The Viper (Highland Guard #4)(86)

“My God, Lachlan.” Her fingers ran over the jagged lines where the steel hooks had pierced and ripped his flesh, nearly to the bone. “To survive this …” Their eyes met. “What happened?”

Once he’d told her to ask him anything. He had no secrets. He didn’t care. His past was behind him.

But something had changed. Her care, her concern, her questions had opened old wounds.

And he feared it would reveal too much to a woman who had already gotten too close.

Bella knew he didn’t want to tell her. He was pulling away from her, just as he’d been doing for the past two days. The closer they drew to safety, the farther away he seemed.

If she thought the way he’d avoided her and acted as if nothing had happened between them had hurt, it was nothing compared to the pain she’d experienced on hearing his crude disavowal to Robbie Boyd. Not until that moment did she realize just how much she’d come to care for him.

“Just because I want to f**k her …”

If he’d pointed an arrow at her heart it couldn’t have been aimed more perfectly. Her chest squeezed and burned. To be an object of lust and nothing more. Dear God, would a man ever want her for something more?

She’d thought Lachlan was different. She’d thought …

What, that because it had felt special to her, it was to him? Had prison left her so desperate for a connection that she’d felt one where there wasn’t?

No. She couldn’t believe that was all it had been to him. He didn’t mean it. He’d probably just been trying to stop Boyd’s probing. Probably. But she couldn’t be sure.

Perhaps his past would give her a clue. She wanted to know the truth, not what people said about him. She wanted to know everything about him.

“Tell me,” she asked again. Knowing he hated being challenged, she added, “I thought you had nothing to hide?”

He knew what she was doing but answered her with a shrug. “There isn’t much to tell. My wife was very young, very beautiful, and very spoiled. I was infatuated with her.” Though he said it without emotion, Bella’s heart pinched. It seemed so unlike him. “Within a few months, Juliana’s ardor waned, and she regretted her impulsivity in marrying a bastard without much land to his name—even if he was a chieftain to a clan.”

Bella paled. “You were chieftain?”

He smiled tightly. “Aye, for a while I did ‘my duty,’ as you call it. I was completely unaware of my wife’s discontent, too blinded by lust to see what was happening right before my face. She devised a way to get rid of me—quite an ingenious little plan, actually—telling her brother that I intended to betray him. Unfortunately, Lorn believed her.

“At the time, King Edward was acting overlord of Scotland, and he was furious at Lorn and the rest of the MacDougalls for a recent spate of attacks on English soldiers. My brother-in-law decided this was a good opportunity to get back in the king’s good graces. He needed someone to blame, and I was convenient. He sent me and my men on what was supposed to be a raid, but instead it was a slaughter—our slaughter. I alone survived. Forty-four men who’d followed me into battle never went home to their families.”

She put her hand on his arm. God, no wonder he’d turned from his clan! He blamed himself for the deaths of all those men. “Oh, Lachlan, I’m—”

He ripped it away as if her comfort scalded him. “I’m not done. You wanted to know; now you’ll hear all of it.”

The mask of detachment had slipped. The fury of emotion revealed itself in the angry sneer of his mouth. “I should have died along with them.” He pointed to a two-inch-wide circular scar on his shoulder. “Unconscious, with a spear pinned through my shoulder, the English left me for dead. Which I would have been in a few hours, had I not been found by my kinsmen—and enemies—the MacDonalds. I ‘recovered’ in a MacDonald prison for a few months, before my cousin, Angus Og, for reasons of his own, decided to help me escape. He was the one who asked me to join the Bruce,” he said as an aside. “He tried to warn me about my wife, but I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t realize the truth until I returned to Dunstaffnage Castle, to find Juliana betrothed to another man—a much more rich and powerful man.”

The lack of bitterness and emotion in his voice made her heart go out to him all the more. She wanted to touch him but knew that he wouldn’t accept her comfort. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

“Juliana pretended to be glad to see me, right up to the point that her brother threw me in his pit prison and gave me these,” he pointed to his back, “while trying to get me to confess my alleged betrayal.” He laughed. “I think even he started to have doubts about my guilt after a while.”

Horror washed over her at the calm manner with which he spoke of the cruelties inflicted on him. It was almost as if he were talking about someone else. She knew she was getting the barest sketch of what had happened and that he was leaving out things she didn’t even want to imagine.

It certainly explained his reaction in the tunnel and to going into the pit prison at Peebles. She, better than anyone, understood that particular source of fear.

Their eyes met, and it was as if he knew what she was thinking. “Ah, yes, you discovered my little secret, didn’t you? I’ve no fondness for dark holes.”