Page 121 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Samantha nodded back.You can trust me.

“Well, I believe ye doona consider yerself a monster, Boyd Masters.” Gavin made a show of taking his pistol off Boyd and switching hands, pointing it at the floor. “But I am.”

Calybrid acted first, hurling the letter opener with the ease of an expert. It sank into the crook of Bradley’s shoulder.

Samantha had hoped it would fling Bradley’s shot wide, but it did one better. Bradley dropped his pistol, unable to maintain a grip with the letter opener protruding from his muscle.

For her part, Samantha lifted her boots and kicked out, using the chaise as leverage to throw Boyd off balance, buying Gavin time to put Bradley down by filling his chest with bullets.

Boyd did pull his trigger, but the shattering of glass and crystal demonstrated that his shot landed in the chandelier.

Her weight wasn’t enough to knock Boyd over, and if she didn’t think of something quickly, he’d recover. She wildly threw her elbows back into his body, but he barely seemed to notice them.

No.This had to work. She couldn’t be responsible for another tragedy. Not to this family who’d already been visited by multitudes of misfortune.

Boyd tightened his hold on her neck, and a dangerous pressure gathered in her head as she fought for oxygen. Her feet scraped against the floor, struggling to find purchase as, through vision becoming more blurred by the moment, she saw the hammer of Boyd’s pistol pulled back and his arm stretched out. This shot would find its mark, of that she was certain.

An angel appeared in front of her just as shadows crept into her periphery. No. Not an angel. A demon. One with cold, green eyes.

Only a few details pierced her dimming consciousness now. The glint of a blade. The sickening plunge of steel against flesh. The harsh gurgle of a throat filling with blood.

The pressure around her neck released. She was falling.

And then she wasn’t.

Air screamed into her with a sound she’d never thought herself capable of making, struggling through a throat bruised and raw, and filling desperate lungs with precious life.

Gavin held her aloft by the shoulders, as Boyd crumpled to the stones behind her.

It was over. Just like that.

Everyone was alive.

The splatters of Bradley’s blood painted the feminine damask wallpaper of the solarium above where his sightless eyes stared at her from where he’d fallen.

Well, everyone that mattered was alive.

She dared not look back at Boyd. She knew she’d find Gavin’s dirk buried deep in his neck.

Every event leading to this moment crushed in upon her then, and she collapsed against Gavin in a heap of quivering bones and broken breath.

“You saved us,” she marveled. “You saved me.” It dawned on her just how terrified she’d been that he wouldn’t have done after learning the truth. That he’d let her go to whatever hellish future Boyd could devise, and be finished with her. She clutched at his work vest with desperate, numb fingers, burying her face into his unyielding chest. He smelled of winter and horses and Highland male dominance. He felt hard and solid when even the earth beneath her rolled and pitched, threatening to give way.

He felt like home.

“I’d not see yer child in the hands of such a man.”

Your child.

He peeled her away from him like one would handle soiled, sticky refuse. “I told him he wouldna leave this keep with his life. That had nothing to do with ye.”

Every word. Every explanation that leaped to her lips now seemed trite and terrible. He’d lost what he thought was his heir, and in turn, she’d lost him.

There was no excusing what she’d done, butGodhow she yearned to. She wanted to make him understand, that desperation made monsters of everyone.

Even her.

“I ought to have ye arrested. Deported,” he stated drolly, “Ye’re wanted for murder.” He reached for her.