More shots rang out. He scrambled to his feet, returning fire and was sprinting after her when he saw a smoking bullet tear through the billow of her skirt. She froze with a terrified gasp, staring into the darkness. "M-Mind your bullets!"

A split second later, her shoulder was wrenched back just before he snagged her around the waist and dove behind a boulder. He felt wetness against his hand, saw his white shirt stained dark. "Lass," he said as he dropped the empty pistol to probe her shoulders. "Is that mine or yours?"

He answered his own question when he felt her shuddering. "It'll be all right," he grated, though fury overwhelmed him. They'd shot her. A defenseless woman. He ripped off her sleeve and just stopped himself from hissing in a breath.

In the moonlight he could see the bullet had torn open her arm. He prayed it had missed the bone. Taking the material from her sleeve, he tied it tight over the wound.

He hadn't been able to prevent this. He wanted to yell, to ask her why she hadn't listened to him. She was too small to take a bullet. What kind of animal would shoot a woman?

She jerked upright and looked at him as though she'd just realized something, and had just forgotten the bullet hole in her arm. "This is all your fault! I loathe you. Detest you!"

He exhaled. "I've heard it before."

"Do you know what this means, you bastard?" she cried.

Yes, he knew exactly what it meant. Pascal was making a statement to anyone who dared to take what was his. And she might now believe him about her brother.

"Do you, you disgusting brute?" she demanded again, seemingly uncaring of the shots all around them.

He narrowed his eyes. "Groom got cold feet?"

She screamed, springing forward, fingers in claw position to scratch down his face just before he caught her wrists. Still she fought him.

"Damn it! Will you stop?" He lifted her injured arm in front of her face. "Look, wench! Look at all the blood everywhere. Now faint. Should you no' be fainting by now?"

She sank back against the boulder, solemnly regarding her wound, and he could see shock settling over her. "I do appear to have been shot." Her tone was dazed, and he sorely regretted his taunt.

She was too small and too delicate. Niall was right. Women like her needed to be cosseted, protected. Two nights under his protection and she'd been shot.

Death to those caught in his wake.

"We've got to get you someplace safe."

She blinked up at him.

With effort, he tore his gaze from hers to scan the area. He spotted her horse, frantic, caught by the reins tangled in a bush. Court tensed to run, but said to her, "Stay here! This is more serious than you know."

In a small voice, she said, "It hurts as though it's serious."

Annalia Llorente was docile, a sure sign she was in shock.

He sprinted after the horse, his ribs singing as he dodged bullets. Just when he'd finally secured the confused animal, which carried her bloody saddlebags full of dresses while his had had ammunition, he heard his men sounding the call. Soon after, he heard the guns he recognized by sound firing back at the assassins, but they were separated from him.

"Niall!" he yelled in Gaelic. "How many are there?"

"Seems like the whole order! They're everywhere."

"Bypass the lodge. We'll meet up at the posting house."

"Aye."

"Can you cover me?"

"Aye, be careful with yourself and the girl."

He rode back under the shield of Niall's covering shots. When he slid down from the horse to bend down beside her, he found her leaning against the rock, sitting very still, eyes closed, cradling her arm. Closer, he could see blood streaming in a line down her bent elbow, pooling into the dust. Her other hand was limp, palm up, and his makeshift tourniquet lay on it. Panic made his vision swim. He took it and retied it, knowing she'd only intended to look at the wound, to check how badly she'd been hurt.

"Anna!" He lifted her up. "Annalia…" She cracked open her eyes. "Ye need tae hold on tae my neck with yer good arm." His brogue was so thick, he wondered if she could even understand him. "I'm goin' tae get ye and me on a horse."

He had turned and was surveying the horse, figuring out how best to mount up, when he heard her say in a frail voice, "You need rescuing as much as I do."

He turned back, brows drawn. "What?"

She struggled against him, weak as a kitten. "I'm better off on my own."

Though he sensed she was gravely sincere, and more than a bit in shock, he clucked her under the chin. "Yer hurtin' my male pride, and will be payin' for that one."

His light response worked. She exhaled and looped her thin arm around his neck. She weighed no more than a feather as he lifted her, but he teased her, saying, "You weigh more than you look."

"You are weaker than you look," she immediately whispered.

He stared down at her in his arms and gathered her even closer. She met his gaze, looking very brave, but he could feel the tension leaving her body as she drifted into unconsciousness. Her eyes slowly closed, and her lips parted.

That's when reason left him.

"You're rich, I've heard."

"Did your father tell you that?" Aleix asked. Though it went against everything he was, he sat in his prison, on the wrong end of a gun, conversing with Olivia Pascal. Why would he speak with the woman who'd advocated a more advantageous and strategic timing of his execution?

In the beginning he'd hoped she would give him information about Annalia, but he'd soon realized she was too intelligent to let anything slip. So why did he continue tarrying with her? Because he was about to die? Because he wanted to talk to someone? Anyone?

And he'd done this for two nights. This room was obviously making him crazed.

"No, not Pascal. Your sister described your home. Even here it must cost something to own a mountain with herds of horses covering it."

"My family has been fortunate in that regard."

She tapped her finger against her chin. "I want to be fortunate as well."

He frowned. "Your father has as much money as I do."

"But I don't." Collecting her pistol, she rose to her knees. "You have something I want, and I have something you desperately, desperately need."

He grew still. "You're talking about freeing me?"

"I'm talking about striking a deal, which would necessitate my freeing you."

He was so staggered he lapsed into politeness with her. "Pardon?"

"Since your freedom has such an extraordinary value, then the price must be dear as well."

Trying not to show her how anxious he was to escape—he thought she would see that as weakness—he said slowly, "Whatever it is, I can pay it."

"Are you sure?" she asked, her gaze steady. "It will be very, very steep."

"Steeper than giving up my life?"

She glanced down and traced a finger over the carvings in the wooden handle of her pistol. "Depends on how you look at it…."

"I'll no' leave."

MacCarrick was speaking to someone, but who? Why did their voices sound as if they'd been bathed in syrup? She wanted to open her eyes, but they felt impossibly heavy. Best just to lie here. Yes. Rest and listen.

"But, sir, I will have to examine her," a man said. His voice sounded young. "In my practice…with a lady like this…uh, husbands do not usually remain with their wives."

"This one does."

The gall. Had he no shame? Annalia tried to protest, tried to cry out that he wasn't her husband, but at that same moment MacCarrick had started to unlace her dress, and it sounded like a moan.

"I suppose her wedding band was stolen when you were set upon," the man said in an off-hand tone.

"Aye." Wedding band?

"And they left the other jewelry?"