Pride Of Lions
Pride Of Lions
Suzanne Barclay
PRIDE OF LIONS A Blood Feud Had Ruled Her Lands For More Years Than Anyone Could Remember And Allisun Murry, chieftain of her clan, would not rest until her murdered kin were avenged. Yet the sight of Hunter Carmichael as he rode from the midst of her enemies gave her pause.For the King's man had proven his bravery in the face of certain death, and captured her unsuspecting heart. Allisun Murry stirred Hunter's blood in a way no woman had before. For the magnificent beauty was living proof that ancient warrior queens had once roamed the Scottish hills.Yet would a woman so hellbent on vengeance ever willingly lay down her sword and give in to the passions that now raged between them?
“Get out of my bed,” Allisun snapped. (#u97a32cdf-3f71-5bc9-b9e2-cf4491278472)Letter to Reader (#ufe26a7b9-aade-56e9-ac69-1e08bf9a38be)Title Page (#u16886e59-587f-5cba-a9a2-441c88b966ed)About the Author (#uc33565da-c3d5-547c-b79e-193ac24006e2)Dedication (#u7aa2b535-ef8b-5b1d-8407-9dd9383018bb)Prologue (#ufe0231c3-aa8e-5d41-8ce0-077ed6a97359)Chapter One (#u249f30c8-c8ec-59a9-9548-1cdaed4d4d28)Chapter Two (#u3b018c2e-9c00-58a5-a404-dd3bccdc1e11)Chapter Three (#u7483f047-fd46-5507-bc8e-c836886d2a3b)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Get out of my bed,” Allisun snapped.
Hunter shook his head, his midnight brown eyes glowing with sympathy. “There’s only the one, and my ankle—”
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” She made to bolt from the bed, but he was quicker, one hand snagging her wrist. She tried to wrench free. “You’re hurting me.”
“Nay, you are hurting yourself by struggling.”
Allisun stilled, but her pulse beat wildly as she stared at her enemy. His eyes bored into hers with an intensity that stripped away everything but this moment. She was vividly conscious of his superior strength, held in check by the force of his will. Inside her, a primitive fear stirred. He could do with her whatever he wanted. None of the tactics her father and brothers had taught her could help her now. She was utterly powerless. But she would not beg. Lifting her chin, she snapped, “Attack me and have done with it.”
Dear Reader,
If you’ve never read a Harlequin Historical novel, you’re in for a treat. We offer compelling, richly developed stories that let you escape to the past—written by some of the best writers in the field!
We are very excited about Pride of Lions, a new Scottish medieval novel and the latest in THE SUTHERLAND SERIES by Suzanne Barclay. Critics have described her work as “Pure gold!”, “Magical!” and “Totally satisfying.” In her latest, a knight and a warrioress from enemy clans join forces and fall in love when they are lost within the territory of an evil laird. Don’t miss it!
Be sure to look for The Heart of a Here, a darling Western by Judith Stacy. Here, a bad boy turned rancher has thirty days to prove he’ll be a good father to his niece and nephew, and enlists the help of the new schoolmarm. The Knight’s Bride by rising talent Lyn Stone is a heartwarming and humorous tale of a very true knight who puts his honorable reputation on the line when he promises to marry the beautiful widow of his best friend.
Rounding out the month is Burke’s Rules, book two of THE GUARDSMEN series by Pat Tracy. Set in Denver, this story features a perfectly mannered schoolmistress who falls for the “protective” bachelor banker who helps her fund her school. Don’t miss this wonderful, sensuous story!
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical
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Pride Of Lions
Suzanne Barclay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SUZANNE BARCLAY
Suzanne Barclay considers herself sublimely lucky to be writing historical romances. What other career would allow her to watch old Errol Flynn movies and call it research? Or daydream and call it work?
On those rare moments when she can tear herself away from the stories she is creating, she enjoys walking in the woods with her two dogs, Max and Duffy, whipping up exotic meals for her husband of twenty-three years and pawing through the local antique marts for special pieces to decorate her office/study.
