Och, thank the good Lord for twenty. Elspeth exhaled a long breath she didn’t know she was holding—holding with him.
Well done. She wanted to tell him, but she would not compliment him.
“Now,” she instructed, refusing to be moved by him, “stretch yer arm out at yer side. Hold it fer ten, and then twenty.”
“Aye,” he agreed and began.
She counted with him, circling around him, watching his form, his breath. She cursed him when he paused at thirteen to take a deeper breath and cast his playfully defeated smile at her. She blushed. Blushed!
“Fergive me, Papa,” she pleaded under her breath. “Fergive me, Mother.”
She stopped praying and looked up at the man watching her.
“Why do ye need to be fergiven, lass?” he asked softly.
“Fer not finding ye completely revolting, Mr. Cameron.”
She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it was not his resplendent grin.
And what it did to her bones, breaking through the barrier to reach someplace deeper, where she hated him.
Chapter Nine
Logan didn’t sufferany guilt about being kind to Miss Woodburn. If he thought warmly of her, there was no one he betrayed, save himself. But he would not betray himself. He would let her help him regain his arm, and then he would take her somewhere else.
He didn’t have any guilt about that either. He could treat her kindly to get what he needed. He would not let her mean anything to him.
He was a fool—and he was a fool even now—to find himself lightheaded just by looking at her. The alluring curve of her brow, the cut of her small nose, and the resilient tilt of her chin against the backdrop of the grand Ben Nevis.
Lifting his arm over his head was the most difficult of all. He could barely make it to six before he had to let it fall.
“Ye were told ye would never use that arm again, aye?” she asked him. “But ye will use it, and ye will show them all that ye can do whatever ye set yer mind to.”
“Did yer brother teach ye that?” he asked. “Did ye set yer mind to stayin’ alive?”
“Aye, I set it on finding and killing ye. ’Tis what drove me.”
Was that truly all she ever thought about? He did not like that she hated him so much. It made him wish he’d never seen her in the first place. Covenanters were killed almost every day for the last eight years for their refusal to accept the king’s authority over the church.
But Logan had not killed anyone at all in over six years. He certainly had not killed her family.
“I am no’ goin’ to stand idly by while ye plot to kill me, Miss Woodburn.”
“Of course,” she agreed dryly.
“If I was guilty, things would be different, lass. I am truly sorry ye lost yer kin, but when yer father captured me, I told him who I was; a royalist Cameron and favorite of the king. He knew that killin’ me would start a battle, which he would likely lose. Despite that—nae,” he said when she shook her head, not wanting to hear anymore. “Ye dinna have to believe me. I wouldna want to believe someone sayin’ the same aboot my father. But instead of heedin’ my warnin’, yer father drove his sword into me. Here.” He pointed to the place just above his ribs on his left side. But he didn’t have to show her, she was already looking there.
How did she know where he was stabbed unless Ewen told her—or she had come to see him in the dungeon, as he dreamed? He didn’t ask again. He would get the same answer. Besides, it was better if he didn’t know the truth—that she had been there with him, helping him.
“I told ye no’ to speak of my father again.” She shook while she told him. “Instead, ye tell me vile lies about him and blame him fer his own death. If I were reconsidering yer demise, I would fer certain end yer miserable life!”
“Och, I tire of yer empty threats, lass,” he told her with a frustrated sigh. “Quit talkin’ and get to killin’. Here. Here is my dirk. Do it.”
He held the blade out to her, hilt first.
She snatched it up before he could reconsider and held it up over her head. He watched its descent and grabbed her wrist an instant before she drove the blade into him.
“Aye, ye are his daughter,” he said, plucking his dirk from her fingers.
