The Highlander's Touch

Circenn inclined his head. “What of Armand?”

“As a show of our allegiance, we resolved that matter. He will trouble you no more.”

Lisa leaned a bit closer to the door. What had they done to him? Banished him? Would they drive him across the border for the English to catch?

“Explain,” Circenn ordered.

“We determined his crime and dispensed fitting punishment.”

“He is dead?” Circenn asked wearily.

“He died by receiving the price he himself had named for his corruption. We gave him his weight in gold.”

Lisa made a strangled sound that was fortunately masked by Circenn’s own. Her eyes flew to his, but he hadn’t yet noticed her. He looked shocked.

“Do not fear we acted wastefully,” Renaud hastened to assure him. “We know we will require the gold to rebuild both our Order and Scotland once the warring is over. We will reclaim it when we quarter Armand.”

Lisa retched instinctively, unable to contain it. A dozen eyes flew to the door, where she stood clutching her stomach.

“Lisa,” Circenn exclaimed, half rising. His eyes were wide and apologetic. “I asked you to wait in your room.”

“You know I never do,” she said irritably. “Why would you expect me to this time?” She looked directly into Renaud’s eyes. “What do you mean you gave him his weight in gold and will retrieve it?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, but her suspicions were so awful that she couldn’t help herself. If they didn’t tell her, she would just imagine atrocities. She’d long ago found it was easier to deal with reality than imagined fears.

Renaud did not respond, clearly reluctant to discuss the matter with a woman.

“Tell me,” she repeated, through clenched teeth. She glanced at Circenn, who was watching her with sorrow and understanding. She appreciated that he did not try to shield her; he understood that she needed her own answers in things.

Renaud cleared his throat uneasily. “Molten. Poured down his throat. It will cool and be removed without difficulty.”

“Lisa!” Circenn rose from the desk, but it was too late.

She was already running down the hall.

IT WAS SEVERAL DAYS BEFORE LISA RETURNED TO HER normal self. Circenn spent the time busying himself on the estate, waiting patiently as she worked through her feelings. He was never alone, always accompanied by the pressure of her heart. One day, he’d almost sworn that he’d heard her voice right next to his ear, muttering pig-headed, bloodthirsty primates, but the phrase had not made any sense to him. Whatever it meant, she must have been feeling it very strongly for him to pick it up. He wondered if their bond would continue to grow stronger over time, affording them deeper communication.

He respected her mild retreat, accepting that it was a necessary part of her adjustment to their way of life. His time must seem strange to her, and the ways of the Templars would likely seem extreme in any century. He was deeply grieved that she had found out about Armand, but if he had learned nothing else about Lisa Stone, he had learned how great her curiosity was. She wished to be shielded from nothing; she wished to be accorded respect and given all the knowledge available so she could make her own choices from a well-informed position.

He would not have wished Armand’s gruesome death upon any man, yet the Templars had their own justice and dispensed it with the same unyielding discipline with which they performed all their duties. In his heart he acknowledged that he was not sorry the man was dead. Armand had nearly killed his woman, nearly snuffed her fragile, tiny, delicate life.

And that terrified him.

Armand’s brutality had elevated Lisa’s mortality to an obsession with him. He loathed it, resented it—her mortality had become his archenemy.

Was he becoming like Adam? Was it in this fashion that such a monster had been fabricated? Did one broken rule permit the next and the next, until finally he would be able to justify taking anything he wanted? Where was the line that he must not traverse before it was too late?

You could make her immortal. You know you want to. You wouldn’t even have to tell her.

Aye, he wanted to. And it confounded him. He’d been married twice and never once considered trying to make his wife immortal.

But no other woman was Lisa.

Besides, up until now, he’d viewed what Adam had done to him as a curse, a vile corruption of the natural order of things. But now that he’d found Lisa, things were no longer so clear. Since she’d arrived in his life, he’d been reevaluating his beliefs, his objections, and his prejudices. He longed to storm into his castle, unearth the flask from its compartment in the stone, and force it between her lips, but he could never justify taking her choice away from her. Somehow, he had to bring himself to tell her.