Be sure to watch for the next installment in the Sutherland series, Taming the Lion, coming out in June, 1999.
Suzanne freely admits that she has trouble keeping track of all the Sutherlands and Carmichaels who people her stories, and has prepared an updated family tree detailing the various characters, their marriages and their children. To receive a copy, send a large SASE to: Suzanne Barclay, P.O. Box 92054, Rochester, NY 14692.
To my family,
a constant source of pride and joy.
Prologue
Luncarty Tower, the Scottish Borders
July, 1381
The setting sun bathed the crests of the Cheviot Hills in red fire and deepened the shadows in the woods along the creek that flowed past the tower. Soon it would be full dark, and everyone knew the land about was wild and dangerous.
So why in the world was his aunt leaving the safety of Luncarty’s stout walls?
His belly tight with apprehension, Hunter Carmichael crept after her, careful to stay well back as she negotiated the steep trail down to the edge of the burn. Her movements were quick and jerky, which was not at all like his graceful aunt, his favorite among his father’s five brothers and sisters. But then, she had not been acting like herself all day.
Hunter frowned. Could it be Uncle Jock’s fault?
Last night Hunter had heard Brenna and her husband arguing. The sounds of raised voices and weeping had roused him from sleep. He’d lain there in the dark, in the little wall chamber down the hall from theirs and wondered what to do. His parents sometimes disagreed, but they never shouted, and his father would not have made his mother cry.
A shaft of longing knifed through him. He’d enjoyed his summer here with his beloved aunt, but he wished he was home at Carmichael Castle with his parents. He missed his mother’s gentle smiles, his father’s sage advice and even Father Matthew’s lessons in reading and writing and scripture. Uncle Jock didn’t hold much with book learning, and had allowed Hunter to roam about, fishing and riding and doing as he pleased. He’d liked that very much indeed, but just now, thinking of home made his throat tighten and his eyes prickle.
Bah, he was ten and three, nearly a man. And it was a man’s duty to protect his family, particularly the woman-folk, his father, Ross, had taught him. The memory of those lessons drove Hunter from his warm bed and down the chilly, dark corridor to knock on the door of the master chamber.
“Who the hell’s there?” Uncle Jock demanded.
“H-Hunter.”
There was some grumbling and cursing, but the door opened. Jock McKie’s burly body filled the doorway, clad in loose breeks and a rumpled tunic. “What do ye want?” he demanded.
“I...I heard voices.” Hunter peered around his uncle to where his aunt stood by the hearth, her eyes red, her hair tumbling like a black curtain to the waist of her tightly belted bed robe. She looked no older than he, though she was near thirty. The sight of her, so small and unhappy, roused his protective instincts. Pushing past Jock, he went to take her icy hands.
“Are you all right?” Hunter whispered.
“Of course she is,” Jock snapped, coming up behind him. “We were just discussing something, were we not, Brenna?”
“Aye, that’s true,” she said at once.
Hunter was relieved not to see any bruises on her face. They’d had a soldier at Carmichael who had beaten one of the maids. Bram was his name, and he’d claimed women needed to be hit to keep them in line. Hunter’s father had disagreed vehemently. Ross had whipped the man and dismissed him, but the lesson had stayed with Hunter. Though Jock was a head taller than him and weighed twice as much, Hunter decided that if he’d been beating Brenna, he’d thrash Jock. Or try to.
“We were having words, as married people sometimes do, and lost our tempers,” his aunt added. “I’m sorry we woke you.”
Hunter had pondered that for a moment. “Papa says the rest of us are cursed with Grandfather Lionel’s hot temper.”
“Meaning Ross does not have one?” she had teased.
“He does, but Mama says it takes longer to come to the boil.” Hunter had grinned. “He’s trying to teach me to master mine, but...”
“Bah, a bit of fire in a man’s gut is what makes him a man,” said the Borderer whose clansmen jumped when he spoke. Aye, Jock McKie ruled Luncarty with an iron fist, but in the two months he’d been here, Hunter had never seen him raise his voice or his hand to his wife.
