Page 8 of Sweet Hellion

Chapter Four

The soft, gray morning light had begun to filter into the room when Rhys opened his eyes. He rolled free of his blanket and sat up on the floor. Emma lay as he’d left her, but the easy rise and fall of her chest signaled the nausea from the night before had passed. She was so tiny. He could almost span his hands around her waist. His eyes caught on the swell of her breasts and his cock stirred. He rose.

Her eyes opened. Confusion passed over her face, followed quickly by a scowl. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She sat up, her red hair tumbling over her shoulders.

“Your brother was my friend,” he answered as he adjusted his plaid. “I will honor him by—”

“It is your fault that he’s gone,” she interrupted. Her chin trembled. “If you hadn’t deserted him, he would be alive.”

Rhys ignored the tightening in his chest and said in a calm voice, “So, you have heard the rumors.”

“Rumors?” she scoffed. “You deny that you are a coward? I wager you ran to the first tavern you could find and drank yourself into a stupor.”

She wasn’t that wrong, but he said, “You were the one drinking last night. Not me.”

“You-I— That proves nothing.”

“Blame for the tragedy that got your brother—and many other valiant men—killed lies at the feet of another man,” he said.

“I have it on good account the fault is yours,” she spat. “You abandoned your men on the field, my brother among them.”

Rhys crossed to the bed and pointed at the scar on his cheek. “This stands testament that I was there.” He stopped short of saying her brother died in his arms while guns exploded around them.

Her eyes blazed, but she said nothing more.

“I will wait in the tavern to escort you home.” He started toward the door.

“I have no need for an escort,” she said. “I am hardly a lady.”

He paused, hand on the knob, and looked over his shoulder at her. “I beg to differ. You are Tory’s sister.”

“I am a seamstress and a washerwoman,” she said fiercely. “Not to mention, a fallen woman.”

He cocked a brow.

She shrugged, but the tightness around her mouth belied the nonchalance she sought to portray. “Really, there is no need to watch over me,” her voice broke and she turned her head aside.

Rhys hesitated, then left her to her grief.

***

Emma urged the gelding over the Waterloo Bridge and down the streets of Inverness toward the sheep market. The Highlander had followed her every step of the way. She frowned. The man bothered her. Not because he’d followed, but because his voice and words held the ring of truth and, unlike Lord Munro, he’d treated her with respect. He’d exhibited no leering, suggestive looks, nor ogling. Instead, Rhys offered what appeared to be genuine concern for her welfare. So much so, she couldn’t shake him from her trail. She’d tried. Damn it all, she’d tried, but her hired gelding was no match for his mount.

Growing more unsettled by the moment, she trotted beneath the pines that bordered the bank of the River Ness, past the limestone walls of her place of employment, the Royal Northern Infirmary. She still had a basket of linens to mend. She’d have to burn a candle to complete all the repairs before morning.

Emma heaved a sigh and tossed a quick glance over her shoulder. Rhys still followed. She locked her eyes ahead. Had Lord Munro deliberately misled her? In truth, he seemed more the coward than did the determined man who rode behind her. And ‘stinkpot’? Tory never would have shared her pet nickname with a man he didn’t trust.

She turned her horse’s head down Ballifeary Lane and trotted past Mrs. Babcock’s boarding house, the smithy, then stopped before the livery from which she’d hired the gelding. The return of the horse took only a few minutes, the monstrous Scotsman waiting at a polite distance all the while. Then, ignoring her escort, she hurried home through the small alleyway that led to the back of her family’s shop. The clop and snort of a horse behind warned that Rhys followed her to her very door.

Emma whirled. “This is home.” She squinted up at him. “You may go.”

Rhys eyed her, his face impassive. He leaned an arm against the pummel and slowly surveyed the shop, the woodshed and the stable. Emma inwardly winced. He couldn’t miss the weeds that had sprung up in the yard and the missing shingles on the shop roof. She’d let the place fall into disrepair. Her father and Tory would have been displeased at how much the place had deteriorated.

“You may go,” she said.

His eyes returned to hers. “I promised Tory to see you safe.”

He should have seen Tory safe.