Page 32

CHAPTER 32

Gordon brought the hammer down hard on the length of glowing metal, sparks flying as he struck, flattening and strengthening the blade, determined to unify the mix of steel into one.

He’d smelted down the fragments of broken swords to craft this blade, taking all of his frustration and concern out on the slowly-forming weapon, pouring his troubles and the ghosts of the past into every powerful strike.

“M'Laird…” A breathless voice barely registered through Gordon’s concentration.

“What is it?” He didn’t turn, striking again.

The forge was his sanctuary: a place he had built several years ago, in the farthest reaches of the castle, in a ruined old tower that no longer served a purpose. A place where no one could bother him, at least in theory.

“News, M’Laird.” The door opened a little wider, a shadow dancing on the wall opposite Gordon. “I think… I think I got him.”

Gordon’s arm stilled, halfway to hitting the blade again. “Ye got him?”

“Nae exactly,” the voice replied, as Gordon’s focus shifted away from his work to the messenger.

He didn’t need to turn around to know it was David. Yet, even if he had wanted to, he found that he couldn’t turn to look at his m an-at-a rms.

For twenty years, Gordon had been haunted by the murder of his father, his brother, and the ensuing death of his mother. For twenty years, something had felt… unsolved, unfinished, despite witnessing the execution of the killers himself.

After his capture, he had discovered what that feeling was, and ever since, he had longed to hear a name, to put a face to the person who had taken so much from him.

But if he turned, he would hear it. If he turned, he feared that twenty years of pain would come crashing down on him. And so, he struck the blade again, his good eye barely flinching as sparks flew.

“Speak,” he growled, slamming the hammer down again.

David cleared his throat. “I have a man in the dungeons, M’Laird. He was the one ye hit with that rock.” He paused. “I daenae ken if it’ll be of any comfort to ye, but ye caught him in his eye. He’ll nae see out of it again.”

“Nay, he willnae,” Gordon hissed.

“I found him hidin’ out in a huntin’ cabin outside Morden,” David continued, his tone more anxious than Gordon had ever heard it as if he, too, understood the enormity of the moment. “Nay one in the village would say aught, but the fortune-teller gave him away. Said she owed it to the Lady.”

The bairn with sandy hair and eyes like the sea… Gordon hadn’t forgotten the crone’s words, so opposite to the portraits on the wall in the domed gallery. Nor had he forgotten that woman’s insistence that Anna should stay with the light, away from shadow. And what was he if not something dark and twisted and terrible?

“He willnae need much interrogation,” David said, “but I thought I’d leave it to ye anyway.”

Gordon turned the blade over and struck it with the hammer, wanting to pummel it to ash. “He’s spoken already, then?”

“Aye, M’Laird.” David cleared his throat, coughing a little from the smoke that wafted through the room. “He was understandably desperate to spare his own life. Couldnae get him to stop talkin’, truth be told. Said he needed money, that he never meant to be disloyal to ye, but an offer was made to him and a few other lads to…”

“To what?” Gordon snarled, when David didn’t continue.

“He was meant to kill Lady Anna that day, M’Laird,” David replied, almost reluctantly. “He was meant to first put poison in her drink, but he said he couldnae find a moment to do it. Then, he was instructed to hunt the pair of ye down, and had arrows to do it, but he lost sight of ye. He was tryin’ to find yer tracks again when ye hurled that rock at him, and after that, he lost his nerve. Accordin’ to him, he was hidin’ from the man who employed him.”

Gordon gripped the hammer until his knuckles were bone white. “And these other lads?”

“Given the same mission, M’Laird,” David answered. “They were instructed to sneak in and kill her tonight. Failin’ that, to make it a spectacle tomorrow.”

“Is she… safe?” Gordon’s voice hitched for a split-second, his heart cracking as if he had just brought the hammer down on it instead of the blade.

David’s footsteps drew closer. “Aye, M’Laird. Her braither is with her now, and I’ve got four of our best stationed in the hallway outside her chambers.” He set a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “But I’m nae so idle as that, M’Laird. Ye ought to ken me better by now.”

“Speak,” Gordon repeated, unable to form any other words.

“I found the other lads. Our wee one-eyed archer gave them up. They’re in the dungeon with him, under the promise that they’ll be paid more than what they were offered,” David explained. “I told ‘em they’d have to stay there ‘til the weddin’ was over, and they dinnae seem to mind. Of course, they willnae be seein’ a single coin but?—”

“But?” Gordon rasped, shaking David’s hand off his shoulder.

David sighed heavily. “They’re just desperate men, M’Laird. Young, foolish, fallen on difficult times, most of ‘em with more than a monetary debt to pay. I’m nae sayin’ their actions should go unpunished, but… maybe ye might be lenient.” He paused. “After all, they gave me a name. The name, M’Laird.”

Gordon froze. At long last, he was about to find out who had orchestrated all of this, from that dreadful night twenty years ago, to the kidnap that had cost him his eye.

“The weddin’,” he said instead, delaying the moment. “Are ye certain it willnae be compromised?”

David snorted, as though insulted. “Aye, M’Laird. I’ve made arrangements for Lady Anna to be escorted to the chapel, and nay one will be permitted inside save for yer family and hers. To be doubly certain, the gates are locked and I have two of our men takin’ names now—anyone who shouldnae be here will be thrown out.”