It must be as she’d said, an argument.
Hunter had returned to his room, but he had kept his door open and his ears, too. There’d been no repeat of the loud voices, but after a short time, he had heard hoarse, rhythmic groans. Before this summer, he’d not have known what they were, but two weeks ago, he’d chanced upon a stable lad and a maid trysting behind the barn.
Feeling hot, flustered and a little ashamed to think they were doing that at their advanced ages, Hunter had closed his door. His aunt and uncle had obviously made up their quarrel.
But come morning, his aunt had behaved strangely. She’d been too busy for their usual walk, too busy even to sit and talk with him. At first, Hunter had felt as dejected as an abandoned pup. Then he feared that Aunt Brenna knew he’d overheard them coupling last night. But she didn’t act embarrassed, more like nervous and preoccupied. She snapped at her maids and harried the servants into what seemed to him, and apparently to them, an unwarranted cleaning spurt.
The mattresses were dragged out to air, the old rushes scraped off the floor of the great hall and a party sent out to cut new ones from along the creek bank. There would be no hot meal that day, declared Brenna the tyrant, for the cook and his helpers were scrubbing down the kitchen.
Jock, chased from the hall by the army of cleaners, had gathered his troopers and ridden off in search of a tavern where they could drink and dice in peace. And doubtless do a bit of wenching, too, judging from the remarks some of the men made.
“Take Hunter with you,” Brenna had commanded.
Jock had readily agreed. “’Bout time the lad completed his education,” he’d said, winking lewdly.
The notion had been tempting, indeed, for lately Hunter had found himself fascinated by the maids at Luncarty. Young or old, pretty or ugly, the sway of their hips and breasts caused a wild, uncontrollable stirring in his lower body. A longing he was more than curious to satisfy, but his sense of duty was stronger. Hunter had pleaded a bad belly and stayed behind to watch his aunt. For what? He did not know.
She had spent a long time sequestered in Uncle Jock’s counting room. When she’d emerged, she was carrying a covered basket. Upon spotting him lurking about, Brenna had sent Hunter on an errand to the blacksmith. He had pretended to go, ducking around a corner to watch for her. When she’d donned her cloak, taken a small basket and headed out of Luncarty, he’d followed covertly.
“I am going down to gather water betony plants,” he’d heard her tell the guard on duty at the gate. The man had waved her past with a reminder not to linger too long. After all, Lady Brenna was answerable only to Jock.
Hunter had felt no such strictures. He was her closest kin, and with Jock away, it was up to him to guard his aunt. Especially since she seemed to have gone a bit mad, he thought.
Pulling himself from his musings, Hunter concentrated on his quarry. From Wee Wat Carmichael, the wizened tracker who must be a hundred years old, he had learned the art of following someone without being caught.
Hunter made a game of it, crawling from rock to rock, and bush to bush. But when his aunt entered the woods, her black cloak blended with the shadows, and he nearly lost her. The cracking of a twig to his right gave her away, and he was soon behind her again. Careful to stay back, he watched as she worked her way along the creek bank. She did not pause to look for herbs, but moved quickly through the trees.
The terrain grew rougher and steeper, huge rocks blocking the path as though tossed there by a careless giant. Hunter crawled over and around them, worried because he could not hear Brenna up ahead over the gush of rushing water. The moon had risen, its light peering through the thick canopy of leaves to light the way. Likely Jock was back by now. He’d be worried. Hunter quickened his pace, determined to catch her and coax her into abandoning this search or offering to help her.
He rounded a towering boulder and stopped in his tracks, transfixed by the sight of his aunt...caught fast in a man’s arms.
The man was tall and broad shouldered, his red hair gleaming like fire in the moonlight. Some of the McKies were redheaded, but this man was a stranger to Hunter.
Who was he? What was he doing here with Aunt Brenna?
She suddenly moved, pushing free of the man’s embrace to stare up at him. Even at this distance, the distress on her face was plain. “Nay. I cannot go with you.”
