The Lady's Protector (Highland Bodyguards #1) (21 page)

“I hadn’t thought to kill him here,” Clemont said, his voice as smooth and calm as ever. “It would be too much of a mess, you see. Too many questions that could be tied back to the man who hired me. But I’ll do it if you do not lay down your sword.”

Clemont’s words sliced through the fog of battle clouding Ansel’s mind.

Isolda cried out wordlessly, but Ansel could not tear his gaze away from the little boy in Clemont’s grasp.

“Mama!” the lad cried again, this time recognition brightening his tone.

“John, don’t…don’t move,” Isolda whispered.

“Drop your sword,” Clemont said, his voice harder now.

Ansel needed more time. He needed to think, but blank darkness descended on his mind. How could he save both John and Isolda? And if he failed either one of them, how could he ever hope to live with himself?

Clemont’s wrist twitched and John inhaled sharply. “Do I need to repeat myself?” Clemont asked coolly.

Ansel was out of options. Slowly, he bent and lowered his sword to the ground, then shoved it toward Clemont.

Clemont nodded curtly. “The blade slipped into your boot as well.”

Ansel hadn’t had time to draw the dagger he kept strapped to his boot in the fray earlier. Reluctantly, he withdrew the blade and tossed it to where his sword lay halfway between him and Clemont.

“Now, the woman. Have her come here.”

He looked up at Isolda. Her hands were entwined in Eachann’s mane, her eyes wide and shimmering with fear. He turned back to Clemont.

“Take me instead.”

“Ansel, nay.” Isolda’s voice trembled, but he refused to look at her.

Clemont’s teeth flashed briefly in the darkness. “You are full of surprises,” he said. “You would offer yourself in the woman’s place?”

“And the boy’s.”

Clemont shook his head slowly, never removing his gaze from Ansel. “I have underestimated you twice now. You would do anything to complete your mission to protect the boy and the woman, wouldn’t you? Perhaps you and I are not so different,” he said, that edge of respect returning to his voice. It made Ansel want to grind his molars.

“Nay, we are nothing alike.”

“Oh no?” Clemont jutted his chin to the ground surrounding Ansel—the ground littered with dead bodies. “Aren’t we? We are killers, merely hired men,” Clemont went on softly. “Our own lives do not matter. All that matters is the mission—the lives we are sent to take, or save, as the case may be.”

Keep him talking
. The voice echoed in the dark recesses of Ansel’s mind. No plan had formed there yet, but if nothing more, Ansel could stall.

“Ye are nothing like me. Ye have no honor,” Ansel said, his brain skittering over all that Clemont had hinted at. “Ye kill for coin. Ye are a bounty hunter, are ye no’?”

“Aye.” Clemont tilted his head in acknowledgement, his eyes emotionless.

“Who hired ye? King Edward? Or perhaps one of his lackeys?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Clemont’s voice was once again flat.

Ansel was running out of time to think, yet he stood weaponless before Clemont, John’s life balancing along the edge of the knife at his throat.

Something tugged at Ansel’s scattered thoughts, something Clemont had said earlier.

“How did ye ken that I was hired to protect the woman and the boy?”

One of Clemont’s dark brows rose as he considered Ansel’s question. “I suppose it makes no difference now,” he murmured at last. He cocked his head, his gaze flicking curiously between Ansel and Isolda. “The Earl of Lancaster told me.”

Ansel’s stomach dropped to his feet.

Lancaster
.

Could the bastard have truly hired a bounty hunter to kill his own son?

“Although he paid my employer handsomely for my skills, he also saw fit to hire a bodyguard—you. Something about giving your Scottish King the impression of an alliance and ensuring that the woman would feel safe enough to lead me to the boy.” Clemont shrugged as if it were all naught but a meaningless chore.

A new realization washed over Ansel, causing sickness to rise in the back of his throat. Lancaster had hired
him
, too. Just as Clemont had said, they were both just pawns, rented out for Lancaster’s schemes.

Suddenly Isolda moaned and slumped over Eachann’s neck. Ansel leapt forward, catching her before she tumbled to the ground in a swoon.

“Why?” Ansel growled, clutching Isolda to his chest. “Why would Lancaster pay to have his own son and the boy’s mother killed?”

“Who knows why rich noblemen hire men like me?” Clemont said with another shrug. “I didn’t ask.”

But even as Clemont spoke, the gears in Ansel’s mind ground into place. It was just as Garrick had said almost a month ago when he’d arrived at Dunrobin with this mission. Lancaster was planning to make a play for the English throne. An illegitimate son could be used against him to call his line of succession into question. But they had all assumed that Lancaster would want to protect his son from an attack, not be rid of him to eradicate such a vulnerability.

