Page 124 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“I suggest we hurry.” The Rook turned and shouldered past Callum, who gaped rather dumbly at the gruesome tableau.

“We’ll handle this,” Gavin vowed, casting Samantha adisgusted look before starting toward the door. “One disaster at a time.”

Lowering her gun, Samantha reached out for him, catching at his sleeve. Her husband was a smuggler. Another outlaw. Lord, but it figured. “Let me come with you. Give me a chance to make amends.” At least this was familiar ground. “Please, if I amanythingto you.”

He shrugged her off, whirling to tower over her, his eyes glinting with a verdant wrath. “Does Erradale rightfully belong to me?”

“No, but—”

“Does the child in yer belly belong to me?”

“You already know it doesn’t.”

“Are we even legally married, Samantha Masters?” He said her name as if it had turned to ashes in his mouth.

“I don’t think so.” By this time, her reply had become a broken whisper.

“Then ye are nothing to me.”

“Gavin—” A punch to the stomach would have caused less devastation.

“If ye’re not gone by the time I return, I’ll arrest ye myself.”

Perhaps she’d been right when she’d assumed she couldn’t be broken by another man. Something broken could be fixed. The sight of Gavin St. James’s wide, straight back walking away forever didn’t merely break her.

It destroyed her.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

Gavin had known many days of darkness in his lifetime, but the black hole in which he now found himself was unequaled.

And not even wide enough to pace back and forth in.

Inveraray Jail wasn’t as dismal a place as the infamous Barlinnie Prison, or even Newgate, but a Mackenzie earl and magistrate charged with smuggling and treason put the gaolers in an especially cruel mood.

He’d not seen the sun for what seemed like days, locked behind a steel door with only a small port though which he’d been fed five times. Whether that meant he’d been there two days or five, he couldn’t tell.

Felt like an eternity, at least.

He slept some, and only in his dreams did he find light.

The light he’d begun to tease each morn from behind his bonny’s blue eyes. Her thin arms would circle him, and she’d gift him with one of those brash, unrepentant smiles before pressing that foul, perfect mouth of hers against his own.

He’d loved her smile, the artless innocence with which she gave it. She never practiced it or posed in the fashion of coy or splendid ladies. It appeared as a smile did on a child, the genuine expression of joy. Of pleasure. And, at times, of victory over him.

A torment so excruciating would wrench him from his dream, as if even his subconscious violently rejected the memory of her.

Ye gods, had she been a good enough actress to counterfeit those almost ridiculously real smiles?

The thought made him sick. With rage. With loss.

With love.

Lovesickness. It was an affliction he’d never quite understood, until the moment he realized the constant lead weight in his stomach, the ache in his muscles—particularly his heart—had nothing to do with the meager food.

And everything to do with Samantha Masters.

Gavin brooded into the darkness of his cell. He slumped on the hard wood plank that was his bed and watched the ghosts of his past dance in the shadows.