“You must.” The man grabbed hold of her shoulders.
“Nay.” Brenna twisted in his grip.
Hunter didn’t wait to see more. Pulling the sword from his scabbard, he clambered up the rocks. He wished he had more than a light practice blade, but his father had declared he was not yet strong enough to yield a two-handed claymore. Just now, he felt capable of hefting two in her defense. “Let her go!” he cried.
The man whirled, shoving Brenna behind him and drawing his own weapon. The huge claymore gleamed ominously in the half light. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“’Tis my nephew!” Brenna tried to step around the man, but he caught her wrist with his left hand.
“Release her,” Hunter shouted, surprised his voice didn’t come out a squeak. His opponent was not only larger and better armed, he held the high ground. To reach him, Hunter would have to fight uphill over the rocks. But he’d do it.
“Bloody hell!” the man exclaimed.
“Please.” Brenna extended a beseeching hand. “Please go, Hunter, I do not want anything to happen to you.”
“I cannot leave you here.” Hunter took a step forward, but was stopped by the press of cold steel against his throat.
“Well, well, what have we here?” a deep voice growled in his ear.
Brenna cried out.
“Do not harm him, Owen,” ordered the other man.
“Why the hell not?” this Owen grumbled.
“’Tis her nephew. Drop the weapon, lad.”
Hunter hesitated, weighing his chances.
“Alex told ye to drop it,” Owen repeated, his blade pressing the point.
Whispering a curse, Hunter let his sword clatter to the stones. His eyes locked on his aunt’s wide blue ones across the short distance separating them. I’m sorry, he mouthed. Then he transferred his gaze to the man who held her.
Alex’s eyes were a paler shade of blue than Aunt Brenna’s but sharp and canny. He was well dressed in a wool tunic and leather breeks. His weapon was costly, his speech less coarse than Owen’s. But for all that, he was a fiend bent on abducting a beautiful woman.
“I’ll fight you, man to man,” Hunter growled.
Behind him, Owen laughed, the sound cold and ugly. “Cheeky lad. I say we run him through and get out of here.”
“Nay.” Brenna broke free of her captor and started forward, hands stretched out. “Run, Hunter! Get away from here!”
As if he could do that. But her bid for freedom caught their captors off guard. Wrenching the knife from his belt, Hunter spun and leaped for Owen’s throat.
The man was big and bulky, with a barrel chest, long black hair and a blunt-featured face Hunter would never forget. “What the hell!” Owen put up a beefy arm to deflect the blow. With the other arm, he caught Hunter in the chest and sent him flying.
Hunter landed in the rocks. His head struck something hard. The night went bright, then dark. The last thing he heard before the inky blackness sucked him down was Aunt Brenna’s scream...high, wild and anguished.
The scream still echoed in Hunter’s brain when he clawed his way back to consciousness.
“Aunt Brenna?”
Only the burbling of the burn answered.
His head pounding, Hunter sat up. He was alone beside the creek, his sword and knife gone.
“Aunt Brenna?”
Nothing.
His stomach rolling, his vision blurry, he crawled to the creek and submerged his aching head in the icy water. It cleared his head but did not ease the guilt strangling his very soul.
He had to find her. Pulling himself up on a rock, he took two staggering steps, tripped and rolled down the hill. The rocks battered him all the way to the bottom. Vaguely. he heard someone screaming and realized it was him. He landed in a heap against a huge boulder and lay there, too hurt to move. There was blood in his mouth, a sharp pain in his left leg.
“Hunter! Hunter, by all that’s holy!” Uncle Jock materialized out of the woods, a dozen McKies at his back. “Bloody hell, what happened to ye?”
“Aunt Brenna...kidnapped,” Hunter said weakly.
“The hell ye say.” Jock roared the orders that sent his men crashing through the woods. “Do ye know who it was? Where they might have taken her?”