“And…and Lancaster had ye track us into Scotland?” Ansel rasped, looking down at Isolda. Her eyelids fluttered as she regained consciousness. His chest burned as if his very heart were being branded.

“Aye, and again, I must compliment you,” Clemont said evenly. “Lancaster was sure you’d lead me directly to the boy once my men and I had driven you from Dunstanburgh. But you made it almost impossible for me to track you.
Almost
. I had nearly lost faith that you would ever seek the boy out, but then…” Clemont tilted his head at the shadowy graveyard and the bodies on the ground. “Here we are.”

“And what did Lancaster order ye to do next?” Ansel ground out.

“As I said, the woman and the boy are loose ends to be shorn off. So you see, your offer that I take you instead of them is no good. You are naught to Lancaster.”

Isolda stirred once again in Ansel’s arms. Her eyes popped open and her gaze darted to Clemont and John. She strained against Ansel’s hold as if she would dash to her son’s side. Carefully, Ansel eased her down onto her feet, but he held fast to her hand.

“John is just a child,” Isolda said, her voice quaking. “He will not remember any of this. Please, let him live. He never has to know who his father is.”

“Enough,” Clemont cut in, his eyes sliding from Ansel to Isolda and back again. “You have tried to stall me, and I granted you the information you sought—out of respect, that is all. There is naught left to discuss. Give me the woman.”

“I’d rather die,” Ansel growled.

Clemont shook his head slightly. “I am offering you a gift, Highlander. Hand the woman over and I won’t kill them in front of you. They will die either way—there are no choices in that. But you do not have to watch.”

John began whimpering softly, his eyes brimming with tears. Clemont gave the boy a hard shake, though instead of silencing him, John moaned louder.

Panic, hot and jagged, tore through Ansel’s veins. He could sense the last of his options slipping away like sand through his fingers.

“What can I offer Lancaster instead?” he said, desperately raking his mind. “The Scottish army’s movements? The location of the Bruce’s camp?”

“Ansel, nay!”

To his shock, Isolda yanked her hand free of his and turned to him, her eyes wide and glistening.

“I was wrong to doubt you, even for a moment,” she breathed. “You are a man of honor. You cannot betray your King and countrymen.”

“Isolda.” Ansel’s voice was a ragged rasp. “Ye would rather I betray ye and John?”

“It matters naught,” Clemont interjected. “I have been sent for the boy and the woman. Naught you say or do will stop me.”

Isolda took a slow step backward, toward Clemont, though her eyes remained fixed on Ansel.

“And if I go with you, Ansel will live?” she said over her shoulder, her voice trembling.

Ansel’s gaze shot to Clemont. The man tilted his head in thought for a brief moment.

“I was paid for two lives, and his was not one of them. I have no business with him beyond this.”

“Isolda, what are ye doing?” Ansel hissed. She took another step backward, broadening the space between them.

“Lancaster will never stop,” she whispered. The tears brimming in her pale eyes finally began flowing down her cheeks. “John and I will never be free of him. But you still can be.”

Clemont shifted restlessly behind Isolda. His hand tightened around the dagger at John’s throat until his knuckles stood out whitely in the darkness.

Soft as an owl’s wing, something brushed the back of Ansel’s mind.

Clemont’s dagger
.

The blade was short and almost oval. Even in the low light, the sharp edge gleamed.

It was the same kind of dagger that Clemont had sunk into Ansel’s arm and shoulder.

The same kind of dagger that Ansel had examined closely for clues…

And that he had tucked into his saddlebags.

Isolda took another step backward. She stood between him and Clemont, blocking Clemont’s view. Slowly, Ansel shifted so that his arm brushed against Eachann’s flank. He darted his elbow into the horse’s side to make him start, then lifted a hand to Eachann’s back just above the saddlebag as if to soothe him.

“Come along,” Clemont said to Isolda, his voice suddenly sharp.

Ansel eased his hand into the saddlebag. Under cover of another of Isolda’s steps, he moved ever so slightly to dig deeper into the bag. He held his breath, expecting Clemont to notice what he was about, but Isolda stood between them, hindering Clemont’s line of sight. At last his fingers brushed cool metal.

Isolda’s gaze shifted to the saddlebag. Her eyes jolted up to him, a question in their pale depths.

“I told ye that I made ye a promise, and I dinnae break my word,” Ansel said, holding Isolda’s frightened gaze as he slipped the dagger partway out of the saddlebag.

Isolda shook her head ever so slightly. “Think of John,” she whispered, her gaze flickering to the dagger and back again.

“I am,” he murmured. “Ye said ye wouldnae doubt me again. Do ye trust me?”

