“You killed him, then?” Robbie asked, somewhat curious if the traitorous bastard died slow or quickly.
Instead of answering, Saban stared at Glynnis before casting his gaze over Robbie. Robbie had never felt so naked while naked before. Finally, Saban replied, “Nay. I let him scurry off to whatever hole Lucian found him in.”
Lucian. Another Rees, no doubt.
“And what did he tell you?’ Robbie inquired, suddenly hyperaware of his nakedness; Glynnis was standing stiffly, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, her face a wash of red and purple. It was obvious it had been a while since she’d seen a man’s body…or at least a body as…well-made as his.
Fighting back a cocky grin—utterly inappropriate under the circumstances, he knew he needed to do what he could to make Glynnis a little less tense. And the fact that he cared at all was strange to him.
Do not think on it.
Bending, Robbie grabbed hold of the blanket and wrapped it around his waist. It was the least he could do for the woman who saved his life…and brought him face to face with the man he’d been hunting for.
As if sensing his fabric shield had slipped into place, Glynnis let out a strangled breath and turned her head to peer at him over her shoulder. She speared him with narrowed violet eyes…and his heart tripped at the sight.
“The spineless lizard told me you are Ravishing Robbie Bowlin, plunderer of the comely wench, highwayman, thief, son of a once renown knight, a broken bastard who lost his mind searching for my grandfather.”
“You will watch how you speak of my father; he was an honorable man…unlike your grandfather.” Robbie sneered, his body taut with the need to do damage.
Saban returned the sneer, flashing his teeth once again. “So you think my grandfather wronged your father in some way? It is possible. Daid was a bloodthirsty demon…”
Was? The man was dead? Had Robbie’s chance for vindication been stolen from his grasp?
“So…what did my Daid do that made your father so desperate to find him?”
His gaze on Saban’s sabre, Robbie answered, “He stole my grandmother from her husband.” At least…that’s what he thought had happened, but now…after what Glynnis said… He wasn’t so certain.
Saban quirked his lip, his eyes remaining as cold and calculating as any predator’s. “And who is this woman my Daid supposedly stole?”
“Ilone, mother to my father, Ioan,” Robbie answered, and watched the color drain from Saban’s tanned face.
Saban growled. “Your grandmother is a lying bitch.”
Robbie knew the man was trying to push him into action so that he could rightfully use his sabre to cut him down. He knew it, but it didn’t stop the rage that poured from his belly and into his limbs. In an instant, Robbie dropped the blanket and sprang forward to pound the man into meat, but the point of Saban’s blade at Robbie’s throat made him halt before he’d made it two steps.
“Nay!” Glynnis screamed. “You will not shed blood in my home!” Turning to Robbie, she averted her eyes from his nakedness and pinned her gaze to his face. “You will go to my trunk and find a pair of breeches to put on. You seem larger than what may be in there, which is why I hadn’t offered them to you before now, but it is better than you standing there in naught but your skin like some pagan. Lord knows I should have gone into town do find you something suitable to wear, but I have not had the coins to do so.” She pointed to a trunk in the corner by the end of the bed. She turned to Saban. “And you! You will drop that damned sword and turn around and leave my home before I gut you with your own blade,” she drawled, a threat in her voice Robbie couldn’t help but find…intriguing. This tiny woman was larger than she seemed—and much more foolish.
Robbie watched Saban, ready to strike out if the man swung his sword toward Glynnis. Instead of the anger Robbie expected to see at the woman’s outburst, Saban threw his head back and laughed. Tense, he watched as Saban’s laughter died sharply.
“I would like to see you try, Glynnis,” he drawled, making the blood thin in Robbie’s veins. There was an underlying danger in the man’s words that caused Robbie’s heart to pound. But why should he care about Glynnis and her dead husband’s kin? Let them have their family squabble…
You would let him harm her after she saved your life? Nay, he would not. But she didn’t seem particularly frightened of the man who’d burst into her home… She’d seemed more frightened of Robbie’s nakedness then she had been of Saban’s sword.
