“That’s right. And who are you, to dare enter my bedchamber at night?”
She wasn’t quite sure where she’d found the courage or sense to inquire so boldly about his identity when her heart was pounding like a mal et in her chest.
The Highlander took a step back and lowered the axe. His voice was deep and terrorizing. “I’m the Butcher. And if you scream, lassie, it’llbe the last breath you take.”
She held her tongue, for she’d heard tales of the brutal and bloodthirsty Butcher of the Highlands, who committed grisly acts of treachery and left a trail of murder and mayhem in his wake. According to legend, he was descended fromGilleanof the Battle-axe, who had long ago crushed an invading fleet of Vikings. The Butcher was never without his morbid death weapon, and he was a Jacobite traitor, straight to the bone.
“If you are who you claim, why have you notkilledme?” she asked, fear and uncertainty burning in every pore.
“I was expecting tokillsomeone else tonight.” His sharp, animal eyes surveyed the room, searching for some hint of the person he’d come to slaughter. “Whose room is this?”
“There is no one here but me,” she informed him, but his heated gaze swung in her direction andcompelledher to answer the question more thoroughly. “If you are looking for Lieutenant-colonel Richard Bennett, I am sorry to disappoint you, but he is away from the fort.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
He studied her face through the moonlight. “Are you his whore?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you are, I might slice your head off right now, and leave it here in a box on the table, for him to admire when he returns.”
A nightmarish queasiness churned through her belly as she imagined her head in a box. Where would he put the rest of her? Would he toss her headless body out the window?
She struggled to breathe evenly, in and out. “I am not Colonel Bennett’s whore. I am his betrothed. My father was a colonel in the English army and the fifth Duke of Winslowe.
So if you mean tokillme, sir, be done with it. I am not afraid of you.”
It was a bald-faced lie, but she would not let him see her cower.
Something in his face changed. One large, strong hand squeezed the handle of his axe, and he lifted it to rest on the edge of the bed. She found herself staring mutely down at the dangerous hook at its tip, which was pressing against her thigh. She noted the huge broadsword in a scabbard at his side, and the flintlock pistol in his belt.
“Get up,” he commanded, poking her. “I want to look at you.”
Ameliaswallowed over a sickening knot of fear in her throat. Did he mean to ravish and abuse her before hekilledher?
God help them both if he tried.
He poked her harder, so she careful y folded the covers aside and slid her legs over the edge of the bed. Eyes fixed on his, one hand clutching the neckline of her shift, she stood.
“Come closer,” he commanded.
As she moved forward, she noted that his face was drawn from elegantly sculpted contours and sharp, flawless angles, and his eyes unveiled a passionate fury—the likes of which she had never seen before. There was aspellbinding intensity there, and it gripped her by the throat, held her captive in its power.
The Butcher backed up, and shefollowed. She couldsmellthe masculine scent of his sweat. His shoulders were broad, his biceps heavy, his hands rugged and enormous.
They were a warrior’s hands, roughened by years of battle and butchery.
Her eyes returned to the fierce expression on his striking face, and she felt her insides quiver. As brave as she wanted to be at this moment—and she had alwaysdreamedshe would be brave—she knew she was no match for this beast of a man. There was little chance she could ever overpower him, no matter what she tried to do. If he wanted to ravish orkillher, he could. He could knock her to the floor with one swift swing of that deadly battle-axe, and she would be powerless against him.
“When it comes to your fiancé,” he said in a coarse voice,
“I have an axe to grind.”
“Do you intend to grind it on me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
