Page 48 of The Highlander’s Improper Wife

Taran started after him. “I believe you have your wish, sister.”

Fiona scrambled to her feet. “What are you talking about?” “You coming, Blackhall?” Ross called from the hallway.

“On my way,” Taran shouted back, then said to Fiona as he grasped the door handle,

“Your husband rues the day he married you.” Caroline lunged for the door. “Blackhall!” He slammed the door in her face.

* * * *

Caroline crashed into the shut door. Dull pain radiated through her shoulder. She gritted her teeth against the throbbing, seized the handle and yanked in unison with the sound of steel sliding against steel. The door didn’t budge.

Fiona appeared at her side. “He’s used the claymore to bar the door.”

Caroline stepped back and Fiona grabbed the handle and yanked. Wood rattled against a clank of steel, but remained firm. She pounded a fist on the door. “Blackhall! Blackhall!” She placed an ear to the wood for a moment, then straightened. “Damn him.”

Caroline stared at the door, still unable to believe it. Taran had bolted the door from the outside with the sword.

“If he kills Ross—”

“He has no intention of shooting your husband,” Caroline cut in.

“Did he tell you that?”

“Well, no.”

“You said two duels in as many days. What was the other duel about?”

Caroline flushed. “He, well, he…”

“Threatened a duel in your honor, did he?” She faced the window again. “Taran does not make idle threats.”

“Surely, he must know you would not forgive him.”

“Taran never asks forgiveness.”

Caroline felt as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs. “He must know he cannot stop you.”

“He knows he can stop me if Ross is dead.”

“He would not kill the boy,” Caroline said under her breath. The man who made love to her in the carriage was no murderer.

“Ah ha!” Fiona cried. “Your bedchamber.”

“What?”

Her sister-in-law raced to a door on the left wall and seized the door handle leading to Caroline’s bedchamber and pushed. The door didn’t open. She shoved with her shoulder. Still nothing. Fiona took a step back and looked the door up and down. “He locked this door as well? I did not hear him enter the closet.”

Caroline remained rooted to the spot. She knew the door led to the small room that connected her bedchamber with Taran’s, for she had locked and unlocked it a dozen times, torn between the notion that a locked door might discourage him from visiting her should he return home late that night. She had decided the idea was nonsense and had left the door unlocked, or so she’d thought.

Fiona blew out a frustrated breath, then whirled in the direction of the curtains of the bay window and hurried to them. With a jerk, she yanked aside the heavy fabric to reveal French doors leading onto a balcony. She threw open the doors and disappeared on the left side of the balcony. Caroline hurried outside and found Fiona, skirts tugged above her thigh as she lifted a leg over the wrought iron railing.

“Fiona!” She lunged for the girl, caught her arm, and dragged her backward.

They tumbled onto the hard stone floor.

Fiona scrambled to her feet and gave her a deprecating look. “What are you doing?”

Caroline grasped the back of a chair sitting at the small table to her right and pulled herself up. “I might ask you the same thing.”