Chapter Seven

Will slammed the cottage door before Lillian could glimpse more, but she’d already seen enough.

Someone was out there—someone who would stop at naught to get through her guards and reach her.

Will dropped an enormous oak beam across the door, then turned to her. He gripped her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake.

“Look at me, Lillian,” he said in a hard voice she didn’t recognize. He shook her again, dragging her out of her daze. She blinked up at him, her heartbeat hammering in her ears.

“I dinnae ken how many men are out there,” Will said, “but no matter what happens, ye are to stay right behind me. Understood?”

She nodded swiftly.

Will’s gaze softened a hair’s breadth on her. “Ye will be safe, Lillian. I’ll give my life to ensure it—or to buy ye time to escape.”

Though his words were meant to comfort her, Lillian’s stomach lurched into the back of her throat and her head spun wildly. Nay . She could not lose Will, her only friend in the world. Was her life worth his? She nearly lost her evening meal at the horrible question.

“Just do as I say, aye?” Will said, turning once more into the fierce warrior she’d met back in Berwick.

“Aye,” she rasped.

Just then, a loud thud against the door had her jumping and screaming in fright again.

Will drew the sword he always wore on his hip and turned to face the door, putting his back to her. The thump came again, but then the cottage fell eerily silent.

Will began slowly backing them both up until she was wedged in a corner between the wall and the narrow stairs that led to her bedchamber on the second floor.

Suddenly the shuttered window to the right of the door exploded inward. Lillian’s scream was lost in the sound of splintering wood.

She could feel Will tense before her, but he remained rooted in place, his body between her and the window.

As if striding from a nightmare, a hooded figure stepped through the now empty window frame. As the figure’s boots landed inside the cottage, his hood fell back.

The man’s dark head turned until his gaze landed on them. Ice-blue eyes assessed Will, then locked on her. Sheer panic washed through her at the cold, flat look in his gaze. He reminded her of a wolf—a wolf who cared not for the life of the doe standing before him.

The man straightened to his full height, and Lillian felt her whole body begin to tremble. He easily rivaled Will in size, who was tall and broadly muscled himself, though this man looked leaner somehow. Rangier. Hungrier.

“Stop there,” Will ordered in a low, hard voice. “Ye will have King Robert the Bruce himself to answer to for the men ye’ve already harmed. Drop yer weapons now and surrender.”

Lillian dared a darting glance over Will’s shoulder at the man. To her surprise and confusion, she thought she saw sadness flash through the man’s cold eyes. When they returned to their ice-hard stare, though, she didn’t trust what she’d seen.

An instant later, the man flicked his wrist. Suddenly a blade slid from his tunic sleeve into his palm. Before she could blink, the blade sliced through the air separating them and buried itself in Will’s sword arm.

The impact from the thrown dagger sent Will lurching backward into Lillian, squeezing her into the wall. The air whooshed from her lungs in a painful wheeze. Will grunted in surprise and pain, his sword arm sagging.

The cloaked man stepped forward, his movement gracefully lethal.

With another grunt at the effort, Will shifted his sword from his right hand to his left, raising it before them like a shield.

The man paused in his slow advance, his lips lowering in a frown behind the dark scruff of a beard on his face.

Another dagger suddenly appeared in his hand, and a heartbeat later, it sank into Will’s left shoulder.

Will growled through clenched teeth. He clasped both hands around his sword hilt, struggling to lift the weapon in front of him.

“Go down, lad,” the dark-haired man murmured, taking another step forward.

Distantly, Lillian registered the shock of what she’d just heard. The man spoke with a Scottish accent.

Will must have heard it, too, for he snarled again. “Die, traitor!”

The snarl turned into a groan as Will hefted the sword overhead. The cloaked attacker was finally within a sword’s striking distance.

But Lillian could tell as the sword descended toward their assailant that the daggers piercing Will’s body had done their work. The arc of the blade was off-kilter. The man easily stepped out of the sword’s path.

Even as he evaded the attack, the man darted toward Will, yet another dagger flashing in his hand.

Though Lillian was still wedged behind Will, she saw the dagger slashing through the air—right at Will’s face .

A sickening moment later, Will bellowed in agony. His sword clattered to the ground, his hands flying up to cover his right eye.

In a final attempt to use his body against their attacker, Will lunged forward, wrapping bloodied hands around the man’s torso.

“Go!” Will roared at Lillian. “Run! Run now!”

Suddenly exposed as Will and their assailant toppled as one to the ground, Lillian had one long, terrible heartbeat where she feared her feet would not move, despite the screaming voice inside her head to flee.

It felt like ages passed before her body cooperated, and when it did, it was as if she’d only just learned how to use her limbs. She stumbled out of the corner, but Will and the dark-haired man blocked her path to the door. They writhed on the floor, Will’s blood darkening them both.

But Will was losing the upper hand he’d gained when his momentum had carried them both down.

“Go!” he shouted again even as the man began to untangle himself from Will’s weakening hold.

The only path open to her was the stairs. Without thinking, she darted up, yanking her skirts out of the way so that she could take them two at a time. As she reached the top, she heard the first stair at the bottom creak with the weight of her attacker.

Out of habit, she turned to the right, where her bedchamber was located. But what would she do in there? There was nowhere to hide. The second floor of the cottage was small—it only contained her sleeping chamber and a private little sitting area in front of the window opposite her bedroom door.

The window.

It was her only chance.

She flew to the left, even as she sensed her attacker only a few stairs below her. With all her might, she shoved the little chair and table she often sat at out of the way.

Just as she yanked back the narrow little window’s shutters, she heard the scraping of the table she’d just moved across the floorboards behind her.

She dared a look over her shoulder to find the dark, broad figure of her assailant only a few paces away.

Dragging in a deep breath, she threw one leg over the windowsill and wedged her body through the narrow frame.

Without hesitating, she flung herself out into thin air.