Page 130 of What a Highlander’s Got to Do

Her laugh danced on the breeze. “Run?”

“You should have.”

“But then I wouldn’t have known you followed me.”

Was she really pouting?

“Isobel . . .”

“Go on,” the highwayman said, aiming at Isobel again. “Lower it or I shoot the girl.”

Something in Nick’s belly fizzled. It was probably rage.

“Oh, he won’t shoot me,” she said cheerfully. “I’m a prime piece.”

“What?” Had he thought that previous feeling rage? How naive of him. He raised the blunderbuss higher, and his expression must have warned the villain that he was serious, because the man took a step back. Then the man stumbled, over a rock or a package or something, and his arms wheeled. And then, to Nick’s horror, the Manton fired.

Not at Isobel.

A blessing, that.

But it hit Nick, slicing through his chest in a scream of agony. He fell back, unable to stop his tumble, and hit the road hard. Just before everything went black, he had a fraction of a second to think of her, his Isobel. A fraction of a second to regret the fact that he hadn’t been able to save her.

* * *

Isobel stared at Nick as he fell to the ground. A terrifying flower blossomed on his shirt.

Something descended over her then, a grief unlike anything she had ever known, and a raw fury as well.

She turned to the highwayman, who held a now-spent pistol. As she approached him, stalked him like a panther, he burbled, “I didn’t mean to shoot him. I swear.”

But she didn’t care. She couldn’t.

Slowly she lifted her pistol and pointed it at his chest.

He took a closer look, then his lips tweaked. He laughed. “You’re going to shoot me with that?”

It was the laugh that did it. That he could laugh, after what he had done, after shooting the man she loved . . . Oh, he needed to die.

Her expression hardened.

He realized that she did, indeed, intend to shoot him and tried to cover himself. But Isobel was a dead shot, with a bow and arrow or a tiny pistol.

Heart filled with rage, she took aim and fired.

The sound of the shot reverberated through the clearing.

His eyes widened. He clutched his chest. His mouth went agape . . .

But only for a second.

Then he laughed . . . again.

Perhaps she should have come closer. Perhaps the bullet was too small. For whatever reason, he did not fall as she had hoped. He did not die.

And then he started for her, with a malevolent look in his eye. “You will pay for that, my lassie,” he said, which only infuriated her more. She was not his lassie.

So he wasn’t dead. Maybe it would be better if he just wished he were dead.