The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(111)

It couldn’t be true…could it? For a moment she felt a sliver of uncertainty. She knew her brother but not the military commander, the man who despised Robbie Boyd and had made it his mission to capture him. Cliff would have been angry, but to do something like this? No. She refused to believe it. Rosalin was under no illusions about her brother’s ruthlessness in war, but he wouldn’t sanction the killing of children and the rape of women. No matter how angry. And above all, she was absolutely certain he wouldn’t do something that could hurt her. There had to be an explanation. “There must be some mistake. Cliff wouldn’t—”

“Don’t say it!” He wrenched his arm away. “I don’t want to hear another damned word about what your sainted brother would or wouldn’t do. If I’d listened to my gut, none of this would have happened. I knew better. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. I told you it would never work. You cannot reason with English dogs.”

Rosalin tried to control her frantic heartbeat. Tried to tell herself he was angry and didn’t mean it. But it was getting harder and harder to make excuses for him. Harder and harder to be understanding in the face of his cold distrust. “There has to be some explanation. Send someone to—”

“No!” His voice fell like the crack of a whip. “No explanations, no couriers, no bloody messages. Your brother will have my reply. The only reply he will understand.”

Rosalin had never seen him like this and didn’t know what to do. How to break through. How to reach him. “Please, Robbie, don’t do anything rash. Don’t do anything in anger that cannot be undone. Lashing out like this…it is wrong.”

“Christ, you sound exactly like Seton. I don’t need either of you to be my bloody conscience.”

Like Seton. Rosalin reeled from the truth. Why had she never seen it before? She was like Sir Alex and that’s how Robbie would always see her. As English. As someone incapable of being fully trusted. Robbie and Sir Alex had fought for seven years together and he still refused to see him as a friend. In seven years would she still be waiting for him to realize that he loved her?

What if he never did?

A sinking sensation settled low in her gut. She felt the happy future she’d imagined slipping away from her like the hazy figment of a dream.

She had to get through to him. “Don’t you? Do you even stop to ask whether it’s right or wrong anymore? Or maybe it no longer matters. Maybe it is only about who can inflict the most pain. What happened to all the principles in those books you love?”

His mouth tightened. “I’m not going to defend myself to you.”

“Then defend it to yourself.”

His silence was answer enough. Rosalin scanned his face, looking for a crack. Looking for anything to tell her she hadn’t been wrong. Where was the man who read philosophy, who kept a garden because it reminded him of a simpler, peaceful time, who helped save a village from fire, and who stood up for a woman most men would think beneath his regard? She’d convinced herself that that despite the ruthless shell, at his core, he was still a man of honor, still a man capable of knowing right from wrong. But she was wrong. All that mattered was vengeance and the single-minded determination to win at all costs, justified or not. “So you are going to fight back with a raid in England? Will you kill children and rape women as well?”

The mouth that had kissed her not an hour ago drew hard and menacing. He took her by the elbow and hauled her up against him. “Don’t push me, Rosalin. I’ve been pushed today about as far as I can go. Unlike your countrymen I do not slaughter innocents, but your brother will feel the pain close to home. Have no doubt about that.”

It took her a moment to realize what he meant. But she knew him too well, knew the way he thought, and her stomach knifed in horror. She gazed up at him incredulously. “Not Brougham. Dear God, please tell me you aren’t going to attack the only place in this world that was ever a home to me. How could you hurt me like that?”

He released her and backed away. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Every word felt like a betrayal. It was a betrayal. God, what a fool she’d been! She’d thought if she loved him enough, she could pull him back from the black abyss he’d been sinking in. She’d convinced herself there was more to him than the ruthless raider. But what if there wasn’t? What if this was him?

“This has everything to do with me, and if you don’t see that now you never will. When you hurt him, you hurt me. I know you want to pay someone back for your friends and for the people in the village, but this isn’t the way. This is wrong. I’m begging you not to do this. Give Cliff a chance to explain.”

Nothing. No reaction. No softening of his gaze. No relenting. Her words did not even dent the steely shell. He was breaking her heart and didn’t even care.

“You will not sway me, Rosalin. Not this time.”

“Do I mean so little to you then? God, I thought you loved me. Mo ghrá.” Her voice broke, emotion tightening like a hot ball in her throat. “You called me ‘my love.’”

He looked surprised, and maybe even a little embarrassed by her discovery. But if she was expecting a declaration, she was to be disappointed. Brutally disappointed. “My feelings for you are irrelevant.” Irrelevant. How little she mattered to him. He might as well have tossed her heart on the ground and walked right over it. “Stop trying to force me to choose between you or your brother. If you want any chance for this to work, I told you not to put yourself in the middle of it.”