun again and fired. MacLeish’s face froze in an expression of hurt surprise as the bullet entered his brain. Then the body collapsed onto the short grass. Barclay looked from Kieran to Diantha. “Shall we go?”
Her blood ran cold as he mounted behind her and then reached to gather the reins of Kieran’s steed.
She gathered he had specific plans for them, since he could easily have killed the two of them along with his servant. She tried to make a place in her mind where she could think calmly, the way she had when her father used to beat her.
She looked around, still unsure of their location. The abandoned croft lay in a hollow with a bandof evergreens on one side. They rode toward the trees. Under them, he led the group along a narrow path that climbed upward. The sun had lowered nearly to the horizon by the time they emerged. With a shock, she saw a road running through a glen at the foot of the promontory. They looked down on Norpen Glen.
She twisted around to face him. “Anyone on the road can see us.”
