waste a moment learning the layout of the room and who was where.
May drew a breath and threw open the front door with her shoulder, using more force than necessary. It banged against the wall, making noise and startling the room’s occupants. She whirled towards the chair at the window, the pistol trained on the man. The light from the window might obscure the details of his face, but she could see enough to hit him. She would aim for his shoulder. ‘Get out, we don’t want you here.’ She let the ominous cock of the pistol fill the stunned silence of the room, a silence that didn’t last nearly as long as it should have.
Most people took guns seriously. Not the man in the chair. He laughed! The sound of it sent a shudder of recognition down her spine as he drawled, ‘Hello, Maylark. It’s nice to see you, too.’ With those words, the element of surprise was neatly turned on her.
May froze. Liam Casek was here? She blinked against the light from the window, against the improbability, trying to digest the reality. Liam Casek—her brother’s work partner, her one great moment of foolishness, the man against whom she measured all other men and found them lacking—was sitting in her front parlour in the middle-of-nowhere Scotland, the last person she’d ever have expected to see. In truth, he was the last person she wanted to see here. He could only bring her trouble as he’d so aptly demonstrated on earlier occasions. How would she ever explain him to Beatrice? She lowered the gun, her arm suddenly heavy from the weight, and his eyes flickered towards the motion.
‘How like you to greet gentlemen with pistols.’ It was an insult if ever there was one. The last time she’d seen him had been five years ago, a mere seventeen-year-old girl. She was far more grown up now. She should say something witty, one of her famed biting retorts, but all she could do was stare.
He was much as she remembered him: blue Irish eyes that sparkled in the face of danger—she didn’t know many men who would take a pistol aimed at them sitting down—untrimmed hair falling over his shoulders in a tangle of dark waves that rebelled against any attempt at convention, a body that dwarfed anything in a room. Tall and lean, Liam Casek had always known how to take up space, only there was so much more of him now. There were new things about him, too: the tiny curving scar high on his cheek near his left eye, the long, refined cheekbones that gave his face its sharpness. Its shrewd intelligence was new, too—signs of the man that had been carved from the boy she’d once known.
But, oh, his mouth was the same. He had the mouth of a gentleman; thin on top and falsely hinting at aristocracy, full on the bottom suggesting sensuality. That mouth was the merest suggestion of softness set above the square jut of a rugged chin, to remind a woman that any pretence to tenderness was illusion only. That mouth knew how to tease a woman, to lead her on, intimating that other mysteries might lurk beneath the rugged façade should that woman dare to look. She’d been that bold once, that naïve. She’d thought to discover those mysteries once upon a time. Back then, she’d been on the brink of womanhood, and he on the brink of manhood at twenty-one, still not quite full come into the man who now stood before her. They had been reckless, she most of all. He was not for her. They both knew it with a certainty which made it inconceivable that he was sitting before her now.
May’s mind started to work again. ‘What are you doing here?’ He wasn’t here for her. They’d parted badly. But if not for her, then who? Preston? No! Her thoughts became a whirlwind driven by not a little panic. The letter she’d picked up at the market! It was at the bottom of her basket.
May darted to the yard where she’d dropped the basket, her mind working at full speed. She grabbed the letter and raced back inside, firing off questions. ‘What’s happened to Preston? Where is he? Is he with you?’ It wasn’t beyond possibility he had come with Liam, and was off on an errand. She tore into the letter. Two loose pages fell out. She was not interested in them, only in the bold scrawl of Preston’s handwriting. She scanned the letter, trying to assimilate the information. May glared at Liam. ‘Tell me. What, exactly, has happened to my brother?’
‘He’s been stabbed, May,’ Liam began evenly, perhaps in the hope of not panicking her. But there was no way the word ‘stabbed’ could be received with bland reaction. There was a gasp behind her, a reminder that Bea was still in the room, silently watching this unexpected reunion play out.
May took a step backwards and sank next to Bea on the little sofa, vaguely aware of Bea taking her hand in support. She would not panic. She would not go to pieces in front of him. ‘When did this happen? Tell me everything.’
‘Six days ago.’ Liam flicked a questioning glance Beatrice’s way and May’s stomach knotted. He would only tell her part of the truth without knowing Beatrice’s full measure. It worried her greatly if Liam was considering mincing words. What needed to be hidden? May picked up the papers from the floor. She studied the sheets. She could see now that they were ledger pages recording expenditures and funds received. There were names and amounts, very condemning proof indeed for whatever had happened and Preston had sent it to her. It spoke volumes about his injury. ‘Is he going to pull through?’ They were hard words to utter. She had to presume the wound had been dangerous enough to warrant Liam coming to her. For the sake of her own sanity, she had to also assume Preston was alive, at least six days ago. Bea’s grip tightened around her hand and she was grateful for her friend’s support.
Liam hesitated. ‘I stitched him up as best I could. I took him to a remote farmhouse.’ He answered her next question before she could ask it. He’d always been good at that—knowing her thoughts before she did. It was a damn annoying habit when it wasn’t being useful. ‘Preston wouldn’t let me send for a doctor.’ Of course not. Her brother would be concerned for the safety of anyone he implicated. Whoever the villain in this mission was would seek out doctors in his search to find a wounded man. ‘Preston made me promise to come straight to you.’
‘To me or to the letter?’ May queried, but Preston’s actions already indicated the gravity of the situation. He had sent her information that needed protecting by someone whom her brother would trust with his life.
‘Do you even need to ask?’ Liam scolded her. ‘Your safety was Preston’s first thought as he lay bleeding in the road.’
His words shamed her. She’d known better than to assume otherwise. They also frightened her. She heard the unspoken message. Preston had thought there was the possibility he might die if he’d sent Liam as his proxy. An idea struck her. ‘You can take me to him.’ He would know where Preston was. She half-rose from the sofa, plans coming rapidly. She would pack, they would go by horseback for faster time. ‘We can leave today.’ Within the hour.
That got a literal rise out of him. The very idea of travelling any distance with her accomplished what the explosive end of a pistol had not. Liam was out of his chair in an instant. ‘And take you in to the lion’s den with the very evidence your brother risked his life to get?’ His incredulity was obvious. ‘What kind of fool-brained idea is that? Your brother sent me to protect you, not to expose you.’
Expose her to whom? She wanted details, but she wasn’t going to get them with Beatrice in the room. ‘I can protect myself just fine. I will shoot anyone who crosses that threshold uninvited, as you are very well aware.’
‘It is irrelevant.’ Liam’s reply was sanguine. ‘I am sure you can shoot one man. I recall you have excellent aim. There are men’s lives at stake, shooting one won’t be enough.’ Again the vagaries. She had no choice but to get Liam alone if she wanted more information. ‘If the man in question is caught, he faces treason and the noose. He will not send one man. He did not send one man against your brother and me on the road. He will not send one man against you. He will not care there is a pregnant woman in the house or a baby.’ What had Preston got himself involved in now? She knew his work was more than what it appeared on the surface, but tracking
