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“My leg?” Her knee moved under the sheet. “The chain?”
He nodded. “I had to break one of those links to get you out of there. But the clamp is still around your ankle.”
“Who is here?”
“A friend of the stableboy.” Evan shrugged. “I’m no good at picking locks so I sent the stableboy to gather his cousin that specializes in such delicate maneuvers.”
The slightest smile came to her face and she tugged the sheet to the side, poking her ankle out from under the sheet and coverlet. “Bring him in.”
Evan retrieved the boy from the hallway where he’d been kicking his heels against the wall most of the day, then watched the boy pick at the lock in silence with a few shards of metal. Thirty seconds, and the lock sprang free. Impressive. The lad must have surely acquired a number of spoils during the years with that skill set.
Evan quickly pulled free the lock and removed the clamp from Juliet’s ankle. Her raw skin underneath the metal made his stomach flip.
The boy stood up from where he’d been kneeling by the side of the bed, grabbing his cap from the floor and pressing it onto his head. Evan pressed fiveguineas into his hand. Overpayment, but the lock was open and there was no limit to what he would have paid to get that hunk of metal off of Juliet’s leg.
He walked the boy to the door. “Thank you.”
“Happy to ’elp, mi’lord.”
“I trust your fingers won’t latch onto anything on the way out?”
The boy chuckled. “Well, not now that ye said so, mi’lord.”
With a slight shake of his head, Evan closed the door after the boy and turned back to Juliet. She’d shifted onto her side, bending at the waist so that she could rub at the raw skin about her ankle.
She glanced up at him. “Where are we?”
“My room in the Whetland townhouse in Edinburgh. It was the closest comfortable place to bring you.” He walked across the room to her, his hand going along the tall back of the chair he’d been sitting in. “Tell me again that Ness is safe so that I don’t need to worry on her.”
She nodded. “She is. She is with a trusted friend far from here.”
Evan stifled a sigh. Juliet wasn’t about to tell him where exactly Ness was. Which meant she didn’t trust him. Exactly what he deserved.
He glanced about him and his nose wrinkled. “The townhouse is mostly used by cousins that live in town and are attending university. So you’ll have to forgive us in that it has the odor of…men. Lots of men.”
The edges of her lips drifted upward. “Does it have archery grounds in the dining room?”
He chuckled. “No. But the cousins are not the most well-kept—they don’t care what they drag in on their boots from the streets.”
Her hand leaving her ankle, she straightened her body in the bed and pulled the sheet over her leg. “Well, I don’t smell anything. Nothing but your essence in this room.”
“A small favor, then. I’ll keep you in here until you are well.”
She pulled a pillow from the opposite side of the bed and sat up, her movements slow, like she’d aged a hundred years in that dark rathole. She propped the pillow behind her.
Settled, the coverlet tucked across her lap, she stared at him in silence for long breaths before she took a deep breath. “Evan, I’ll not let this hang between us, unspoken. Your brother—he is dead? I saw him fall, but I don’t…I don’t remember what happened next, no matter how I search my mind.”
He moved around the chair and then sank down onto it, leaning back, his look never leaving her. “He’s dead.”
Her eyes closed with a quick inhale. “Did you…”
“Gil jumped.” The words were gravel in his throat and he ran his fingers across his eyes. “He jumped with the words, ‘live with this brother,’ at his lips. Stared up at me the entire way down.”
She gasped, then exhaled a shaking breath, her head swinging back and forth as her eyes remained closed. “Even at that—he left this earth hurting you, Evan. That was all he was determined to do.” A spike of anger cut into her voice and her eyes flew open to him. “You know that, don’t you? That your brother—he was lying? That he only wanted to hurt you? Kill you, even. He was the one that had you—us—attacked in Bicester.”
“What?” His forehead furrowed as his hands flew up, palms to her. “No. I know he lied about finding you, what he did to you—but the attack on us in Bicester? He couldn’t have.”
“Except he did.” Her look pinned him. “His hatred of you was only eclipsed by your belief in him. You were a blinding light to his wretched darkness.” She leaned forward, reaching for his hand on the arm of the chair until she could grasp the back of it. Her hold on him was still weak. “He admitted to me that he sent the men after us—after you. He wanted to dispose of you. Have you killed.”
