If You Dare - Cole Kresley - Страница 21

"Aye, I can. I'll no' let you risk your life when there's nothing to gain."

"It's my risk to take!"

"No' anymore," he said so easily.

"And just what do you intend to do with me?"

"We'll wait here for a couple of days, then I'm taking you to a posting house in Toulouse. It's safe there. You can contact your family."

Her hands balled into fists. "And I should just trust that your intention is to get me to safety? Out of the kindness of your heart? I seem to recall you saying 'Never trust me, Annalia.'" She lowered her voice and mocked his Scottish accent. "'I'm bluidy bad and ye wilnah liv tae regret it, Annha-leha.'"

Outright laughter from the next room. He turned with a scowl, then faced her again. "I never said I was bad."

"I took license!" She fought to dampen her temper. "I am…sorry. I just want to come to some terms." When he appeared unmoved, she resorted to begging. Clasping her hands together, she said, "I will agree to what you…to what you said before, but please—please—let me return to Pascal." Instead of this softening him, he appeared to grow even angrier.

"Forget it. The plan goes ahead."

"But I saved your life!"

"And I canna tell you how much I appreciate that."

Loathe you. So she wouldn't reach out her hands to strangle him, she crossed her arms over her chest. His gaze flickered over her breasts again as if he couldn't stop himself from leering.

And as easily as that, his mind was again on bedding her. "You are a rutting Scottish animal just as everyone said."

He met her eyes, his expression deadly. "Calling me that? When you were there to rut with the general."

She sucked in a breath. "I was there to marry him!"

"Even worse," he roared. "Why no' tell me the truth?"

"Why should I have?" she asked, truly bewildered. "Because of our friendship? Because of the kindness you showed me? You're worse than you think he is, which is precisely why I chose him over you!"

"I dinna harm you. I dinna steal your jewels or silver—"

"You say these things as if they're noteworthy!"

"For a mercenary, they are!" He raked his fingers through his hair.

"You're no mercenary," she spat the word. "Mercenaries kill and then receive money for it. From what I heard at Pascal's you haven't managed the last."

"You know nothing."

"Couldn't get the gold from him? So for revenge you kidnap an innocent girl before her wedding?"

"Innocent?" He laughed, a mean, mocking sound. "You were no' so innocent on the desk. Milady."

Over her gasp, she again heard noise at the doorway. While MacCarrick strode to the door and slammed it shut, grating, "Mind your own damned business," she tried to will the blood from her face.

Oh, my Lord. Her skin burned, her eyes watering from humiliation that her shameful secret was known to these strange men. As long as she lived she'd never give in to passion again. MacCarrick was cruel, taunting her first taste of it, deriding what she'd found pleasant. Not so innocent on the desk. She turned from him, futilely tearing at her bodice.

"I wonder what Pascal would think about your kissing me right before the wedding."

She replied over her shoulder, "I have never lamented anything more in my entire life." A statement that was absolutely true.

He clutched her arm hard and turned her. "I've done you a favor. I saved you to repay my debt. I could have ransomed you to get back my money."

"Yes!" she cried. "Please ransom me! Send a note, and then he'll know I didn't leave willingly—he'll know I was taken."

"You've met him, you know he's a butcher, and you still trust him to have kept your brother alive? You trust him to free a man who's his biggest liability?"

"Yet you worked for him? Try to reason this out with your dull Scottish brain—if you're hired to do the dirty work of a 'butcher,' then guess what that makes you?" She yanked her arm free. "You might want to think twice about calling Pascal one in front of me."

"The opposite holds true as well, then. If we're as bad as you think, then know the fiance you're keen to get back to was directing us," he grated. "But you think to take his word?"

"Over yours?" she asked in disbelief. "Of course I would!"

He strode to the doorway, but turned back to say, "Understand, I've locked the shutters outside—the thick, heavy shutters. And we'll all be out in the next room. There's no way to escape." He slammed the door so hard the walls quaked.

"I wish I'd let you rot by the river!" she screamed, then took stock of her situation. She would get back to Pascal or she would die trying. She would marry him.

The irony wasn't lost on her. She'd dreaded marrying Pascal. Down to her very bones she'd rebelled against the idea. Now she was being forced to forgo being forced to marry. This was all MacCarrick's fault, and she simply could not allow him to hurt her anymore.

Tonight it had felt good to fight, to lash out against those who would control her.

She balled her hands into fists and recalled when she'd once asked Vitale how he'd managed to survive on the streets of Paris. "If I hit someone," he'd answered, "I made sure they didn't see it coming." She'd shaken her head, scarcely comprehending that kind of existence, but he'd told her that she could have survived as well—that she could be as cunning and fierce and dangerous as the situation demanded.

Cunning? Yes. Fierce? Probably. Why not use MacCarrick to find out if she could be dangerous?

He wouldn't see it coming.

Court stormed from the room and found the others sitting around the table or lounging on chairs, waiting anxiously, yet attempting nonchalance.

"So she will no' believe you?" Gavin asked.

"No' at all."

Niall scratched his chin. "Let me go talk to her, then."

Court exhaled a long breath. "Pascal told her her brother lives, and his daughter did as well. Why would Annalia believe you or me when she hates us? She thinks we're savage foreigners—she will no' believe us over accomplished liars from her own culture."

"Still…"

"Niall, if you want to be the one to persuade her that her brother's dead, go try." He lowered his voice to say, "And while you're at it, you can be the one to tell her that if her brother was no' dead before we took her, he sure as hell will be now." Broken glass snapped beneath his boot and he scowled. "What I want to know is why she was able to cast every object from that room. Why was she no' tied?"

"She promised us she would behave," Gavin hastily said.

"She told us she'd be better than before."

"Was she worse than this?" Court asked in amazement as he sank heavily onto a wooden bench.

"Aye," both he and Liam answered at once.

"I know you said doona muck this up," Gavin said. "But she's a sly one."

Liam was nodding. "A clever lass. She looks up to you with those big green eyes…"

They aren't green, Court thought. They're gold.

"…and then promises no' to fight or bite again."

"She bit you?"

A few men chuckled.

"She bit, she clawed, and she kicked."

"Aye, and she's got some really strong legs for a lass. Must be from the mountains."

Shuddering, Liam said, "Those little white teeth of hers sank deep."

He could hardly fathom it. Prim and proper Annalia bit Gavin and Liam? So the wine bottle incident wasn't just a fluke. She really was a fighter, as fiery as they came.

And Pascal would've been bedding her, slowly killing that spirit, if they hadn't stolen her. Maybe even starting tonight, the way he'd dressed her…. The thought made him gnash his teeth, clenching his jaw. His filthy hands on her body—

"Court, are you all right?" Niall asked. He was staring at Court's whitened fists.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door from inside the room.

Court swung his head around, eyes narrowed as he rose. He strode through glass to snatch the door open and found her defiant, chin jutted in the air.