Thorne’s eyes flashed like a blanket of lightning over the emerald moors. “One night, Liam. Ye’d been gone so long. She was lonely and I was in love. It was only ever that night.”
“So ye say.”
“So. It. Is. We’ve been over this before, brother. I told her that we’d made a mistake. That I had to confess the sin we’d committed against ye.” Thorne’s teeth were clenched now, his handsome features contorting into something cruel and malicious.
“I bled for ye,” Liam said, so low it was almost a whisper. There it was. The bleak truth left to fester between them. Liam’s back bore the scars that should have been his brother’s. He had taken on so much cruelty, so much pain for the boy he tried to protect from their evil father. “I bled for ye and ye still betrayed me.”
“We all bled plenty.” Thorne’s register also dropped dangerously low.
“Ye doona ken the half of what I’ve done…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. “Ye were too young to remember—”
“Oh, I remember many of yer deeds, brother. I remember ye whipping that whore. I remember that no one has seen her since.”
“Are ye accusing me of—”
“I remember what happened to Colleen when I told her we had to confess. She was so afraid of ye, of the Demon Highlander, that she threw herself off the roof. What does that tell ye about what kind of husband you were to her? What does that say about what kind of man ye are?”
To Liam’s surprise, a bitter sense of amusement permeated the rage fueled by pain and alcohol. “I ken exactly what kind of man I am. I am a monster. A monster who has earned the title of demon. I’ve killed more men with my bare hands than most soldiers have the opportunity to shoot at. I have done every evil deed required of me without question. Without hesitation. I’ve wiped out bloodlines, Gavin, and ridden through entire cities like the angel of death. I’ve spilled enough blood to turn the sea red. I’ve heard enough screams to fill eternity with their echoes.” His grip tightened on his glass. “I am tired of being reminded of just who and what I am, not because I doona want to remember, but because I’ve never forgotten. And doona intend to.”
Liam took perverse enjoyment out of the darkness gathering across Thorne’s usually light features. “But I ken what ye are as well, and I will see ye hanged before I’d see ye with Miss Lockhart. So mark me when I order ye to leave her alone.”
“You mean leave her to ye?” Thorne spat, his own fire igniting behind the mask of geniality. “I’m not one of yer sycophantic soldiers, Liam. Ye canna sanction me. Ye canna fire me from the distillery. And ye sure as fuck canna order me away from whomever I wish to keep company with.”
He could kill the lad. This wasn’t the first time he’d considered it. “She is in my employ. Not only that, she’s under my protection.”
“How noble of ye,” Thorne mocked. “But I doubt ye’ve learned the difference between protection and command. If she seeks my company, ye canna very well physically stop her from doing so.”
“Ye’ll not take her,” Liam growled. “Not this time.”
Thorne’s smile showed entirely too many teeth. “What is that charming expression? Oh, yes. All’s fair in love and war.”
Liam advanced, prowling forward until he was toe to toe and nose to nose with his brother, whose usual smile had been replaced by a sardonic twist. But Liam was able to look past that. To see what his brother hid behind all his bravado and pride.
There was fear. And perhaps regret, if he looked deeply enough. But love?
“It would be the last mistake ye ever made, little brother, to go to war with me.”
The arrogant smirk returned. “The war would have ended before it even began, Liam. Though she’s a kind and good woman, Philomena Lockhart has secrets. A lass like her could never put her heart in hands like yers. And a man like ye couldna love a woman he didna trust. Ye would dominate her, smother her, and finally ye would break her, fail her, and ultimately ruin her.” Thorne drew himself up to his full height, the eyes he used to charm and disarm so many glittering with unmistakable meaning. “Just like ye ruined Colleen. Like ye failed Hamish. Just like our father broke both our mothers. Have another drink, my laird, ye grow more like him every day.”
Liam’s beast reared like a wild stallion. “Get out,” he seethed.
“With pleasure.” Thorne’s look of disgust preceded his lengthy stride to the door. He wrenched it open, pausing with his hand on the knob. Though he didn’t turn around, he touched his chin to his shoulder, obviously not comprehending how close to death he stood.
“There is treachery in this keep, Liam. Something nefarious is going on right beneath yer nose and ye’re too blind or too proud to see it. Someone’s trying to sabotage ye, to turn those closest to ye against ye. I’d look to my own. I’d be questioning whom I could trust.”
“Believe me, I already am.” Liam’s muscles tensed to the point of breaking. It was as though he turned to stone beneath his skin. His rage was a volcano, the lava dousing him and hardening, building upon itself until it had become a living thing.
“Ye sit on top of a lonely mountain, Laird,” Thorne continued. “Ye’ve fortified it well so ye keep out all yer enemies, and barricade yourself against the screams and blood in your past. But no one else is in there with ye, Liam, and ye’ll die alone. Just like our father did.”
“I said get. The fuck. Out,” he roared. The door closed behind his brother just in time for Liam’s whisky glass to shatter against it rather than the back of Thorne’s skull.
And then he was alone. Alone and seething. Like coals shoveled onto a boiler fire, a myriad of memories, needs, and failings heaped into the flames of his rage, fanning it into something familiar and lethal.
But there was no one here to kill.
Head swimming with the heady rush of intoxicated fury, Liam stared at the flames in his fireplace, the only sound the whoosh of the fire as it devoured the air surrounding it. Would that he could control his own inferno … contain it within a casing of mortar and stone. Feeding it just enough to keep those he protected, those he loved, warm and safe.
Would that it didn’t consume him, this unquenchable rage. That his very flesh wouldn’t burn with it, becoming mottled and red from the force of its heat.
His blood, it boiled. His wounds, they burned. The lashes on his back itched and stung as though flayed open once again.
His head pounded in time to the beating of his heart.
Unable to stare at the flames any longer, or allow his own demons to scream at him through the silence, Liam stalked to the sideboard and reached for more Scotch.
Finding the decanter empty, he surmised that the closest bottle would be in the library.
As he prowled his own keep, it seemed that the castle bent and swayed with malevolent shadows. The shades of his demons waiting impatiently to drag him down to his final judgment. They were behind every tapestry. Slithering beneath the carpets and the cold stones. They were in the rain, hurled at the castle turrets by an unforgiving wind. Lightning sliced through the storm, slashing into the hall and casting a nightmare in terrible white.