“Why is that, do you suppose?”
She scraped the moisture from her cheeks with the heel of her hand and glared. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who should know the answers. Perhaps Friar Tucker paid the proper taxes and has done nothing so outwardly untoward as to attract the warden’s wrath. How should I know Hereford’s mind?”
“Has he ever been to the abbey?”
“Nay. And I wish you never had been either. For you are as autocratic as he must be. As are all men. Afishserves a more useful purpose on this earth than do men.At least I can eat a fish. I am not responsible for what happened to your brother.”
“The boy to whom you so casually refer is James Marcus Kerr,” he said. “My father’s son by his second wife. She calls him Jamie. I have never met the boy. I was gone from Scotland ’ere he was born and did not return for thirteen years because my father beat the living hell out of me, claimed me unworthy as his heir, and hoped I would die on the sea. I did not. Jamie shares my sire’s blood through no fault of his own. He is twelve.”
He laid his palm against her cheek and turned her face into the sunlight. “I do not take my actions lightly,” he said. “Some would go to war over what Lord Hereford has done to my family. A month ago, before my return, I was one of those men. But in the end, my brother would still be dead.” He lowered his hand. “I wish things could be different but they are not.”
She did not pull away from his gaze as he had expected, and instead he was the one who broke contact as he bent to return her plate to the top of the knapsack.
He did not want to see Rose as anything more than political currency. He was a pragmatist, a man at ease with his duty with no qualms doing what was necessary to secure his brother. He’d never had much of a conscience when it came to life’s ambiguous moral choices. So he did not understand his feelings now.
“I fear I am far braver dealing with another’s ailment than my own,” she said, returning his attention to the task at hand.
She had lifted part of the bandage and was studying the injury on her thigh. She wrapped her hand around the whisky flask as if considering its contents, then offered it back. “I know this is sacrilegious for me to say to a Scotsman, but whisky is nauseating. If I must get myselfdrunk to endure sutures, I prefer wine as my anesthetic of choice. I ... I can do this without intoxicating myself.” She squeezed her eyes shut and said bravely. “I am ready.”
Ruark edged the flask back to her. “Drink, Rose. A sip. You might be ready, but I am not. I can knock you out and you’ll feel nothing or you can drink ... or both.”
And strangely, the fact that Ruark Kerr, the infamous Black Dragon, did not seem bent on intentional cruelty toward her seemed to soften her eyes as if his actions somehow gave her hope that in the end he would find a way to free his brother without sacrificing her.
She was wrong. More than she could possibly know.
“My apologies, Rose.”
He could endure his own pain more than he could suffer hers. Before she could respond, he clipped her head with his fist, and darkness mercifully claimed her.
Rose dreamed in a landscape barren of color and light, gliding on wings of shadow. Pain came and went with the darkness that weighted her like lead in water and she struggled to rise from the depths consuming her. She could not breathe. She fought to loosen the ties that bound her before she drowned.
Cold, wet, and shuddering, Rose was not remembering the river’s rage that had nearly taken her over the falls. She was remembering the storm that would take her mother out to sea. She heard the seagulls screaming and wheeling above her head and the strain of battened-down canvas in the rush of wind. People standing in the rain on the docks. The scent of lilac, faint in the fine mist of dawn. The warmth as someone carried her and held her, and Rose knew it was her mother.
“Roselyn . . .”
With a gasp, she opened her eyes and sat up.
Arms had come around her almost at once, gently pulling her back into a protective embrace, promising she would be safe.
In the somber shadows, she recognized nothing. Rain fell in the darkness beyond and she was cold. Roxburghe’s voice came to her. He lay between her and the way out of the shelter. As if to guard her ... or protect her. She had not realized how close in meaning the two actions were. There was a narrow divide between being imprisoned and safekeeping. Tonight she felt safe.
“You are dreaming, Rose.”
She splayed her fingers over his chest if only to test that he was real and not a figment of a dream, knowing she should never test boundaries.
His heartbeat was steady against her palm, like the sound of rain outside their shelter. The heat from his body warmed hers. “I ... I am sorry,” she whispered.
His arm tightened around her, and at once, the dream of moments ago began to fade back into the darkness. “Why?”
Blinking moisture from her eyes, Rose drew in a breath. “She died alone in an angry sea. She died because of me, my lord. I want to know why.”
He pushed up on his elbow and she felt his hand go to her forehead. But she could have told him she had no fever. Even the throb in her thigh had faded to the background of her thoughts.
She could feel his gaze on her face, a palpable touch. “Who died, Rose?”
But she was emerging from her dream world now as if she had stepped from the icy mist that would drown her and into Roxburghe’s arms.
She had awakened once earlier in the day and he hadgiven her supper and told her the weather had worsened. But in the darkness, the rain and the rest of the world faded with the dream. In the darkness, her senses hummed. Only in the darkness did she truly feel free.