“Two men ... Alex ... tall ... a nobleman, I think... red hair. The other...” Hunter turned his head and spat out blood. His uncle’s face was hazy, and he knew he was likely to faint again. “Black hair...ugly...Owen. Owen’s his name.”
Jock McKie cursed, leaped up and kicked a nearby rock. “’Tis Alex and Owen Murray. Bloody hell, I should have known, what with the way Alex was sniffing around my Brenna at the last Truce Day.”
“She knows him?” That made an odd sort of sense to Hunter’s battered brain. “Mayhap he won’t hurt her.”
Jock cursed again. “Faithless jade. I should have seen this coming.” He seized hold of Hunter’s shoulder. “Did she have anything with her? A ledger? Tally sticks?”
“Nay.” Memories dipped dizzily in and out of focus. “Wait. She... she was in your counting room for a time. When she came out, she was carrying the basket.”
“Dod! Where is it now?” Jock rose with a roar. He shouted for his men, and when they’d assembled, gave orders for some to carry Hunter back to Luncarty while the rest came with him. “Alex Murray’ll rue this night’s work.”
“You’ll get Aunt Brenna back, won’t you?” Hunter whispered.
“Aye, that I’ll surely do, then I’ll make certain Alex Murray pays for taking what’s mine.”
Chapter One
Scottish Middle Marches
August, 1393
A thin crescent moon shed pale light on the Cheviots. Desolate and treeless, the hills stretched toward the horizon like a great rumpled quilt, pocked by narrow valleys and steep bluffs. Atop the most prominent sat Luncarty Tower, its stark stone walls blending with the hillside that plunged fifty feet to the Lune Water.
Stretched out on her belly in the coarse grass of a neighboring hillock, Allisun Murray scanned the fortress domain of her clan’s most hated enemy. Jock McKie’s ancestors had chosen the site well.
Small ravines guarded the approaches on either side of the tower, and the only entrance was a winding trail up the face of the bluff to a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch. On the other side stood the tall gatehouse, its stout door tightly shut, a pair of arrow slits staring out like giant, malevolent eyes. A single McKie manned the open battlements above, his round helmet and long spear gleaming in the moonlight as he paced to and fro.
“It’ll no’ be easy getting in and back out again with our stock,” muttered Owen Murray.
Allisun sighed and shifted fractionally on the hard ground, her muscles cramped, her bones jarred by the hard ride from their hideaway at Tadlow. But she dared not let her fatigue show. Though the death of her brother, Daniel, had made her head of their small clan, no Scot would follow a woman into battle. She was here only because she’d insisted and Owen, Daniel’s captain, had backed her. “We must find a way,” she said.
“I’m for throwing our scaling hooks over the back wall, climbing in and fighting for what’s ours,” growled Black Gilbert, hunkered down behind a pile of rock to her left.
A murmur of agreement swept through the thirty Murrays sprawled along the hill’s summit, clad in riding leathers and armed for battle, their faces bleak with fury and frustration.
Allisun understood both. For twelve years the feud between the Murrays and the McKies had raged. She’d lost first her father, then her home and finally, her two brothers, Sandie and Daniel to Jock McKie’s punishing raids. Daniel’s death had cut the deepest, for he’d been only twenty and a gentle soul. “Aye, let’s give them a taste of Border justice,” she muttered.
Owen caught her arm with a wide, scarred hand. “Easy, lass,” he whispered. “I know how you feel, but ’twould be suicide. Getting ourselves killed will not bring Danny back.”
“Have you forgotten how that foul, deceitful old man lured Danny into meeting him with promises of a truce, then tortured and killed him?” She shuddered, torn by the memory of her peace-loving brother, lying broken and bloody in a high meadow twenty miles from here.
“Nay, I’ve not forgotten a single one of Jock McKie’s crimes against us. Each death is carved into my heart. But young Danny withstood Jock’s brutality for our sakes.”
Allisun nodded. She knew full well why Jock had tortured her brother—to learn the whereabouts of their camp so he might finish what he’d started so long ago.
“We cannot let his sacrifice be for naught,” Owen added. “You’ll be remembering Danny’s last words ere he rode out.”
