Page 54 of The Scot Beds His Wife
Demetrius’s hooves clattered over the stones of the ancient Inverthorne Bridge that arced over the McRae Burn. Just as soon as Gavin heard the ground soften beneath his tread, he swung immediately to the north. The pace he set surpassed foolhardy to downright reckless on a night with no moon.
Callum had thought to bring a lantern but sensitive creature that Demetrius was, he seemed to recognize Gavin’s almost desperate haste. He leaned his neck into a gallop, his long stride eating up a road that had become a ribbon of ink barely distinguishable from the shadows.
Gavin kept his head down and his breath steady, forcing himself to exhale to the cadence of her name.
Alison.
He barely knew the woman. Hell, he couldn’t even claim to be overfond of her. She was little better than a banshee with a sidearm.
And yet… anxiety pounded through his veins with an intensity he’d thought himself incapable of. What could possibly be amiss at Erradale? As far as he knew, Calybrid and Locryn had no enemies to speak of. The Ross and the Mackenzie had been at peace for generations.
If one didn’t count Hamish Mackenzie and James Ross. His father and hers.
He supposed the backward folk from the Rua Reidhcould have started trouble. The year had been lean, and some of them had come to Liam looking for work in the barley fields before Samhain to help with the harvest to get them through winter. Perhaps they’d been driven to poaching, and the lass’s itchy trigger finger and apparent distrust of strangers would be tinder for an altercation.
Just as the ancient Erradale manor house would be easy tinder for an arsonist with a vendetta.
Gavin flinched as a stab of worry for the cargo hidden beneath his own keep pierced him. Though Inverthorne was a drafty stone castle, it now sat on a literal powder keg.
Fat lot of good that deal with the Rook had done him. He now possessed his own staggering fortune, and still he was perpetually denied.
Gavin took two miles to convince himself the sick, desperate feeling lodged in the pit of his stomach was for Erradale, and not its heiress. As she’d so inelegantly put it, if something were to happen to her, no one stood in the way of him getting everything he desired.
The land would be there even if the structures were not. The full herd of several hundred had yet to be gathered, and any losses garnered by poachers could easily be gained back in a spring or two of calving.
So, why was he risking a broken neck racing to her—to Erradale’s—rescue in the middle of the night?
It wasn’t because the thought of Alison, as fierce as she was tiny, in any danger made his chest burn as though he’d swallowed an ember of coal. It wasn’t the panicked, macabre thoughts stabbing at him with all the savagery of a thousand native spears…
All that luxurious hair of hers would burn first.
He kicked Demetrius to go faster.
Callum and my mother had heard rifle shots. Alison Ross didn’t use a rifle.
The Mac Tíre in question called after him, both a warning and an entreaty to slow down. To take care.
I willna reach her in time. Not if she’s been shot.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. It shouldn’t matter.Sheshouldn’t matter.
Not this much.
But it did.She did. Because he was not his father. He was not his brother. He didn’t litter the path to his legacy with violence. He didn’t create blood feuds that lasted generations. He didn’t take a little girl’s father from her so that he might possess her land.
And he didn’t… hecouldn’tstomach the idea of her being hurt.
Or worse.
Goddammit.If the stubborn lass would have stayed in America, if she would have taken his offer, she’d be safe and he’d be ignorant that Alison Ross was anything but some name he’d once written on a transfer of funds.
He’d never have known that a woman could shoot just as well as a man, maybe better. He’d never have considered the amusement and arousal feminine profanity could provoke in him. Nor would he have known that a battle could be waged with a kiss, the casualties of his power and pride a small price to pay for the rare sensation of being truly alive.
For Gavin had never met anyone with more life and vitality than Alison Ross.
And now…
He spurred Demetrius with a merciless kick. At a dead run in the middle of the day, it took the better part of an hour to reach Erradale. Time became a nebulous thing as Gavin raced through the darkness. It was impossible to tell if minutes or an eternity had passed before he nearly collided with a traveler galloping with identical recklessness in the direction of Inverthorne.
