She didn’t know him anymore. At all.
She didn’t know the stranger who stared at her with such hatred.
The man who oh-so-apparently assumed that she had somehow attempted his death in that fire!
She was suddenly chilled.
He was here, no mistake about it.
But he hadn’t come to try to help her understand what had happened that night.
He had come, having already condemned her.
“You’re back, but you’ve become a demon then,” she told him. “Fierce and cruel. It’s in your eyes. Nothing more than a beast?—”
“A selkie, would you? Ah, lady, you’ve yet to see the beast fully furred, taloned, and fanged! Indeed, what irony! I come to wrest my own revenge only to discover that I must first seize you from another man intent upon severing you with his sword. Tell me, Lady MacGinnis, have you not fared so well then since you achieved my supposed murder?”
“I have fared quite well?—”
“So, you do admit to attempted murder?”
“Nay, I do not!” she cried furiously.
“Ah, how strange!” he murmured, easing himself from her prone and tattered form. He strode some distance from her, hands folded behind his back. He swung back to look at her and said politely, “Yet you thought me dead?”
“I saw you dead!” she whispered.
“Alas, my dear, you did not. And you claim to have done so well, yet when I am eager to strangle you myself, I find I must first battle an unknown thug.”
“The man who chased me!” she gasped. That David was alive was a shock. That she had been chased by another assailant as well was simply too incredible to be fathomed.
“Who was he?” David demanded sharply.
“I’ve no idea, I never saw his face.”
“Why did he chase you?”
How in God’s name should I know? she asked herself.
Shawna sat up, determined that she must have more dignity for this conversation. She was at such a terrible disadvantage. So stunned. So sweetly relieved and disbelieving to see him alive, yet…so unnerved by his restrained yet furious manner. She tried to draw the torn shoulder of her nightgown upward lest she lose more of her damp gown.
She didn’t succeed well.
Because she hadn’t replied to his snapped-out demand quickly enough.
He was back before her, wrenching her to her feet by the very hand that attempted to hold her gown in place. His gaze fell upon her breast. She felt the flush of heat that rushed into her face. His eyes swiftly fell up and down the length of her, and a wry smile curved into his lips. His grip around her wrist tightened. The tone of his voice did not change. “Did you not hear me, lass? Why did that fellow chase you? What new treachery has sprung up here in my absence? Who was the man?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she snapped back. Who was he indeed? What was going on? How could she begin to care or think or reason when David was here. Holding her in so merciless a grip.
She forced herself to stare into his eyes and reply heatedly, “You should have asked him.”
“I would have enjoyed doing so, but I’m afraid it was his life or my own. We had no time for conversation before I was forced to make his acquaintance through my sword. Pray tell, my lady, just where are your kin? Your great-uncles and cousins? What are they up to these days? Could one of them have now decided that you should have joined me in the coffin those many years ago?”
“How dare you—” Shawna began furiously, but he gave her a hard shake that silenced her, and his green stare sliced into her with the commanding power of a steel blade.
“I dare because you attempted my murder, my lady. The question here is, how dare you?”
She shivered, the fire within him seemed to burn so hotly. What words could she say? How could she cry out that she did not know the truth, that she had suffered like the damned herself when the night had turned from blaze to ashes? His fingers,clenched around her wrist, just brushed the tender flesh of her breast, and she longed to shriek out in protest of the disturbingly sensual touch. One that he did not even seem to notice.