Page 100 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

She thought about their intimate moment and how he had kissed her after he had brought her to climax. He had looked satisfied.

He’s coming. He’s already coming. He probably left before the sun was up and is riding west with his jaw set and his hand on his sword. He’s going to walk through that door alone, and whatever happens after that is going to be the rest of both our lives or the end of them.

The final loop snapped free.

She kept her hands in her lap, exactly as they’d been, and breathed. Once. Twice. She looked at O’Brien’s back at the window. She looked at the two men at the door, heads bent together. She looked at the ember nearest the outer edge of the hearth stone, close to the leg of the wooden table stacked with O’Brien’s gear against the wall.

Right then.

She had started to push herself up from the floor when the door flew off its hinges. The whole thing, wood and iron both, collapsing inward fast and hard. Magnus burst in with his sword already drawn and an expression that she had never seen on his face.

His eyes found her first. Before the door had finished falling. Before O’Brien had fully turned from the window.

He took in the rope loosely circling her wrists, the position of the two men, and O’Brien’s hand going to his blade all in the space of a single breath, and then his gaze flicked back to her one last time, sharp and brief and steadying.

She held up her hands so he could see the rope was loose.

His jaw moved once. He turned toward O’Brien and raised his sword, and his voice when he spoke was the quietest she had ever heard it.

“Step away from the window.”

* * *

O’Brien had a knife at her throat before Magnus had cleared the doorway. He’d moved fast for a man his age, crossing the room the moment the door caved in, one hand fisting in Elspeth’s hair and hauling her upright, the other pressing the blade flat against her neck.

Magnus stopped.

The two men by the door had their swords up. He took that in, took in the room, the fire, the distance between himself and O’Brien, the rope loose around Elspeth’s wrists, and the fact that her hands were free.

She’d gotten free herself.

He filed that away and looked at O’Brien.

“Put it down,” he said.

“In a moment.” O’Brien’s voice was calm, almost genial. He hadn’t changed much. Broader through the chest, grey at the temples, but the eyes were the same. “First, I want ye to look at her.”

Magnus was already looking at her. He was also watching O’Brien’s knife hand, the angle of his elbow, the slight forward lean that said he was ready to move left.

“Look at her properly,” O’Brien continued. “Because this is what it feels like, Magnus. This specific moment. This is what yer father left for me when he stood by and did nothing.” He pressed the blade closer, and Elspeth’s chin went up, jaw set, eyes on Magnus rather than the knife. “This is what ye’ve had comin’ for thirteen years.”

Magnus moved left.

O’Brien had been expecting him to rush straight. He hadn’t expected the angle, and it bought Magnus two steps before O’Brien shoved Elspeth sideways toward the hearth and brought the knife around in a sweeping arc.

Magnus caught his wrist and turned it, and then they were close, too close for swords. O’Brien slammed his elbow hard into Magnus’s jaw and broke free.

The two men at the door lunged for him. He knocked the nearest one down with a shoulder to the chest and a knee to the ribs. The second one swung high and missed, and then Elspeth’s voice came from the direction of the hearth, sharp and carrying.

“Duck.”

He dropped.

Something hot and glowing sailed above his head, scattering embers and catching the second man in the face. The man swore and fell back, clutching his eyes.

Magnus straightened and looked at Elspeth, who was crouched at the hearth with a piece of burning wood in her still-bound hands, composed.

O’Brien laughed, and Magnus turned back to him.