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Chapter Three

12 April 1721

Leith, Scotland

Bryston seized Branwen’s fine-boned hand and hauled the raven-haired, pewter-eyed beauty with him as he sprinted down the crowded track. Tall for a woman, she kept pace with him, her hand clutching his as if her life depended upon it.

It very well might, damn it to hell.

Her breath rasped in and out, but she didn’t slow her pace nor complain.

Another time, he’d have admired her bravery and resolve. At present, however, his mind raced ahead of his pounding feet, plotting the best escape route.

How was it a man that Bryston had believed dead for years walked the streets of Leith? A man he despised with such loathing, his blood boiled and fury blurred his vision?

“McPherson!”

He cringed upon hearing that hated sing-song voice.

“I see you and your lovely mademoiselle. I wonder, mon ami, will she meet the same fate as the belle Delphine, oui?” The French pirate, Marc-André Le Sauvage—not his real surname but one he’d earned because of his brutal acts—bellowed in his thick French accent, followed by a deranged laugh.

The man was a savage in every way.

Aye, and mad, too.

“Jesus on the blessed cross,” Branwen panted, glancing over her shoulder, her unbound hair a flowing ebony curtain. Her bright cloak billowed around her ankles as they flew down the street, dodging people.

“Bryston, who is that man?”

Nae one ye ever want to meet, lass.

“Who is Delphine?” she gasped, between breaths and slanting a harried look over her shoulder. “How does he ken ye?”

Her questions would have to wait.

“Out of the way. Move aside,” Bryston shouted, stretching his legs into a sprint only to slow his progress to dash around a startled elderly woman clutching an overflowing basket to her ample, sagging chest.

Dammit.

They’d never outrun Le Sauvage and his henchmen with this many people milling about.

Indignant men and women exclaimed and protested as Bryston rudely shoved them aside without apology. Behind him, the Frenchman shouted his name again before he ordered his men to pursue Bryston and Branwen.

“Zut. After them, Bisonette, Faucheux. They must not escape.”

Shite.

Bryston turned down another street, this one narrower and less populated, but reeking of refuse. A pair of rats scampered into a hole in the foundation. His heart stampeded in his chest, battering his ribs, and his pulse pounded a frenetic staccato in his ears.

The rumors of Le Sauvage’s death had been just that. Rumors.

God’s teeth.

And in the ensuing almost five years since he’d seen the devil’s spawn and learned of his supposed death at sea, Bryston had become complacent.

But, by God, why wouldn’t he have?

I believed the bastard dead and burnin’ in the ninth layer of hell right next to the devil himself.