“What’re you thinking, leaving her alone as you did?” he demanded, stopping just short of strangling the fool who owned the tavern.

Hamish, Margery had called him when he’d entered her pathetic excuse for a room at the back of the building.

“She was retiring for the evening!” the older man sputtered, eyes wide.

“And you didn’t hear a struggle? You didn’t even hear someone going through the place?” He swept his arm over the room, where the bed had been torn apart.

“I didn’t!” he cried out.

“He’s a bit deaf,” Margery murmured, sitting in a chair with her hands clasped between her knees.

“Is that true?” Derek demanded.

“Is what true?” Hamish asked, confirming what Margery said. He hadn’t heard her call him deaf.

Derek paced the length of the room, back and forth. It didn’t take long, the room being small as it was. “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t come to say goodbye? What would’ve happened? When will you learn that I’m right when I tell you this place isn’t safe for you? When?”

She raised her eyes, ringed with dark circles and red from weeping, and guilt wrapped itself around his heart. He had no business accusing her in such a manner after what she’d been through.

His hands were sore from the pleasure of beating the bastard until he was half-dead, though he wished he could’ve finished the job.

After taking back the money stolen from Margery, he and Hamish had thrown the attacker in a slop puddle and left him there, still unconscious.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

She lowered her head again, chin nearly touching her chest, the shaking of her shoulders revealing the sobs she tried so valiantly to hold back. With her face tilted away from his, he couldn’t see the marks on her creamy cheeks from the hand which had been pressed over her mouth.

Guilt pierced him again and again, reminding him how he’d failed her. He should’ve done more to prevent something such as this from happening. He’d known it would, hadn’t he? He should never have left her side for a minute.

The room was dark, lit only by a pair of candles, and a chill had long since worked its way into Derek’s bones. She’d slept in this very room for a week? This depressing, threadbare little room without so much as a fireplace? It was a wonder she hadn’t frozen half to death—in winter, it would be unbearable.

The sobs which Margery tried to hold back burst forth just before she covered her face with her hands. “Why did I think I could do this? Why did I ever leave home? I was such a fool!”

Part of him wanted to agree with her. Yes, she was a fool, just as he had accused her of since the day they’d met. She was stubborn and pigheaded and refused to listen to reason. She’d rushed ahead without thinking, with no knowledge of what she was getting herself into.

She had put herself in grave danger again and again.

Yes, she was a fool.

She was also terribly important to him, or else he wouldn’t care half as much.

He went to her, dropped to his knees to kneel at her feet. “Och, lass, you only did the best you could. That’s all any of us can do.”

The tenderness in his voice surprised him—as it did her, evidently, since she lowered her hands to stare at him in open-mouthed awe.

“Do you mean it?”

“I rarely say things I don’t mean,” he murmured.

Hamish cleared his throat. For a moment, Derek had forgotten he was still in the room with them. “I’ll be heading up to my chambers now,” he said. “Normally, I wouldn’t leave a young lass alone in the company of a man, but you seem the type who can be trusted.”

“Aye,” Derek acknowledge with a nod. He waited until they were alone before turning back to Margery, who wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

Hamish had filled the basin pitcher with fresh water for Margery to wash her face in, and Derek soaked a piece of linen before handing it to her. “Here. Use this.” She took it with a smile of gratitude.

“I can’t imagine what you must think of me,” she murmured with a shake of her head.

“I think you were unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?” she asked, laughing without humor. “I was fortunate that you found me in time. Misfortune would’ve been if you hadn’t come at all. I don’t even want to think—”

“Don’t,” he cut her off. “Don’t think on it at all.”

“You’re right. Oh, I wish I had never come to this terrible place. Whenever I think I understand things, that I can handle myself, I find out it isn’t so. I’ll never be able to save enough money to bring Beatrice here—and I wouldn’t want her to live in this place,” she added, nose wrinkling. “I would spare her this.”

“You’re a good sister,” he assured her. “Brave and loyal and willing to sacrifice.”

“I’ve been sacrificing my entire life,” she whispered, then sighed unhappily. “Did I tell you about that? Anything about my life before now?”

“No, only about your sister, and about your mother who recently passed.”

She nodded, then looked down at her hands. “I come from a tiny village named Thrushwood. We live on a farm. We have no friends, no one to take care of us now that Mama’s gone and Papa has been gone for so long. It was either go to a city or rely on the charity of the parish, which I would rather die than do.”

He nodded, knowing he’d feel the same in her shoes.

“There are no prospects there, either. No… suitors,” she murmured, turning her face to the wall. “You see, that is our only hope. Marriage. A family, a home, a man to care for us. We’d heard so many things about London from the merchants who passed through, and... I suppose our imaginations took off. We created an entire world between the two of us. Oh, we were so childish.”

“You had no way of knowing.”

“True, but it was still terribly foolhardy, coming all this way on my own.”

“What is your sister doing at home?”

“She teaches the children of the parish, who come from miles away every week to receive lessons. The deacon gives her a small stipend for this, so I have no worries about how she’ll fare while I’m away.”

He nodded, studying her face.

She looked up at him, eyes now blazing with defiant fire. “It isn’t enough. It will never be enough. But I have to allow it to be, I suppose, since there is no future here. She’ll be so disappointed.”

Her chin quivered on that last bit, and Derek’s heart went out to her in a way it never had before. So much of what she’d just shared might as well have been his own story.

