Page 56 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“Jesus, Si, I found her here alone. I was only trying to convince her to come back for her own safety,” Blair gasped, but Silas didn’t relent.

At first, the younger man tried to fight back, clawing and grappling, and landing a blow here or there, but he was no match for an outraged husband.

“You know I would never…” Blair fell to his knees, trying ineffectually to block his face, but Silas held him up by his shirt collar, continuing to pummel him, his knuckles slick with blood.

And some small, wicked part of Ellen was relieved. Some dark part of her soul wanted Si to beat Blair until there was nothing left that could grab her arm or sidle up to women in a forest glade. But the rational part of her mind knew she had to intervene.

“Stop,” she finally cried, for if Si didn’t, he’d surely kill the man and if he did that, he’d be hanged—by the law or the Watch or Norval and the clan. Even if he wasn’t hanged, at the very least he’d lose the favor of the MacKenzies, Ellen’s whole reason for being there.

Si looked at her in shock, blinking as if only just realizing what he’d done.

“Mercy,” Ellen whispered. “Show him mercy.”

And he nodded, tossing Blair to the ground in disgust. “Can you walk?” he growled.

“Fuck you,” Blair spat, which appeared to be good enough for Si.

Without a second glance, he scooped Ellen onto his horse and rode back to Leod, not loosening his hold around her waist until they reached her chamber.

“I’ll have them draw a bath,” he said, his voice hoarse with restrained fury.

She shook her head. She was dirty and coarse, and she longed to be scrubbed clean until all her skin peeled off, but she’d no desire to disrobe, and she didn’t deserve the comforts of a bath, in any case. She deserved to stew in her own filth for flirting with disaster. He had warned her last night of how it must look, and she’d treated his warnings as ridiculous, but now she was the fool after all.

“Bed,” she whispered, though it wasn’t even late enough for dinner.

Silas scowled at her, searching her face, her neck, her arms for marks, she suspected, that would grant him leave to go back and finish murdering Blair.

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head and chewed the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.

He nodded and stepped away from her, but returned a moment later, holding out a little knife, a sgian dubh like Jory’s, but finer, with a stone of red jade that matched her wedding band in the hilt.

“I should have given it to you sooner,” he rasped. “But I was afraid...” he cut himself off.

Ellen reached out hesitantly to accept the gift, knowing full-well what such a thing was capable of.

“I’ll teach you how to use it,” he promised.

Ellen could only nod, still gazing at the weapon in her hand.

Then Si nodded too and stepped back into his library, adding, “Knot the door,” over his shoulder as he went, and when she was alone, Ellen crumpled to the floor and wept.

Chapter Sixteen

What kind of pitiful excuse for a husband would promise to protect and instead lie about his identity and lure his wife off to the forest only to be attacked by a sniveling weasel of a man? Len appeared physically unharmed, but every shudder and every tear was Si’s fault, all because he’d been too weak and cowardly to speak to his own wife since the day they wed.

Thank Christ she stopped him before he took his retribution too far. What a terror he must have seemed, rage made flesh, beating the lad bloody with every barb and insult ever flung his way, every moment of inadequacy, every second of despair in his eight and twenty years.

He wasn’t a man of violence. He abhorred it, which was one of the reasons he didn’t return to life at Leod after the prior Kintail’s death. He could fight as well as any man and better than most, but his heart wasn’t in it, and usually, thanks to his size, he didn’t have to. Until today. Now the lass had borne witness to his temper unleashed, seen just what he was capable of, and she would fear him more than ever. She would absolutely insist on leaving Leod now.

He pulled himself together in time to go down to dinner alone and ordered a tray taken up to her room, to be left covered in his library if she didn’t answer. Working the Hall as he had done the evening before, he smiled and nodded at the slaps on the back praising his shinty skills and the teasing, “We’ll make a man of young Bram yet.” He allowed the taunts about his father’s absence to roll off his back like so much water, putting on the mask of his most charming self and never rising to the bait. It was easy, because his mind wasn’t there in the Hall with the clan. It was with Len—only Len.

“D’ye have Old Kintail stuffed in a coffin upstairs?” one of Cedric’s brothers asked.

“Well now, if I did that, the old bastard’d be haunting the place, wouldn’t he? Throwing food, spilling wine. Pinching you when nobody’s looking.”

“He would at that,” Gawyn agreed, patting Si’s shoulder so he’d know he wasn’t alone.