She looked up at the weathered face of the man who’d been like a father to her since her own had been killed by the McKies five years ago. Before leaving to meet with Jock and, hopefully, forge a truce, Danny had ordered them not to avenge him if something went awry. “I cannot let it pass,” she said.
“You must. You and your sister are all that’s left of your family. What of her and the others waiting for us back at Tadlow Mountain?” Owen asked roughly. “Who will hunt for them, who will protect them, if aught happens to us?”
Duty dulled the hunger for revenge that clawed at her. Privately Danny had urged her to take Carina and leave the Borders if he was killed. That she could not do, but neither could she let Danny’s death pass. “They do outnumber us.”
“Pair of weak-willed women, ye are,” Black Gil taunted, his scowl as black as his hair. Though five years younger than Owen’s forty, he was as hard as the land, the wicked scar bisecting his cheek a memento of the feud. “I say we go in and kill as many McKies as we can.”
“Aye,” growled a chorus of Murrays.
“We’ve got to strike back,” muttered Wee Harry, the giant who served as their blacksmith. else they’ll keep picking us off one by one till there’s not a Murray left alive.”
That, Allisun knew, was Jock’s goal, his obsession. And Wee Harry was right. They had to do something to keep the McKies at bay. To do that, they needed food. Meat, preferably, to keep their fighters strong and their bairns alive through the long winter. They had no coin to buy sheep or cattle to replace those lost to McKie raids this year. Eighteen head, to be exact. Allisun was determined to get them back. “Where do you think he’s got the stock penned?”
“In the barmkin beyond yon walls,” snapped Black Gilbert. “Which is why we’ve got to go in.”
“What of that shieling we skirted on the way here?” Allisun asked, recalling the large huts they’d bypassed to avoid having anyone sound the alarm and alert the countryside to their presence. “I heard cattle near there. We could relieve the crofter of eighteen head to replace ours.”
“What of Jock McKie?” snarled Black Gil. “Does it not trouble yer conscience that he lives free and clear whilst yer father and brothers molder in the ground?”
“Of course it does.” Allisun felt the tears gather behind her eyes but blinked them back. “And we’ll have our revenge against the McKie. That I swear,” she added, looking around the circle of hard-faced men. She’d known them all her life, lived with them from the good days at Keastwicke Tower before the feud began and the McKies burned them out. They’d been driven from one hovel to the next, forced to take shelter in burned-out towers and abandoned huts. How hard she and Carina had worked to turn them into some semblance of a home, only to be forced out into the hills each time Jock found them.
Tough living, it was, and it had scarred them all. Short rations turned their bodies thin and wiry. The constant threat of discovery bred children who seldom cried and never laughed. Allisun’s heart bled for them. Somehow, someway, she was going to make Jock McKie pay for what he’d done.
Allisun glanced at Owen, drawing strength from the approval in his dark eyes. Throwing up her chin, she challenged Black Gil. “There must be a hundred McKies behind Luncarty’s walls. To venture within would be tantamount to suicide, and we can ill afford to lose even one man. Nay, we will wait till we can lure Jock McKie out into the open where we stand a fair chance of winning.” Seeing her men nod in agreement, she added, “Mayhap the raid on Jock’s herds will do just that.”
“Aye.” Gibb’s Martin, tall and lanky as his sire had been before he’d caught a McKie spear in the chest, turned to crawl back down the hill. “Allisun has the right of it. We’ll attack the croft, lure the bastards from their tower, then cut them down as they did our kinfolk.”
“Wait,” Allisun said as the others made to follow. “We’ll not succeed if we go crashing off through the woods. Let us ride to that hillock behind the croft. We will wait there while Owen and Mouse scout the area to judge where their guards are posted. When we’re sure of success, we’ll strike.”
Owen smiled. “Exactly right. You’ve as canny a mind as your da, God asoul him.”
Allisun flushed, warmed by his praise. Though her father and brothers had forbidden her to ride out with them, she’d spent many an hour listening while they talked strategy. Little did any of them realize she’d need those lessons.