“Go,” she ordered Saban before throwing a scathing glare at Robbie. “If you are able, come outside—once you are clothed. No need to frighten my pig.” With that, she watched as Saban slid through the lopsided door, and then followed him out into the gloaming.
Chapter Six
Glynnis sucked in a much-needed breath and willed her body to stop trembling—from the wrath at Saban and her unwanted attraction to the stranger she rescued. By the sea gods, the man in her cottage was a prime example of masculine perfection, and his nakedness had been both a distraction and a temptation. The anger and confusion that flashed between Saban and the man named Ravishing Robbie—she’d nearly snorted when she’d heard Saban call him that—was palpable. If they’d been family as she’d first assumed, they were doing an excellent job of acting as enemies.
Snapping her attention back to the belligerent demon before her, she planted her hands on her hips and glared up into Saban’s rugged face.
“Why are you here? And do not tell me you were worried about me. I have heard enough lies from Rees mouths to last me three lifetimes.”
Saban sheathed his sabre and crossed his arms over his broad chest, a chest she’d once admired…before she’d been seduced by William. Oh, what a fickle wench she’d been.
Been? You still are! She’d sworn off men and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about Robbie. Biting her cheek to keep from cursing at herself, she waited for Saban to reply.
“I have men watching the coast. One saw you hauling this man up the shore and toward your cottage. As a caring and protective man, I thought it best if I come offer my aid.”
She scoffed. “So you reduce my door to rubbish and threaten my guest?”
Saban offered a single careless shrug. “I thought it better to be sure.”
Glynnis uttered a curse, one William had taught her, and raised a finger to poke Saban in the chest. “You care nothing for me save how I can assuage your guilt for allowing your cousin to remain a feckless debaucher of women even after he pledged to remain faithful to me.”
The sharp look on Saban’s face told Glynnis she’d hit the truth of it. Just a part of it, at least. There was more there beneath the flickering gray that she couldn’t see clearly.
“And how did you know who that man was?” she asked, poking his chest again. Saban swatted her hand away as if she were a bothersome fly.
“I was not convinced of his identity until I saw him. I’d received word from a man in Cobh about a black haired, green-eyed newcomer asking around about me. The man said his name was Robbie Bowlin, a highwayman with ties to a dead knight. A knight I had heard of previously. He had been searching for Daid for decades, but since Daid has hidden away from us all, it was no hardship for him to remain hidden from the likes of a mad knight.”
“You speak as though you know something,” a deep, dangerous voice said from behind her. She spun on her heel to see that Robbie had donned the breeches as instructed—or commanded, rather—but that was it. His broad, naked chest and hard, ridged belly were still on glorious display.
“Did I utter a falsehood?” Saban intoned, gripping the hilt of his sabre menacingly.
Robbie shook his head once. “Nay.”
“Are you not Robbie Bowlin?”
“Aye.”
“Are you not looking for Saban Rees?” Saban’s gripped tightened on the hilt, and Glynnis could only stare between them, her heart in her throat.
“Aye,” Robbie answered without hesitation.
“Why w
ere you looking for me?”
“To find the man who ruined my family.” Robbie’s voice was sharp, hard, edged with grief and rage. It was how she sounded when she’d cursed William to hell.
Saban flashed a predatory grin.
“And so, you think to find my Daid and make him pay for stealing your grandmother… Ilone, did you say?”
“Aye.”
“And she bore a son she named Ioan?”
Glynnis couldn’t understand the line of questioning. Why did Saban care about any of that? He could have easily dispatched Robbie before he’d ever set foot on the ship for Port Eynon. So why hadn’t he?
Robbie let out a laden breath, as if his patience had worn perilously thin. “Aye.”
A long, heavy silence stretched out between them.
Saban’s whole demeanor seemed to change before her eyes; his body remained tense and coiled, but his eyes took on a gleam of something…unexpected. Sadness.
“Well then, I suppose I should take you to see him,” Saban finally said, and Robbie’s eyes widened.
“In pieces, you mean?” he said, eyeing Saban’s wicked sabre.
Saban chuckled. “If I wanted you dead…you would be.”
