Page 127 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“I supported Alison’s claim to Erradale all this time.” Callum shifted in the darkness, his sinewy form still graceful in the shadows. “Like I said… I was hoping it would bring Alison back. That she’d fight for her homeland instead of marry that bastard, Grant… And then, when it seemed apparent that she would not return, I saw how happy you were with Sam. How happy she was with you. And I thought that if at least one of us could find love, it would all be worth it.”

So many emotions eddied about in Gavin’s body, they momentarily paralyzed him.

“Were we not about to hang, I’d not be so bold as to seek yer forgiveness,” Callum confessed.

“Were we not about to hang, I’d not be so quick to give it to ye.”

They exchanged smiles that neither of them saw, but both of them felt.

“Ye’ve been a like brother to me since—”

The door flung wide, and Gavin couldn’t have been more shocked to find the towering, kilted form of his actual brother, the Demon Highlander, holding the chains imprisoning the absolute last person he’d expected to see again.

CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT

“You fucking son of a whore!” Gavin was on his feet again, surging toward the Rook, who somehow managed to look self-satisfied even with manacles securing his wrists in front of him.

“Careful, Gavin.” Liam stepped out of the doorway to allow in the guards to unchain them. “The man permitted himself to be caught. Though ye’ll forgive me for how many days it took me to track this one down. As it turns out, he’s a hard man to find.”

“Most wanted men are,” the Rook stated blithely.

It occurred to Gavin that committing murder in a jail wasn’t the cleverest path to freedom and so he waited with barely concealed impatience for the guards to finish with Callum’s chains before they liberated him.

He turned to Liam. “I thought the next time I saw ye, ye’d be stretching my neck at the end of a rope, not saving it.”

A look he’d never identified on the Demon Highlander’s brutal features unsettled him enough to look away,even as the iron weights disappeared from his wrists. He’d have identified the expression as wounded, if he’d thought Liam capable of it.

“Ye are a Mackenzie, Gavin. And my brother. I’d not let ye hang.”

“Didna stop ye before, when the Duke of Trenwyth hanged Hamish.”

“Hamish was beyond saving, and ye knew it.”

“So much blood on your hands, on your heads, on your name,” the Rook remarked with only mild amusement. “And they sayI’mthe criminal.”

As if sensing the tension between Gavin, Callum, and the Rook, three guards escorted the two men out of the cell, creating a line between Gavin and the pirate in the small, white hallway. They didn’t move until the Rook had been pushed into the cell, the door shut, and the heavy key turned.

“I doona understand,” Gavin marveled, rubbing at the places the manacles had chapped his skin. “By what miracle are we being released?”

“Due to a crisis of conscience, I confessed everything,” the Rook stated through the port.

Gavin’s eyes narrowed on his brother, then at the door separating him from the most dangerous criminal the seas had known since the days of Blackbeard and Sir Francis Drake. “‘A crisis of conscience’?” he repeated dubiously. “What exactly did ye confess to?”

“Only the truth.” The Rook’s unaffected features were somehow more chilling from the confines of the dark room. “That I smuggled the goods and weapons onto your land without your knowledge, thereby victimizing a peer of the realm, and a magistrate besides. Look how contrite I am; do you think the High Court will have mercy upon me?” To say his voice was cheeky wouldn’t be wrong, ifsomeone could be both cheeky and menacing at the same time.

Gavin couldn’t have been more stymied. “How?”

Liam addressed the guards. “If ye’d be so kind as to escort Mr. Monahan out, the magistrate and I would like a word with the criminal.”

“Aye, Laird,” they chorused, allowing a very relieved-looking Callum to lead their procession toward freedom.

“You’ve a very charming wife,” the Rook observed casually. “With two very convincing pistols.”

Samantha? What did she have to do with this? Was she here? Gavin wished his traitorous heart didn’t thump against its cage at the prospect.

“Ye’re joking,” he gasped.

“Partly, yes.” The Rook’s chuckle made a devilish echo down the forlorn hall. “I was on my way to London, anyhow. Why not travel at the government’s expense?”