“Who is it?” Gordon finally asked. “Give me the name.”

David cleared his throat, bracing to reply, when a breathy gasp cut through the thick air like a sharpened blade. Before Gordon could think, or remember that he wasn’t wearing his eye patch, he turned to see who had made that startling sound.

And when he saw the fear, the horror in his betrothed’s eyes, transforming her face into a pale, open-mouthed mask of shock, he realized too late his mistake.

Indeed, in that moment, he wished he had never met her… for as she stood there staring at him, he understood with a jarring pain what someone was trying to take from him. Rather, what he had almost lost, and might still.

Anna couldn’t take her eyes off Gordon, her heart pounding in her chest at the sight of him, bare-chested and majestic, wielding that blacksmith’s hammer as if it were as light as a twig.

If she had a lifetime to draw him, she doubted she would ever be able to map the defined lines and contours and intricacies of his flexing, tempting, exquisite muscles, moving with the formidable strength he possessed.

It wasn’t even the first time she had seen him like this, but the novelty was equally compelling. This time, he glistened with the sweat of his toil, all that hard muscle slicked and gleaming, his dark, damp hair swept back off his face, his one eye glittering in the light of the forge. She had never seen anyone so extraordinary before, and if these were his fires of Hell, she was only too happy to burn for him.

In truth, it took her a second to realize that he wasn’t wearing his eye patch. Oh… so that’s what was hidden beneath…

Of everything she had imagined and pictured, she couldn’t have been more wrong. His eye was gone, there was no escaping that fact, but it almost looked like he had closed it to aim his bow. Not horrifying or ghoulish, just a closed eye that happened to be covered in scars, the skin around it silvery and dappled with an array of angry hues, from the lightest pink to the darkest purple. Akin to an eyepatch beneath his actual eyepatch.

He glared at her with his good eye. “Leave us.”

“Nay, I’m nae leavin’,” Anna replied, remembering why she was there.

Gordon’s expression hardened. “I wasnae talkin’ to ye.” He glanced at David, who looked just as shocked to see Anna. “Ye, leave us.”

“But what about—” David began to say, but Gordon cut him off.

“I willnae repeat meself.”

David bowed his head. “I’ll meet ye… where I mentioned.”

With that, he hurried out, squeezing past Anna and into the hallway beyond: a half-derelict, structurally suspect passage that seemed to leak even though it wasn’t raining outside. And with his departure, Anna understood that she would be entirely alone with Gordon, so far from the main body of the castle that no one would intrude. Indeed, it had taken her charming no fewer than eight servants to even learn about this secret place.

“What are ye doin’ here?” Gordon said coldly, as he picked up the sword he had, apparently, been making, and dunked it in a bucket of water. It hissed, steam rising.

“It may have escaped yer notice,” she replied haughtily, “but we’re due to be married tomorrow, and ye’ve been avoidin’ me for days.”

He left the sword in the bucket, setting down his hammer. “If memory serves, ye were the one avoidin’ me. Do ye nae want me to comply with yer wishes anymore?”

“I think we’re beyond that, considerin’ ye went ahead with this weddin’ without consultin’ me,” she shot back, struggling to hold on to the thread of thought that had brought her down there in the first place. “But I came to say that I ken why ye did it.”

He seemed to be looking for something, searching the crooked shelves, peering underneath old chairs and tables that appeared to be destined for the furnace of his forge. “And why is that?”

“Ye’ve been tryin’ to push me away, because ye’re scared of what might happen to me if ye start to care,” she replied, steeling her nerve. “Ye kenned it would anger me and make me doubt yer reasons for marryin’ me if ye went against me wishes. That’s why ye did it.”

He stopped what he was doing, and leaned against a weathered workbench. He had never given much away with his expression, but as Anna looked at him, she thought she saw a shadow pass across his face: a look she didn’t like one bit. Something cruel and strange, that didn’t belong to him, regardless of the devilish nickname he had been given.

“Or I couldnae be bothered with yer games,” he said flatly. “I told ye at the beginnin’, I daenae like games.”

A stinging pain struck Anna in the stomach, just below her ribs. “I wasnae playin’ games. I was tryin’ to get to ken ye.”

“What more do ye need to ken about me that ye daenae already ken?” He pushed away from the workbench, walking slowly toward her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Everythin’. I… have come to realize, Gordon, that I ken nothin’ about ye. Nae really. Nothin’ of substance.”

His good eye warmed for just a moment, his brow furrowing as if he was in pain too. He stopped half a step away from her, raising his hand to her cheek but not touching her.

“Are ye scared of me, lass?” he asked thickly.

She shook her head, the clarity of her mind fogging up with the proximity of him, forgetting all the things she’d rehearsed saying on the way to find him, forgetting the answers that she craved. Whatever wondrous spell it was that he kept casting on her, she didn’t want it to end; she longed to be enmeshed in his enchantment for as long as possible.

“What do ye need to ken about me that’s more than this?” he whispered, closing the distance, his arm sweeping around her waist, pulling her to him as his lips found hers in a searing graze, hotter than any furnace.