Isolda swallowed hard, but she nodded slowly at him, her eyes round.

“I trust you.”

“Enough,” Clemont bit out. “You have had your time to say goodbye. This ends—”

Ansel’s heart leapt into his throat as he yanked the dagger free of the saddlebag.

“Now!” he bellowed.

Time seemed to slow.

Ansel’s arm blurred in the corner of his vision as he threw the dagger as hard as he could.

Isolda flung herself to the ground, the dagger whizzing where her head had been a fraction of a second before.

The dagger cut through the night like a beam of light.

The air reverberated with a soft thunk as the dagger found its home in Clemont’s neck. He jerked backward at the impact, dragging John to the ground with him.

John screamed in panic as he toppled onto Clemont. Isolda’s cry of fear joined the lad’s. Even before Ansel could uproot himself from where he stood, Isolda had scrambled to John’s side.

“Mama!” the boy wailed.

At last, Ansel managed to drag in a raw breath of cold, fresh air. He rushed to where Isolda pulled at John to extract him from Clemont’s grasp.

“Are you hurt, my dove?” Isolda cried, her voice still tight with fear.

“Nay, Mama!” John burst into tears as he launched himself into his mother’s arms, free of Clemont’s hold at last.

Ansel crouched next to their huddled forms. Unbidden, his arms caught them both up and he dragged them against his chest.

“Ye’re all right, lad,” he breathed. “Ye’re safe now.”

His eyes locked with Isolda’s over John’s dark head. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gave him a wordless nod.

He gently released his hold on them and eased Isolda to her feet. She clung to John, pulling him up in her arms as she stood. Ansel guided them to where Eachann stood and moved the horse so that he blocked their view of Clemont.

When he trusted that they would not have to see their attacker again, he turned and let his gaze fall on Clemont’s form.

The man lay wide-eyed on his back, the dagger protruding from his throat. He was still alive. His body lurched as he struggled to drag in a breath, but dark blood was already pooling around his head. Each ragged inhale made a rasping, wet sound that told of fast-approaching death.

To Ansel’s shock, Clemont’s dark eyes locked on him as he crouched by the bounty hunter’s side.

“Perhaps…in another life…you would have been like me,” Clemont wheezed, his words almost indiscernible. “If a man like my employer…had found you.”

“Nay,” Ansel said, though all the heat of anger suddenly drained from him.

“Then perhaps,” Clemont whispered, “I would have been…like you.”

Clemont lifted a shaking hand toward the dagger in his throat.

“Free me.”

Ansel nodded slowly, holding Clemont’s half-lidded gaze. His hand closed around the dagger and in one swift jerk, he yanked it free. Blood coursed eagerly out of the wound. On one final shuddering exhale, the light went dim behind Clemont’s eyes.

As he stood, Ansel dropped the dagger by Clemont’s lifeless body. At last, he turned away, a murmured prayer for the dead man slipping from his lips.

He returned to Eachann’s side to find Isolda rocking John gently in her arms, though the lad was big enough that she struggled to hold him. Even still, she clung tight, her face buried in John’s hair as she murmured soothing words to him.

“It is over,” Ansel said softly. “Let us leave this place.”

Isolda nodded, a slow exhale escaping her lips.

“Where will we go?”

“To Brora.”

His response didn’t answer the underlying question that lurked in her voice, though.

“And then?”

He gritted his teeth against the churning emotions in his gut. Aye, he’d protected John and Isolda, as he’d promised. But he’d been willing to betray his King to do so.

“I’ll seek out Robert the Bruce. He must be told that Lancaster is no’ his ally after all. And he must hear of my betrayal.”

“But Ansel…” Her pained eyes met his over John’s head. “You didn’t tell Clemont aught. Why can’t we let it be over, as you said?”

“Because I would have told Clemont everything I kenned if it could have saved ye and John,” he said quietly. “Clemont is dead. He cannae report back to Lancaster about yer whereabouts or mine. And I’ll make sure Lancaster can never reach ye again. But I must face my King and tell him the truth.”

“And then what?” she whispered. “What of our future? What of marriage and a simple life together?”

The fear in her voice cut him as surely as a sword. If he could have, Ansel would have swung Isolda and John onto Eachann’s back and guided them deep into the Highlands—somewhere no one would find them. Some place where the outside world would never encroach on their dreamed-of life.

Ansel cupped her cheek in his hand. Bloodied though he was, she leaned into him as if she drew strength from his touch.

“I swore to ye that I would keep ye safe, and I will keep that promise,” he vowed. “Lancaster and his men will never get near ye or John again.”

His heart twisted painfully in his chest. “But I must live up to how ye see me—I must be a man of honor,” he said, his throat tight. “Which means I must face the King.”