David shrugged. “Not a bad clan as clans go. Even good families must throw out a bad egg now and then, eh?”
“MacDonald. A good enough name to live by if you’d seek to retrieve your own.”
Indeed.
There was but one way for him to find justice and vengeance, and that was to survive. His rage against what had happened, against her and those who had conspired with her, would not help him now.
Had he been supposed to die?
But he had not perished.
Yet it did not seem that he had lived.
He had found hell on earth.
But he was going to survive it. He was going to survive it because he was going to go back. Find out who had sought to kill him, and who was buried in his stead. Discover what evil cunning and conspiracy had brought him to this pit of eternal fire.
And he was going to enter her life again.
And God help him…
She would have all the fury of hell to pay, and he would see to it that they were damned together.
David awoke with a start. He was no longer aboard a ship, nor was he any man’s prisoner. He had found his freedom, and he was back in his room at Castle Rock.
In his own bed.
He looked quickly to the floor. She slept.
All those years…
All those years he had waited to come back, and she had been both the focus of his revenge and the spirit that plagued his sleep, for though he longed for his revenge, he had found himself simply longing for her as well. Her scent had haunted him in the night. Memories of the satin-smooth feel of her flesh had come to him in the darkness, along with those of the soft brush of her hair against his limbs. And now…
He still longed both to hold her tenderly and to shake her. When she had been younger, he had cared for her as an unruly, headstrong, beautiful child.
When she had grown and matured, he had desired her.
Aye, he had wanted her, therein had lain his weakness, and therein now lay his thirst for revenge.
Yet again, it was Shawna twisting his heart and senses and reason.
He rose from the bed and walked to where she slept now upon the cold stone of the castle floor. He gently picked her up and laid her upon the bed.
And because he could not help himself, he gently placed his lips against her mouth and there tasted her sweetness with the breath of his kiss.
Fool!he charged himself.
And he departed the room in the same manner by which he had come.
CHAPTER 8
Shawna sat in the office, scrupulously going over each individual set of books kept for both estates. As far as she could tell, not a single shilling had been miscounted since the day David Douglas—or the charred corpse that had supposedly been David Douglas—had been buried.
She sighed, setting down the books, rising, stretching, looking out of the large window that was so similar to the one in her bedroom. Steps led to it, and beyond it was a stone balcony. The balconies naturally offered a fine method of defense for the castle, but to the best of her knowledge, they’d never been used so, for in the days when feudal wars had plagued the Highlands, the outer walls had stood strong against any attempted invasion.
She frowned, staring at the window, hoping it would give her some insight as to how David was coming and going from her room.
Since she had awakened the second morning after his arrival—back in the bed—three days had passed.