Black Gilbert grunted. “I still say we should—”
A shout from Luncarty Tower sent the Murrays scrambling up the hill to observe a party of mounted men hailing the tower. Allisun counted twenty in the band. Even from this distance, their horses looked enormous, great black beasts draped in red blankets. Their riders were no less amazing, tall men clad entirely in metal that gleamed like fire in the moonlight.
“Who do you suppose they are?” she asked.
“Knights,” Owen replied. “French, likely. Or English.”
“English.” Allisun savored the word. “If we could prove Jock is treating with the English, Andrew Kerr would be forced to investigate, wouldn’t he?” The Warden of the Scots Middle March was charged with keeping the peace, but he had rejected the Murrays’ complaints against the McKies because Jock paid Sir Andy a handsome quarterly bribe.
“But we know proof is hard to come by,” said Owen.
“Aye.” How different things might have been had that not been the case, Allisun thought.
The guards at Luncarty called out, no doubt asking the identity of the newcomers.
The foremost man, more richly dressed than the others, his armor covered by a sleeveless tabard, removed his helmet and shouted something back. His reply was inaudible to the Murrays, but it sent the guards scrambling to lower the drawbridge.
Allisun eyed the leader of this band. His hair gleamed bright as newly minted gold in the light of wind-whipped torches, but it was his bearing that impressed her. He sat taller in the saddle than any man she’d ever seen, his back straight as a pikestaff. Arrogance, she decided. Aye, he carried himself like a man who owned the world., “Do you think he is an Englishman?” she asked.
Owen shrugged. “Possible. Though I’d not have thought lock so foolish as to trade openly with them.”
“The standard they carry, the black lion on red, I’ve seen it before,” said Black Gil.
“Where?”
“I do not know. ’Twas a long time ago, but I’ll remember.”
Owen scowled. “Mayhap we should stay and see what they do.”
“I say we go after those cattle,” Gilbert grumbled.
“Agreed,” Allisun said, but as the Murrays began to creep down the hill, she looked back at the armored knights walking their mounts over the drawbridge. “Those metal suits look vastly heavy.”
“Aye, and cumbersome. Ill suited to the sort of fighting that goes on hereabouts.” Owen kept pace with her during the descent. At the base of the hillock, he spoke gravely. “Once we’re back at Tadlow, I’m going to see about getting you and Carina away someplace safe.”
“Nay.” Allisun cursed and spun away from him.
Owen caught her arm. “Mind your tongue. Your poor lady mother is likely spinning in her grave to see how I’ve let you forget all she taught you about being a fine lady.”
“Lady.” Allisun spat the word. “What good are lessons in reading and playing the harp with my menfolk dead and the McKies hounding us? Better you teach me to wield a sword.”
“Nay.” Owen enclosed her icy, knotted fist with his warm, callused one. “I swore to Danny that I’d take you away to live in Edinburgh before I’d let aught happen to you.”
Allisun shook her head so vigorously her thick red braid beat against her back. “Never. I—”
“This is no’ the time, nor the place to discuss this.” Owen rubbed a hand across his whiskered jaw. “But our time is running out. Clearly Danny did not tell Jock where we’re hiding, but someday soon the old bastard will find us, and then—”
The McKie would not only kill them all, he’d discover the secret her father, brothers and countless other Murrays had died to protect. “Before it comes to that, I’ll take Will Bell up on his offer of protection,” she teased.
Owen’s eyes rounded in horror. “You cannot be serious, lass. Desperate we may be, but III Will Bell is—”
“A disgusting old reprobate.” And leader of the most infamous reiving family on the Borders. It had been her bad luck to be spotted by Ill Will one day when she and Danny were in Kelso fetching supplies. The old coot had . leered at her and offered to aid the Murrays in their little disagreement with the McKies. The price of that help had been patently obvious. Shuddering, Allisun thrust away the memory. “Come, if we’re going to lift a few head of McKie stock, what better time than whilst Old Jock is busy entertaining these knights.”