Robbie’s compelling sea green eyes darkened, his lips pulling back into a wolfish mask. Every inch of Glynnis’s body took notice of the way his face changed from simply handsome to devastating. Even when deadly, this man was beautiful.
With another chuckle, Saban turned his back on them and started toward the path that lead to the beach where she’d found Robbie. “Come then, Ravishing Robbie. And I think you should come, too Glynnis. Lucia and Rose have been asking about you.”
Lucia…Rose… The only women Glynnis had ever counted as friends. She’d met them long before she’d met William. They’d been secretive but kind, and they never ceased to stand as her friends, even when their own cousin, her husband, had wandered from her bed and into the bed of another…and another. They’d been stalwart in their defense of her, stating that no woman deserved to be cuckolded. But they’d been William’s cousins. So when she’d broken ties with him, she’d broken ties with them all. And that decision still cut her to the quick. Thinking back on the bright, fiery Rose, and the cool yet clever Lucia, Glynnis’s heart lurched. She missed them.
You can see them again…
“Fine. But you will fix my door before we go.”
Saban didn’t even slow down. “We will not be gone long, but if it will ease your mind, I will send someone to fix it once we reach Dwyn Twll.”
Dwyn Twll… The Hole They Stole. It was the family moniker for the large sea cave where the Rees stored their smuggled goods and anchored their smaller boats. It was large enough to hold a middling village—complete with chapel and steeple, but only the Rees knew where to find it.
So why bring Robbie, a supposed stranger, to such a secret place? The truth pricked at her thoughts, but she dared not give it purchase. If Robbie were indeed a Rees, as she’d first assumed, she was a far greater fool than if he were simply a gorgeous man she wanted to lie with. The place between her legs pulsed, an ache spreading from her womanhood and out into her belly.
Nay. She needed no man… Need? Nay. But you want Ravishing Robbie.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Only having him there for five days, her desire for him was utterly ridiculous. And wanting someone even remotely tied to the Rees was dangerous.
Danger had never looked so tantalizing.
Robbie walked behind Glynnis who was following behind Saban—but it wasn’t Saban he was watching. From the back, Glynnis was perfectly curvy, her hips just wide enough, her arse just plump enough, her waist trim, and her long hair brushing over it all as if to tease him. In that moment, he didn’t care if she were as flat as a board in the front.
He wanted her. His manhood throbbed, aching like it hadn’t ached in years. And for a sharp-tongued widow, no less.
Grunting, he shook himself, pressing all his lascivious thoughts down into his gut so he could focus on what the hell he was doing…and who he was following…and where they were going. It was obvious Saban was leading them to someplace off the beaten path. They’d taken the well-trodden path to the beach, but then veered east along the shore. As they walked, the shore became craggier, like jagged daggers thrust into the sea. And as the darkness descended, the seeing became as difficult as the walking, until a bright light shone ahead. It was a lantern lashed to the side of a rock, like a beacon showing them the way.
Not a smart way to hide a hideout…
As they approached the lantern, the shore around them grew ever rockier until the sand completely disappeared, and all that was left were spears of sea cliff. They’d ascended and he hadn’t even noticed.
I am losing my mind watching this widow’s arse sway so becomingly. Even in the dark, he could make out her movements…and he wondered how she’d look moving about on his bed, groaning as he kissed his way from her shoulder blades to her round, lush arse.
A few steps ahead, Saban halted abruptly, flinging an arm out to stop Glynnis and Robbie from proceeding. Startled and sharply alert now, Robbie gazed at where Saban was staring; there was a chasm just before them. Dark, no doubt deep—reaching to the crashing sea below—and hidden until they were nearly upon it. The lantern they’d been traveling toward hung immediately to the left of the chasm, casting shadows over it, disguising it as shadows alone, and not certain death.
The lantern hanging from the rock was a ruse. Anyone following the light would perish. Swiftly. Painfully. It was the perfect way to keep spies and potential threats from finding what the Rees didn’t want them to find. A smart way to hide their hideout after all.
