Page 115 of The Scot Beds His Wife

From behind her closed eyes, Samantha felt the shadow fall upon her like the specter of winter, stealing what warmth she’d found beneath the windows in the solarium.

“You’re a crafty, double-dealin’ bitch, I’ll give you that much.” Boyd Masters’s Western drawl was an incongruous echo against stone walls used to more lyrical brogues than butchered, bastardized English.

For a ridiculous moment, Samantha kept her eyes squeezed firmly shut. This scenario played out often in her nightmares. Was she lucky enough to be dreaming this time, as well?

More exhausted than usual, she’d come to bask during a break in the clouds after pulling a chaise over to where a shaft of rare winter sunlight warmed the stones. Stretching out upon it like a lazy kitten, she’d dozed the day away.

That sunlight had disappeared now.

Maybe forever.

The residual ache in her leg and a few new bruises courtesy of her tumble from her horse this morning told her she was very much awake.

That her nightmare had become a reality.

Her eyes snapped open, revealing her unkempt brother-in-law’s hostile leer as she instinctively reached for her hip.

Shit. She’d left her guns in their suite when she’d changed out of her work attire. Why would she need them within the safety of Inverthorne?

In a way, it was a blessing she didn’t have them. Because if she’d laid her hand to a real pistol, Boyd would have squeezed the trigger of the Colt currently aimed right between her eyes.

“How did you manage to get to Scotland?” The question tumbled out of her on a gasp of disbelief.

Alison had said in her letter that the Masters brothers were hunted men, that their wanted posters were scattered from California to Ellis Island.

Right alongside hers.

With Boyd and Bradley’s swarthy, almost exotic coloring and uncommon height, they weren’t the kind of men to get lost in a crowd.

“Escaped south of the border, even though some would-be-hero marshal who started that whole fucking massacre winged me on that train. ’Course, we had to take the time to dig a grave for my brother first.”

The back of his hand connected with her cheek with such force, little starbursts of darkness danced across her vision.

When she blinked her eyes open again, her head swam, but he’d moved to the foot of her chaise, continuing in his conversational manner.

“We set sail out of Puerto Cancún, Mexico, once we got word of what you did to them Pinkertons we sent afteryou.” He made a short sound of reluctant mirth. “Fuckers should have listened. I donetoldthem a skinny girl like you don’t make no easy target, and could still shoot their eye out at fifty paces in the dark. That’s what you count on, isn’t it? Men underestimating your scrawny ass until you put a bullet in their heads?”

“No.” She shook her head rapidly enough to dispel the sight of him and regain her equilibrium. “I didn’t want any of this to happen… youhaveto believe that.” A bolt of terror seized her muscles. “Boyd, who let you in the keep? Did you—did you hurt… anyone?”

“You mean that mountain of a man you went and married before my brother’s corpse done gone cold in the ground?” His lips curled back in a terrible sneer. He’d lost another tooth since she’d seen him last. Even covered in grime and smelling like a peat bog, Boyd Masters was a passably handsome man until he smiled. She wondered if he lost that tooth to rot or tobacco. Probably both.

Hysteria threatened her consciousness. “Boyd, tell me you didn’t—”

“Calm down, you simple slut, I ain’t done him no harm. Been freezing our balls off in the forest tryin’ for days to figure a way into this fortress. And wouldn’t you know it, this mornin’ luck was on our side. Every last workin’ man rode north without you, for once, and then some blind old biddy left the gate wide open.”

Samantha’s heart leaped into her throat, and she had to swallow the bile threatening to escape her stomach as she pushed herself to her elbows. “Lady Eleanor? Where is she? Where’s Bradley?”

“Stay right where you are, girl.” He pushed the rim of his bronze cowboy hat up on his forehead to squint down from where he towered over her. “He’s gatherin’ up some folks. He’ll be along directly.”

“What have you done?” Gunshots would surely have roused her from her nap, but Bradley never had been much good with a gun.

He preferred to use knives.

The thought chilled her so completely, her soul shivered. What kind of hell had she brought to these people? How could she have been so stupid? She’d hoped that Boyd and Bradley would have to stay on the other side of the world. She’d hoped Boyd had been fatally wounded. That they’d forget about her in time.

She’d hoped… and that had been her gravest mistake.

“Howisthat little ass of yours, Sam? Quite a fall you took this mornin’.”