The Viper (Highland Guard #4)(50)

If Lachlan hadn’t already been guaranteed an eternity burning in hell’s fires, this was sure to do it. He was the last man in the world who should be wearing a churchman’s robes. God knew how many sins he was committing just by putting the bloody thing on. It itched like hell. Who needed a hair shirt with wool like this?

He’d wanted to leave his armor and clothes on underneath, but Boyd and MacLean had insisted they could be seen. The bastards probably just wanted to see him suffer. All four of his fellow guardsmen had howled with laughter as soon as he’d put the damned thing on. Even Seton, who’d borne a hefty percentage of Lachlan’s barbs over the past few years—the young knight was an easy target—had snapped out of his brooding long enough to get in a few jibes.

Lachlan had let them have their fun, but he’d drawn the line when they’d tried to shave his head. He’d taken to wearing his hair short like the other members of the Highland Guard, but he didn’t need a damned bald spot at the top of his head. Just his luck, the priest was also a monk.

It seemed as if he and the young soldier climbed forever, but five stories later they finally reached the top floor of the tower. The man leading him nodded a greeting to the guard at the door. “The priest,” he said, “to see the lady.”

The other man frowned. Lachlan didn’t like the look of him. He was bigger, older, and shrewder than the soldier who’d led him to the tower. Though Lachlan had a small dirk strapped to his leg under the blasted robe, he didn’t want to use it. Dead bodies were a sure way to put them on alert.

“Sir Simon didn’t tell me there’d be any visitors today,” the guardsman said. “Only the lady’s attendant.”

Lachlan affected his most pious and subservient pose, slouching to hide some of his height. But unfamiliar as he was with either piety or subservience, he feared he did a piss-poor job of it. He slid the parchment from his robe and handed it to the guardsman. “My instructions,” he said with as much meekness as he could muster.

The guard’s frown deepened at the deep sound of his voice that no amount of feigned humility could hide. The guard peered into the dark shadow of his hood but took the missive.

Lachlan kept his gaze down on his hands folded at his waist as the guard scanned the contents. Damn. He quickly stuffed them in the folds of his robe, hoping to hell the men didn’t notice the battle scars and heavy calluses that covered his palms and fingers. He’d be hard-pressed to explain how a priest had come to have the hands of a warrior.

Sneaking around in the shadows was a hell of a lot easier than this. But he would never have made it past all these guards without leaving at least a few bodies behind. Intercepting the young priest in the forest beyond the gates of the castle had seemed a stroke of divine intervention, but now Lachlan was beginning to wonder. He had a bad feeling about this.

After what seemed an eternity, the guard folded the missive and handed it back to him. “You’re to hear the lady’s confession?”

Lachlan nodded. Seeing the man’s continued scrutiny, he explained. “I’m to make sure the lady is ready to leave on the morrow. Body as well as soul,” he said humbly.

The man held his eyes on him a moment longer, then grunted what Lachlan assumed was acquiescence when he removed the keys at his waist and began to unlock the door. “Ned here will wait to escort you down when you are done. It shouldn’t take long. The lady is monitored too closely to get in any mischief; she hasn’t seen anyone other than her attendant and my captain in months.”

Lachlan debated moving his hand in the sign of the cross and saying “bless you my son.” Though the situation seemed to warrant something priestly, he didn’t want to overdo it. His disguise was perilously thin already.

As the guard started to open the door, Lachlan studied the crude leather tips of the too-small shoes he’d borrowed along with the robe, which he’d be almost as glad to give back to the priest when he woke from his drunken sleep as the robe. Lachlan didn’t want the men to see his face, fearing they’d sense the excitement coursing through him. Excitement that was too palpable to hide.

This was it. The moment he’d been waiting for. The culmination of more than two years of agonizing delays, waiting until he could free Bella from the hell that he’d foisted upon her.

Unwittingly perhaps, but it was his fault all the same. He’d let it happen again. Instead of leading his men into a trap, he’d led Ross’s men to the women.

He’d been distracted. Angry. Trying to calm the violent, unfamiliar emotions twisting inside him and cool his heated blood, his body teeming with the aftereffects of a kiss that had stripped every last vestige of his control. Christ, he’d been moments away from taking her right there against the chapel door.

She’d had every right to stop him. To slap him. But that didn’t lessen the sting of her rejection. What was it about her that brought out the blackest part of him? That made him want to lash back when she taunted him?

He’d been so caught up in what had happened with Bella that he’d missed the threat. Because of his desire for a woman, he’d failed his duty, and those he’d been charged to protect had been captured. He knew that Bella thought he’d betrayed them. He hadn’t, but it was his fault all the same.

The door opened.

He’d steeled himself, but nothing could have prepared him for the fist of emotion that hit him in the gut as his eyes fell on her for the first time in over two years.