The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [147]
Sinjun eyed the huge man when he walked through the door. His head barely missed the frame. He looked very pleased with himself, damn him. She closed her eyes a moment, picturing Colin and her brothers. They would find her. She didn’t doubt it for a moment. On the other hand, it would never have occurred to her not to try to escape. She was nearly ready.
“Not long now,” MacDuff said as he sat down on one of the chairs and rubbed his large hands together. The chair creaked ominously under his weight. He cracked his knuckles, a ripping sound in the silence. He opened a brown bag and pulled out a loaf of bread. He tore off a huge chunk and began to eat. “No,” he said, his mouth full, “not long. I saw Colin riding back from Edinburgh just a while ago. I left the letter on the front steps. No sense waiting until morning. Perhaps he wants you back alive, my dear. Who can say?”
“He is very honorable,” Sinjun said, her voice carefully neutral. She wasn’t stupid. She was afraid of MacDuff.
MacDuff grunted and swallowed the bread. He ate steadily until the entire loaf was gone. Sinjun felt her stomach knotting with hunger. The bastard didn’t care if she starved.
In that moment she found herself wondering if he truly intended to let her go as he’d promised.
“I’m hungry,” she said, eyeing the other brown bag.
“A pity. I’m a big man and there just isn’t enough for you. Maybe a bit for the rats, but not for you. Yes, a pity.”
She watched him eat until both bags were empty. He wadded them up and threw them into the far corner. The air was redolent with the smells of sausage and bread. “If the rats want the crumbs, they’ll have to eat through the bags.” He laughed at that.
Nearly free, she thought. Nearly there. He rose then and stretched. With his arms over his head, they touched the sagging roof of the croft.
“Perhaps you’d tell me now why you’re doing this?”
He looked at the bruise on her jaw where he’d struck her the previous afternoon. “I was tempted to strike you again when you asked me that last night.” He made a fist and rubbed it against his open hand. “You don’t look like such a lady now, my dear countess of Ashburnham. You have more the look of a frowsy slut from Soho.”
“Are you afraid to tell me? Do you think I can somehow free myself and kill you? You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
Sinjun waited. She prayed he wouldn’t hit her again. Her jaw hurt dreadfully. She prayed he wouldn’t go ahead and kill her now.
“So, you want to taunt me into talking, huh? Well, why not? You’re not stupid, Sinjun. You must know that, if I please, I can easily kill both you and Colin. You are so very different from Fiona. Colin must believe he’s already died and gone to mighty rewards. You have an independent spirit and you have money, an irresistible combination. I will think about it. But, you know, telling you makes no difference to the outcome and we must pass the time. So why not tell you?”
He stretched again, then took a turn around the small room. “What a filthy place,” he said more to himself than to her.
She waited, working her hands that were tied behind her.
“Colin is a bastard,” he said abruptly, grinning hugely at her. “Ah, yes, a real bastard, as in his mother was a whore and slept with another man. Arleth knew but since she nurtured hopes of marrying the earl herself after Colin’s mother died, she feared he’d turn on her if she told him the truth, so she just made up that story about Colin’s mother and her kelpie lover. Ah, some kelpie! A flesh-and-blood man with a flesh-and-blood rod.
“The