Page 116 of The Scot Beds His Wife

A wave of helpless frustration almost knocked her over.Of course.She should have known. The stables were the only part of Inverthorne open to the small horse pastures and the forest beyond.

And a burr under the saddle was the oldest cowboy trick in the book.

“The thistle… that was you?”

“That was Bradley’s doin’. I thought you were too good to let a horse dump you on your head.” He snorted. “I only had two brothers in the whole world, and you kilt the smart one.”

A scuffle and uneven footsteps disturbed the silence from the door behind her and she craned her neck in time to see Eammon with his arm around Eleanor leading a small procession into the solarium. Alice, a plain, bespectacled woman, stumbled on their heels, and Calybrid followed after, his hand pressed to his middle. It had been a month since he’d been shot, and he’d much improved, but gut shots were slow to heal, if they healed at all.

Bradley sauntered in behind them, his pistol trained on the little procession, his features too gaunt for his wide,dark eyes. He’d always been the ugly Masters brother. Opium and alcohol hadn’t helped any.

“I locked the staff below stairs and barred the door,” Bradley announced proudly.

“Sam?” Calybrid’s reedy, befuddled voice broke her heart nearly as much as the sight of the wild tufts of fluff he called hair and his unsteady knees visible beneath his wrinkled nightshirt.

He’d been napping, too.

Emotion and regret stung behind her nose and filled her throat with woe.

“No chance ye got yer pistols on ye, Sam?” He blinked bleary, hopeful eyes at her, his shoulders slumping when she wordlessly shook her head. “Bugger.”

“What’s going on, Alison?” The tremble in Eleanor’s voice defeated her completely.

“Please, Boyd, don’t hurt them,” Samantha croaked.

“Aww. Now we ain’t here to hurt innocent folk, Sam.” Boyd tugged the thighs of his denims so his long legs could squat down at the foot of the chaise. “You’ll hurt ’em plenty by tellin’ ’em the truth. That you’re a lyin’, murderin’ whore.” Though his voice remained deceptively mild, malevolence leaked from every syllable, as malodorous as the unrefined sludge they pulled out of the ground in Texas and New Mexico.

Samantha bit back a whimper as he rested the hand holding his pistol on the chaise. The barrel pointed between her parted feet. Were he to pull the trigger now, his bullet would land in her womb.

“When you’ve finished hurtin’ them…thenwe’ll hurt you.” He cocked the pistol, and the familiar metallic clicks sent her hand to her belly. “We’ll hurt you good for what you did to my little brother. And once they know the truth, they’ll let us do it. Hell, they might even help.”

“You don’t want to do this—”

“Yes, I fuckin’ do. It’s all I’ve thought about for two months.”

Breath sawed in and out of her as she fought to force the words past a throat quickly squeezing closed.

“The lassie’s with child, man.” Eammon blurted a plea. “Have some mercy.”

“You think I fuckin’ care that your master squirted some Highland brat into this worthless piece of—”

“Ye will when the son of a Mackenzie Laird comes for ye,” Calybrid warned ominously. “Because he’ll bring all the suffering hell can contain down upon ye.”

“Not before I shoot her in the—”

“If you kill me, you murder your own kin.” There. She’d done it. No going back now. The only mercy to be found was that she didn’t have to look into Gavin’s eyes the first time she revealed her deception. Boyd was a man without conscience or scruples, but family meant everything to him. Enough to risk crossing the Atlantic and storming a castle to take his revenge. “I’ve been pregnant since I left America. The baby belongs to Bennett.”

The potent silence contained the individual astonishment of every person she’d come to care for.

And every person she’d come to hate.

Their thoughts, their fear, and their disbelief hurled through the space between them and battered at her with an inescapable dissonance.

Boyd stared at her blouse, as if he could see through it. “If you’re lyin’ to me…”

“I’m not. I’m more than two months along.”

“You squirrely slut.” Bradley’s glee bounced around the room with a sickening chortle. “Is that why you married the first dupe who would look at you? So you could pass the baby off as his?”