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Precisely, who were these miscreants?
Liam would vow playing the part of coachmen wasn’t their typical employment. It didn’t matter. They’d breathe their last today.
He whipped his tartan around his arm. Using the plaid as a shield, he lowered his shoulders and barreled into the smaller man, slamming him into the coach with a sickening crunch.
The driver shrieked in pain and terror as Liam caught his neck in the crook of his elbow and with one violent twist, broke the would-be-murder and rapist’s neck. He crumpled to the ground, his lifeless eyes glazing over. He’d not be attacking any more defenseless women.
Liam mightn’t ever want to marry again, but he’d never mistreat a woman or stand by and watch another do so either. Breathing hard, his heart yet hammering an erratic drumbeat behind his ribs, he retrieved his dirk, a gift from his da for his sixteenth birthday. After wiping the blade clean on one of the dead men’s coat, he slipped the knife into his belt.
“Aunt Jeneva.” Her voice and expression anguished, Miss LeClaire rocked her ashen-faced aunt in her arms. Scarlet stained the older woman’s unmoving chest and Miss LeClaire’s gloves. “I’m sorry, Aunt, so verra sorry,” she choked around her inconsolable weeping. “Ye wouldna be here if I hadna insisted we visit Berget,” she moaned, her voice breaking.
Hurrying to her side, Liam squatted and put two fingers to the limp woman’s neck, checking for a pulse. Dead. Lips pressed tight, he scanned the area, ensuring nobody else skulked about. “Lass, is there anyone else with ye?”
She dragged her watery gaze upward, her thick-lashed brandy-colored eyes glazed and out-of-focus pools. The sprinkling of cinnamon-colored freckles stood out starkly on her high cheek bones and impertinent turned-up nose. Blinking sluggishly, her attention slid to the men, and a violent shudder racked her.
Shifting slightly, he maneuvered to partially block her gruesome view. The wind caught his plaid and slapped it against his thigh. The ferocious storm yet seethed around them, but she appeared to have retreated into her own hellish world.
“Lass?” He touched his fingertips to one shoulder.
“Nae.” She swallowed, shaking her head then biting her plump lower lip. “Nae one.” Her voice was as lifeless as the woman draped across her lap.
“I’m Liam MacKay,” he said softly, in the soothing tone he used to speak to an unbroken horse. No need to mention his was also a baron. “I saw ye at Graeme Kennedy’s gatherin’ in August.” He hadn’t spoken to her and in doing so now, he violated rule number one: Stay clear of innocent lasses.
Her expression, utterly lost and devastated, she didn’t respond.
He hadn’t remembered her name until the dead man said it, but Liam did recall her costume at the ball. A rather hideous shepherdess ensemble, complete with a ridiculous bonnet and staff—not that they’d been introduced.
In general, Liam shunned women.
To be precise, he avoided unwed, marriageable lasses like the plague or pox. Snared once already in that unholy trap, he’d no intention of ever falling into that viper’s pit or finding himself in a compromising position again. Kendra and her progeny could bloody-well inherit the feudal barony.
Familiar grief cramped his lungs, the ache blooming in his chest and stealing his breath.
Nae. No’ now.
Except, damn his eyes, he’d also broken rule number two in the past five minutes: Never, ever, be alone with an unmarried woman. Widows didn’t count, and he’d found them most accommodating over the years.
“Ye’re Emeline?” He knew her name, but forcing her to focus on something besides her dead aunt cradled in her arms was paramount.
“Aye, Emeline LeClaire,” came her monotone response. “I remember ye.” Her wary doe-eyed gaze slashed to the strip of puckered flesh marring his right cheek. “I’ve wondered several times how ye came by yer scar.”
Not exactly the stuff of conversations, especially between strangers.
Kristin’s doing, the night she’d tried to kill him. But he wasn’t about to reveal that to a woman and one he didn’t know. Again, his chest constricted, and he fought the helplessness the dreaded memories stirred.
Lightning lashed across the gloomy sky. Several more jagged flashes followed in quick succession, accompanied by resounding, earth-shaking crashes. Could the thunderstorm possibly be growing worse? Just then, the rain turned to hail. The cherry-sized pellets pummeled them like miniature cannonballs. Thunder exploded, roll after furious forceful roll, across the sky.
God’s bones.
A peculiar rumbling echoed in the distance. Glowering, Liam glanced upriver.
What was he to do with this woman? Or the three dead people, for that matter?
Undecided, he sighed, plowing a hand through his soaking hair. He could tie Deri to the rear of the vehicle and drive the coach himself. At least Miss LeClaire would be out of this damnable weather.
He’d leave the assassins here. But he wasn’t keen on placing the dead aunt inside the coach with the lass or securing her corpse with the luggage either. Besides, the miry road would make for painfully slow travel. What was more, he had no desire to endure the beastly weather perched atop the conveyance and a potential target for a lightning bolt.
Eyes oddly vacant and shoulders slumped in misery and grief, Miss LeClaire shivered. Tears careened down her wan cheeks, but she made no sound. Her silent agony tore at his consternation. Kristin had been a screamer.
