Page 39 of Bound to a Highland Beast
“Stay here?” Isabeau scoffed and though Tiernan couldn’t see her, he could imagine the eye roll she was giving him. “I told ye that I’ll come with ye, nae matter where ye go. I’m nae stayin’ here.”
“It’s fer yer own good,” Tiernan insisted. “I willnae hear it, nae today. Ye’ll stay here.”
There was a pause and Tiernan had to fight the urge to look at Isabeau and try to figure out what she was thinking. For a few moments, nothing was heard other than the soft patter of herfeet on the floor as she approached him, but even so, he didn’t turn around to face her.
“Where will ye go?” she asked, her tone simultaneously casual and a little dour.
“Tae kill Constantine,” he said flatly.
“What dae ye mean?” Isabeau asked. “I thought ye said ye had a plan.”
“Plans change.”
Another silence stretched between them. Tiernan wished he had stepped out of the room before Isabeau had woken, so he could have avoided all this. Still, he had no idea how he would kill Constantine when he was surrounded by so many of his men. He had to lure him away from them somehow, to get him all alone, but Constantine wouldn’t trust him enough to follow him anywhere.
Unless he believes I pose nay threat tae him.
Would Constantine consider him a threat or would he think he could easily defeat Tiernan, regardless of circumstances? Tiernan couldn’t tell. Constantine was no fool, but he was also a notorious killer. Perhaps he thought he was too strong for Tiernan to kill him in one-on-one combat.
“Tiernan,” Isabeau said again, but this time she stepped around him and came to stand right before him, grabbing his face and forcing him to look at her when he tried to look away. He breathed once, twice, their gazes locked with each other, and when he tried to get away from Isabeau, she only tightened her grip on his jaw. “I dinnae ken what happened tae make ye act like this, but whatever it is, I dinnae appreciate it. Ye cannae act like a bairn an’ treat me like one. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Ye cannae treat me like a bairn an’ act like one.
Those words echoed in Tiernan’s mind again and again. He had never considered that this was what he was doing, but now that Isabeau had put it so plainly and succinctly, without sugarcoating it, he had no choice but to admit she was right. Yes, perhaps she often veered towards naivety and she was too optimistic for her own good, but she was also a grown woman who could make her own choices. Not only that, but out of the two of them, she was the one who had forced him to talk, while he had tried to avoid the subject altogether.
With a sigh, Tiernan took her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m concerned,” he admitted. “I keep worryin’ about ye, Isabeau. If anythin’ happens tae ye…”
He couldn’t even bring himself to continue that thought. He didn’t want to bring such scenarios to mind, fearful that the moment his mind conjured them, they would happen.
“I understand,” she said, her free hand coming up to cradle his cheek, her thumb brushing small circles over the swell of it. “Butturnin’ away from me like this an’ tryin’ tae hide things from me because ye’re scared, it will only hurt me in the end. I dinnae like it when ye become so… so cold. It’s cruel, even if ye dinnae realize it.”
There wasn’t much Tiernan could say to that. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Isabeau or to make her think that he didn’t care about her. And yet, if he were honest with himself, he had already done more than enough to hurt her.
“Forgive me,” he said, as he pulled her into a tender kiss. Isabeau melted into it as though she was had never been angered by his behavior, as though this was all she needed to forgive him; and that, too, frightened Tiernan. He didn’t want her to be so easy to forgive, not when it could hurt her so easily. “I dinnae mean tae be cruel. But I… I’ve made mistakes, Isabeau. An’ these mistakes will hurt ye, even if I dinnae want that.”
Isabeau let out a soft, disbelieving chuckle. “What dae ye mean? Ye havenae done anythin’ tae hurt me.”
“I have,” Tiernan insisted. “I ruined ye. Dinnae ye see? Yer braithers will have me head fer this…”
Isabeau’s gaze dropped to the floor for a moment, her positive spirits dampened. It was heartbreaking to see. Tiernan never wanted to see her like this, but it was the truth; he would be lucky if Ewan and Alaric only had him hanged and didn’t do something worse to him if they found out about them.
But then Isabeau looked up at him, her expression one of absolute determination. Even in the fights in which he had been, Tiernan had never seen such a fierce look in anyone’s eyes.
“I will speak tae me braithers. I’ll make them understand,” she said, and she sounded so committed to that plan that Tiernan couldn’t help but believe her, at least momentarily. “I’ll speak tae them when the time comes. But until then, we have more pressin’ matters. We stay alive… an’ we kill Constantine.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Ach, I didnae think ye would actually come.”
Constantine sat on a rotting log outside his hut with two of his five men, who were sharpening their swords. He seemed truly surprised to see them there. Isabeau watched him carefully once again; no matter how much time she spent around him, she didn’t think she would ever see the real him, but the more she observed, the more her suspicions that he was not a simple brigand solidified. She didn’t know what, exactly, it was that made him seem so different from all the other men around him, including Tiernan. There was simply an air about him, something that she could identify but not name.
It was as though he took up all the space that surrounded him.
“I told ye I would,” Tiernan reminded him. “I promised ye we would spar.”
Constantine stared at Tiernan curiously, as though he had expected Tiernan to go back on his word and was surprised to see that he had kept it. “So ye did.”
With a slap to his knees, Constantine stood from the log and stepped closer just as Isabeau stepped back. The last thing she wanted was to be caught up in this fight by accident, she had seen her brothers spar before and she wasn’t foolish enough to get too close.
