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“Ye goddamned bastard.” Bryston thundered. “I called her my treasure. She wasn’t speakin’ of baubles and jewels and coins and other bloody meanin’less rot. She meant love and adoration, somethin’ ye obviously ken nothin’ of.”

Branwen’s heart broke for him as he faced his wife’s murderer. The poor woman’s last words had been of her love for Bryston. Stinging tears pricked behind her eyelids.

It shattered Branwen as she fully understood the depths of his love for Delphine and hers for him.

Och, to be loved so wholly and devotedly by a man such as he.

Le Sauvage’s confidence faltered, and a flicker of uncertainty danced across his sun-bronzed features. He narrowed his snake-like eyes, his attention traveling from De La Beche to Bryston and back to De La Beche.

A wholly humorless grin edged Bryston’s mouth upward. “That’s why ye had a spy infiltrate Trentwick Castle, isna it? Because ye think I kent where the treasure was?

Branwen shot him an astonished glance.

Spy? At Trentwick?

“Christ, ye’re as stupid as a neep,” Bryston said.

His upper lip curled in anger at the insult, another gleam of uncertainty flashed in Le Sauvage’s eyes.

That mocking grin still in place, Bryston canted his head and gave a derisive snort. “Yer spy is as much an idiot as ye. He told ye there is somethin’ between this lass and I, too, didna he?”

He inclined his head toward her, his flaxen hair swinging with the movement.

Something unhinged in Branwen’s heart at the cold, dismissive way he uttered those indifferent words, but she refused to let her devastation show on her face. Instead, she straightened her spine and arranged her features into controlled disdain.

She swung her blade side to side.

“Well, now that is a colossal mistake. A most embarrassin’ and incompetent one. Mr. McPherson has been assigned to be my bodyguard at the behest of my guardian. I’ve known him since I was a young lass. There is absolutely nothin’ between us. Nor will there ever be.”