And he was marrying one of them.
The two women stared at each other for a meaningful moment. “I can’t face those people,” Alexandra said finally. “You go. Send someone to find us should we not return directly.”
With one more hesitant glance, Cecelia followed Francesca, who’d already made it more than halfway up the hill.
Piers and Alexandra stayed silently concealed within the ruins until they were certain the party had dropped out of sight below the ridge of Tormund’s Bluff.
“Are you all right?” He reached to smooth away a curl that had escaped her chignon and caught on her mouth.
She jerked her chin to avoid his touch, tucking the bit of hair behind her ear with trembling fingers. “I’m quite well, all things considered. Shall we get on our way?”
Piers dropped his hand. Of course she was upset. He’d made her feel like a fool for not recognizing the groom in her own friend’s wedding.
Oh, and one mustn’t forget the part where she’d nearly escaped a bullet.
The gunman lost consciousness, and Piers belatedly wondered if he hadn’t beaten the man to death.
He hoped not. At least not before he extracted some information first. His hands itched to strike the man again.
And worse.
“Stay hidden until I have him secured,” he ordered.
Setting the gun on what was left of a hip-high wall, he fetched Merc and led the stallion to the unconscious plonker. The man was shorter than he, as most men were, but heavy-handed and rotund. Piers crouched down and verified that the gunman still breathed before he rifled through his pockets. He found nothing but a slip of paper, which he unfolded.
Falt Ruadh
Suspicion twisted in his gut. This had been no random act of violence. Not a robbery nor a ravishment.
This had been a hit.
The note was hastily scrawled in a language he was only familiar with because of his Scottish half brother.
Falt Ruadh
Scots Gaelic for “red hair.”
Red Hair. Uncommonly, all three of the women were possessed of some shade of the description. Lady Francesca’s a brilliant, fiery crimson. Cecelia’s a coppery gold. And Lady Alexandra’s a russet mahogany that took on the colors of the sunset when the daylight shone on it as it did now.
Hers was the least vibrant color, and yet the most captivating.
Christ. He berated himself as he lifted the blighter’s arm over his shoulder and hefted the bulk of him with his back.
What sort of man lusted for his fiancée’s bridesmaid?
He heaved the bastard over Merc’s saddle, and had to steady the animal when it danced sideways.
Better not answer that just now, he told himself as he retrieved a length of rope from the saddlebags. He used that and one rein to secure the gunman to the saddle by both feet and the arm that wasn’t broken. The knots weren’t pretty, but they’d hold.
Alexandra recovered the pistol from the wall and checked the cylinder for the remaining bullets.
Two shots left, if he counted correctly.
Piers reached out, palm open, expecting her to gladly surrender the weapon to more capable hands.
He should have known better.
She closed the chamber and lowered the pistol, though her thumb rested on the hammer. “I’ll carry this, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind.” He motioned to the sack of shite he’d trussed to the saddle. “He’s perfectly secure. You’re in no danger from him.”
“I’ll carry it all the same,” she said resolutely.
He scowled. “Tell me you at least know how to use the blasted thing should the need arise.”
She didn’t react to his gruff tone and motioned for him to proceed. “Well enough. I practiced on snakes in Alexandria.”
Snakes in Alexandria. He snorted as he turned his back and led Mercury toward the path with one rein. Of course she did.
They walked along the cliff in silence for a long moment, as the waves crashed against the rocks below.
She maintained a wider distance than propriety dictated, keeping the gun next to her opposite hip.
Out of his reach.
She slid a nervous glance at him. “What was on the paper you found?”
Piers reached in his pocket, and extended the note to her. She scanned it quickly before returning it, her pale features remaining carefully impassive.
“I don’t know what it means.”
He could tell that it pained her to admit this.
“It’s Gaelic for ‘red hair.’”
He watched her for a reaction. Her expression remained smooth, tranquil even. But he was a man who’d been in the presence of animals for most of his life.
Even if her countenance didn’t convey fear, he read it in every tense line of her body. The distance she established. Her propensity to startle. The quickened rhythm of her breaths and the hoarse trembling barely concealed in her carefully modulated voice.
“Can you think of a reason someone would wish any of you harm?” he queried.
At this, she leveled him an anxious, searching gaze. “Can you?”
“I certainly intend to find out,” he muttered.
Her free hand crept to the cravat at her throat. She tugged and fidgeted with it as if to struggle for a few nervous swallows of air. That didn’t seem to help, so she pressed a glove to her cheek, then to her forehead, then dropped it back to her side to bury it in her skirts.
Despite the bracing breeze still carrying the scent of last night’s storm, a sheen of perspiration bloomed at her hairline. She had surpassed anxious and was leaving frightened behind her in the race toward true terror.
A strange and unprecedented urge welled within him, unsettling him almost as much as the sight of the pistol had.
The yearning was ludicrous—he wanted nothing more than to take her hands in his and smooth away her trembling. He wanted to … hold her, to offer comfort that he, himself, had never received.
He shook away the notion, landing on a constructive approach.
Misdirection.
“What snakes did you shoot?” he asked. “Some sort of cobra, no doubt.”
“Snakes?” It took several seconds for the glaze of confusion to clear from her eyes before she answered. “N-no, there weren’t as many cobras in Egypt as one is led to believe. Where our company camped near the lighthouse of Alexandria, we were mostly plagued with horned vipers. Th-they’d, um…” She took a shaking breath, lifting the gun hand to toy with her hair only to discover she still held it. Guiltily, she lowered it to point at the ground.
Piers let out the breath he’d caught, using all his self-control not to snatch it from her.
“They were prevalent, these devil vipers?” he prodded, sensing she’d lost her place in the conversation.
“Yes.” She refused to lift her eyes. “Yes, and they matched the startling white of the sand, and so it was almost impossible to see them until it was too late.”
“I imagine you became quite the markswoman during your tenure there.” He said this just as much for his benefit as for hers, as she’d seemed to again forget about the weapon clutched in her hand.
“Actually, no, I didn’t have much use for my pistol once I adopted Anubis.”
“A dog?”
“A cat.”
He pulled up short, causing Merc to toss his head. “I’ll admit to not being the best pupil as a boy, but isn’t Anubis a god with a dog’s head?”