Chapter Twenty-Seven

Kirk’s strength flagged as he carried Lillian back up the ridge where the horse waited, but not from her slight weight in his arms.

Nay, he grew weak at the sound of her desolate sobs and the feel of her slim frame shaking uncontrollably against his chest.

He cursed himself in every way he knew how. He’d done this. He’d hurt her, broken her magnificent spirit.

When he at last reached the roan, the animal was skittish from the storm. He carefully set Lillian on the animal’s back but decided to walk the horse, leading him by the bridle in case he spooked and tried to rear again.

But as he trudged back through the darkened forest toward the abbey, the damp air grew decidedly colder and the wind picked up. When he brought the horse to a halt and draped the sodden, muddy cloak around Lillian’s shaking shoulders, fat snowflakes began to mix in with the heavy rain.

Soon the mud underfoot was covered in a layer of slushy snow. When the horse slipped once, and then a second time, Kirk knew they would have to stop or risk laming the exhausted animal.

Ahead, the dark outline of an enormous Scots pine tree stood black against the stormy sky. With high, wide-spreading branches, there was enough room beneath the tree to take shelter from the storm.

Kirk led the horse all the way under the highest of the boughs and secured the reins lest the animal bolt at another flash of lightning or peal of thunder.

When he pulled Lillian from the saddle, fear spiked in the pit of his stomach. She was still trembling, and her teeth chattered loudly. Her tears had ebbed, but in the gloom he could see that her eyes were half-lidded and deadened.

“We need to get ye out of that wet dress,” he said more to himself than to her.

Both of their clothes were soaking. The cloak was heavy with moisture as well, but at least it had not been dunked in the river.

She did not respond, making his fear hitch higher. He set her down carefully beneath the shelter of the pine tree. Once he’d peeled back the cloak, he reached around her and fumbled with the water-swollen ties down the back of her dress.

“Ye shouldnae have done that,” he murmured, loosening the strings. “Ye shouldnae have fled.”

She blinked and tilted her head up to him, as if partially coming out of her stupor.

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Let you take me to them?” Her low, soft voice gained strength as she went on. “Let them kill me? You’ve made it clear that you will not help me, despite what you feel for me—what we feel for each other.”

Kirk gritted his teeth as he pulled her sodden dress down her shoulders.

“I needed to save myself,” she continued. “I needed to get away from you .”

Something snapped deep inside Kirk. He yanked the dress down her torso in one pull, and over her hips and free of her legs with a second.

“What would ye have me do?” he bit out. “Ye said it yerself—I am as bound in this as ye are.”

“I don’t know,” she shot back, her voice breaking with emotion once more. “I don’t know.”

As he reached for her soaked shift, his hands shook with fury for his powerlessness.

“Damn it all.” He felt the delicate, treacherous web of lies and deceit pull tight around him. He was almost out of time—they were no more than a three days’ ride from the Compound. Colin would be coming soon. And still he hadn’t come up with a solution.

The terrible truth—the truth he’d refused to face until now—was that he hadn’t come up with a solution because none existed. There was no way he could accomplish his mission of infiltrating the Order and also keep Lillian safe. If he failed to turn Lillian over to the men who’d paid for her, the Order would take his life. And the Bruce’s plot to destroy the Order would be for naught.

He turned the possibilities over and over in his mind, but every path led to a dead end.

Though it was reed-thin, he grasped at a new idea.

“Mayhap…mayhap if ye told me whatever those men want to hear, I could tell them myself and keep ye out of it.”

Lillian shook her dark head, her eyes closing. “I told you already. There is naught to tell. Richard never designed a weakness into Berwick’s wall. He was no great loyalist to King Edward, but he would consider such an act an insult to his work, his guild, and most importantly to God, for such deceit would be an affront to the stone itself and God’s creation of it.”

“But if ye just—”

“Nay!” Lillian cried. “There is no secret, Kirk. Don’t you understand? There is no flaw, no weakness to confess. And that doesn’t matter.” Her voice climbed toward hysteria. “Richard had naught to tell, and they still murdered him. The fact that they are coming for me now proves that they couldn’t extract aught from him. It doesn’t matter that there is no great secret to reveal, for they will do to me what they did to Richard all the same.”

“Lillian—” he reached for her, but she shoved him away.

“Nay!” she cried again, breaking down into sobs once more. Her hands balled into fists and she pounded against his chest. He hardly felt the blows, for he was already awash in agony as his heart ripped in two.

He gathered her against his chest to cease her flailing, pinning her arms between them.

“God, Lillian,” he said as she shook and moaned in his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His throat closed then, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain battering inside his ribs.

He buried his nose in her wet hair, dragging in the scent that haunted his dreams and fired his blood. He kissed her head, his fingers twisting in her shift and sinking into her cold-pebbled flesh.

“God forgive me,” he rasped. “I love ye, Lillian.”

He tilted her chin up toward him, letting his lips trail over her swollen eyelids and along her cheeks, which were salty with her tears. She stilled in his arms, her breath ragged as his lips traced her delicate features.

When he reached her mouth, he could not hold back any longer. He pressed his lips to hers, groaning at their petal-softness. He breathed her in until his head spun with her scent and his blood surged with heat.

Slowly, tentatively, she opened to him like the first flowers of spring opened to the thin rays of the sun.

His tongue slipped into the honeyed heat of her mouth, and he could not stop another groan from rising in his throat. God, she was so sweet, so good. He felt his blackened soul straining toward her warmth and light.

He deepened their kiss, one of his hands rising to the back of her head to sink into her damp locks. Her arms snaked out from between their bodies and her hands balled in his wet tunic.

Even through her shift and his tunic, he could feel her nipples pearl tight where they were pressed against his chest.

Hot need shot through him, firing his blood and making his cock and bollocks ache. His kiss grew wild, urgent. She matched his increasing fervor, her hands rising to loop around his neck and her fingers digging into his nape.

Gasping, he pulled his mouth away from hers.

“I need ye, Lillian,” he hissed. “ Now .”