“I know what it means to want more,” he offered, crouching at her side. “Truly, I do. My brother was content to serve the laird for the rest of his life, and still is, as a point of fact. I wanted more than that for myself. It was what drove me to go to war, and then to leave the Duncan lands and set out for Kincarny. That… wanting… was what pushed me. And I’m certain there were those who felt I was a fool for leaving the security of the laird’s protection, but it was what I had to do.”

She listened in silence, the lines which appeared between her eyebrows as she concentrated on his story her only movement. “But you’re a man,” she whispered at the finish, “It was possible for you to do that because you’re a man.”

He saw the truth of this and acknowledged it with a mute nod.

“Even so,” she continued, “you understand me.”

“I do.”

“The only person in this terrible place who does.”

She sounded so broken. He reached for her before he could stop himself, wanting only to soothe her if he could.

He cupped the side of her face, and she leaned into his palm with eyes closed. So beautiful, so fierce. It wasn’t her fault that she was up against forces she was no match for.

Seeing her as she was—at the mercy of a brute about to take away the last vestiges of her innocence—had changed something in him. He’d gone from merely being enchanted with her to knowing in the depths of his soul that she was meant for him and could be only his.

His to protect, his to cherish, his to love until he breathed his dying breath.

He was gentle, taking his time in drawing her face closer to his. Would she pull away in light of what she’d been through? He’d never force her.

He didn’t have to.

She leaned in, opening her eyes briefly before he touched his lips to hers. Her quiet sigh sent desire unfurling in his core, an urge he had no choice but to control for both their sakes.

Her mouth was sweet, warm and full, intoxicating. He kissed her slowly, using all his skill to ease her into accepting his ardor when he wanted to do so much more. She wasn’t just another woman, one of the ones who serviced the sailors who came ashore. There was no racing headfirst into such matters with a woman like Margery.

His woman. Whether she knew it or not, she would always be his.

It became too much, too quickly, and he pulled away only by sheer force of will and the desire to refrain from harming or frightening her. His body ached for satisfaction, but it could wait. He was a strong man.

Her eyes opened slowly, and only when did he noted the way her nostrils flared as she breathed in short, sharp gasps. She’d never been kissed before. He hoped he’d lived up to her expectations—something in the lass’s life had to live up to her ideas of it, after all.

“It’s very late,” he whispered, as though he needed to.

“Yes. It is,” she breathed, still shaky.

“I don’t want to leave you alone…”

“You should,” she assured him. “It wouldn’t be proper to stay here, in the room, and I couldn’t imagine making you spend the night on the floor outside. The door locks from this side. I’ll be all right.”

He looked at the bed, which was still in disarray.

“I’m not concerned with that, either,” she murmured. “I don’t think I could sleep tonight if I tried, anyway.”

“Because of him?” he growled, the brute’s broken face reappearing in his mind.

She merely smiled. “No. Because of you.”

He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the backs of her knuckles and relishing her soft sigh. “I’ll be back in the morning. First thing.”

“I’ll be here,” she chuckled, rising to see him to the door.

Only when he was certain she’d locked it between them did he leave through the tavern, closing that door carefully behind him before turning in the direction of the rooming house in which Broc waited for him.

He wouldn’t want to hear of what had just taken place—especially since it meant that Derek no longer wanted to return to Duncan manor so soon, though they had discussed doing that very thing after his ill-fated meeting with MacBride.

How could he leave her behind?

Thoughts of her were the only thoughts he could keep his mind on as he walked the dark streets. It was a new moon, with only the light from the stars above his head. He was accustomed to this, having navigated using nothing but the position of the stars more times than he could count.

What would Broc say about this? He didn’t think he wanted to find out, but there was no choice in the matter. There was an uncomfortable conversation on the horizon.

There was also a tall, dark-cloaked man standing in the distance.

In the near-blackness, it was impossible for Derek to get sight of the man’s face. Was he one of MacBride’s men, tracking his prey?

Not MacBride himself, surely—the figure was mostly hidden in shadow, but there would be no missing his rotund body.

Not the man he’d beaten in Margery’s room. He wouldn’t dare—as much as Derek wished he would. Without her watchful eyes on him, he could give the bastard what he truly deserved.

He didn’t slow his pace, not wishing to give away his awareness even as every nerve stood on end and his senses went on alert.

Suddenly, he heard everything more clearly, his sight sharpened, he even felt the hair along the back of his neck stirring in the breeze coming off the water.

Still, he walked as though there was nothing to fear. The house was only another two or three minutes away. Why had he ever stopped carrying a dirk?

He’d softened, to be sure, and now with a new enemy.

It would be just like MacBride to watch his movements, but he wouldn’t do it himself. He’d have someone else do the dirty work for him.

There were footfalls other than his own, coming in closer and closer behind him. His every muscle tensed, his heart beating faster with every step. He was fortunate in that his tracker believed he had the element of surprise on his side. If he timed his move just right, he could spin on him and take him off-guard.

The footfalls were closer than ever—he judged his opponent to be no more than ten feet behind him. At the rate they were walking, the man would reach him in no more than a second or two, possibly too soon to change his course. And Derek would spring into action.

He stepped forward with his right foot, pivoting sharply to whirl on the man behind him.

And found himself looking into his own face—or one nearly identical to his.

“Hugh!”