“That’s not the way,” Saban said, a humorless laugh in his voice. “Come along.” Turning to the left, Saban led the way downward now, along a path cut into the rocky cliff edge. The path was narrow, crumbling, but Saban seemed to know the way like he could see in the dark.
And he probably can, the devil.
The salty wind whipped off the sea, lashing Robbie’s face, tossing his long, loose hair in his eyes. It was doing the same to Glynnis’s long rich brown hair, and she flung it away from her face as best she could, though failed as the wind seemed to take that as a challenge.
“There’s a storm coming,” she called over the quickly growing wail of the wind, and Robbie had to agree. The moon was now cloaked in dark clouds, obliterating the view they once had of the perilous cliff path. But Saban continued on, and they continued to follow.
Just as they reached an outcropping of rocks at the bottom of the path, a large wave slammed into the boulder beside them, dousing them all in frigid salt water. God, but he could live the rest of his life without ever knowing the suffocating cold and disgusting taste of the sea. He shuddered, cold water sluicing down his face, belly, and back. He was still naked from the waist up, not having found a shirt in the trunk where he’d found the breeches.
Give him the rolling hills and wide rivers of Leeds, where he would thieve and cavort the rest of his days, dying a happy man in some woman’s arms.
Not just some woman…
Glynnis’s coughing and shocked shriek pulled him from his thoughts—for which he was grateful.
“By damn that was cold!” she yelled over the approaching storm…and the distant roaring sound coming from somewhere to their right. It was too dark to see, but Robbie would wager his best dagger that there was a sea cave close by.
It had to be Dwyn Twll.
From nowhere, Saban produced a spark and lit a torch set into a natural alcove. Lifting the blazing torch over his head, he signaled for them to follow.
The passage was narrow, damp, and chilly, but there was the unmistakable sound of people ahead. Talking, laughing, yelling. Soon, the light of the torch gave way to the brightness of a large open cavern, with many torches lining the rock walls…and the walls of the small wooden dwellings nestled about.
They seemed to have built an act
ual village in here…a village of Rees.
“Welcome home, cousin…” Saban drawled, his smile lopsided and his welcome less than warm. Robbie felt the underlying threat in the words and watched as four other pairs of eyes pinned him to the spot, right there in the cavern opening.
“Cousin?” he finally thought to ask, his mind slowly picking apart what the man had meant.
Saban ignored his blurt of confusion as he turned in a circle, his arms splayed. “Lucian, Lucia, Brendan, Rose, come meet our long-lost cousin, Robert Rees, son of Ioan Rees, the stolen son of our very own Daid.” Saban’s lips twisted. And Robbie’s heart followed suit.
Chapter Seven
Glynnis didn’t know whether to curse the lot and leave them behind for good, or to slink into the nearest shadow and watch the comedy of horrors play out before her.
Robbie stood, back straight, face grim as he glared at Saban.
“I am a Bowlin,” he intoned, nearly growling. Every muscle in his broad back knotted and rippled, like a wild animal tensing for the attack.
Lord, I need that wave to drown me again.
The hairs along her arms and neck stood on end, both frightened and aroused by that sound, the growl of a man both dangerous and beautiful. Which was utterly preposterous. If Saban was correct, and Robbie truly was a Rees—as she’d first suspected, thank you very much—she would walk away, leaving the rabble to deal with their own. Besides, he looked no worse for wear. Though he’d survived a shipwreck, he showed no signs of it, other than the bruising along his sides…which only served to highlight the taut ropes of muscle that bunched and twitched as he moved. As an uncomfortable warmth spread over her, she pulled her gaze from Robbie to scan the cavern around her.
She’d only been to Dwyn Twll once before, back when William had wanted to seduce her with the promise of a life of living well and richly. He’d covered her eyes with a strip of cloth and lead her through a passage away from the cliffside—more than likely the same one she’d just traversed. Then…he’d shown her a store of goods—casks of wine, boxes of gems and jewelry, sacks of cereals and sugar, and even chests filled with beautiful gowns. She’d known it was all stolen, but William’s charming smile and talk of taking her away from her life of endless, backbreaking work had blinded her to all but him.
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