“Does it seem strange to be back here?” asked Gavin Sutherland as the party cantered over the wooden drawbridge.
“Aye. If Uncle Jock had not sent for me, I’d have been content never to set foot here again.” Hunter Carmichael’s mouth was held in a grim line, torchlight flickering on features as bleak as the land they’d traveled to reach this place.
Gavin knew full well what had caused his usually jovial cousin to look so dour. “Not since Aunt Brenna disappeared.” Though Brenna Carmichael McKie, sister to Hunter’s father, Ross, had not really been Gavin’s blood kin, the Carmichael and Sutherland clans were as close-knit as the dark Highland plaids both men carried rolled behind their saddles.
“Not since she was kidnapped—” Hunter corrected him “—by those cursed Murrays.”
“It has been a bloody feud.”
“One I vow to end—permanently.” Hunter’s oath echoed hollowly off the stone passageway that led them under the gatehouse and thence to the barmkin.
It was no idle threat, Gavin mused as he followed his cousin through the open meadow, bounded by Luncarty’s high walls and filled with grazing sheep. This second son born to Lady Megan and Ross, Laird of the Carmichaels, carried on the family tradition for valor and ferocity. While his older brother, Ewan, distinguished himself on the field of battle, Hunter was a warrior with words. Chief justice of King Richard’s high court at the age of five and twenty, so fiercely did he defend the cause of justice that he was often called the King’s Lion.
None outside the family knew that Hunter’s obsession with justice stemmed from the guilt he felt over that fateful moment twelve years ago when his aunt had been taken by the Murrays while Hunter, a youth of three and ten, watched helplessly.
He was not helpless now, Gavin thought as they passed under the portcullis and into the tower’s courtyard. Standing well over six feet tall, with muscles honed by hours of rigorous swordplay, and a razor-sharp mind, Hunter was a match for any man, be he statesman or swordsman. Almost, Gavin pitied the Murrays whom Hunter had come to punish for this latest outrage against poor Jock.
“Dieu, Luncarty’s a dour-looking place.” Gavin gazed up at three stories of sheer gray stone, broken only by a pair of tiny, shuttered windows on the uppermost floors.
“Aye, the peel towers are drear and poorly furnished,” Hunter said, glad for the change of subject. “Especially after what we’re used to at Carmichael Castle. And though you’ll not believe it when we get inside, Luncarty is finer than most Border peels. Uncle Jock’s a wealthy man. We’ve been riding on his land for nearly half the day, and those cattle herds we passed are his, too.”
“Pity he has no son to inherit all this.”
Hunter nodded. Walter, Jock’s son by his first wife, had died the year before he wed Brenna. That union had been too brief to bear fruit, nor had any of his mistresses quickened. There were some who speculated that Jock’s seed was dead.
“Why, ’tis wee Hunter, all grown-up,” said the old man who’d come out of the tower to greet them.
“Hutcheson, isn’t it?” Hunter swung down and handed the reins of his warhorse to his squire.
“’Tis Old Hutch, now, my lord. This is Young Hutch, my son. He’ll be steward after me.”
A skinny youth with his father’s pale eyes and hooked nose stepped forward and nodded. “We’ve put ye in the new tower.” He waved toward a two-story structure of gleaming gray stone.
Hunter smiled, grateful to be spared the room he’d stayed in the last time. “My uncle?” he asked anxiously.
“Ach, the old bird’s too tough to kill,” said Old Hutch. “But ’twas a near thing.” He shook his head dolefully.
“They say he’ll no’ walk again,” added Young Hutch. “The Murrays took a Jedburgh ax to him. Crushed his leg, it did.”
“Aye. He’s lucky to be alive,” said Old Hutch.
“He does not see it that way.” Young Hutch’s features tightened. “Better dead than crippled, he says.”
Hunter’s belly cramped, recalling the big, energetic man who had taught him to fish and trap. If only he’d been stronger, quicker himself twelve years ago, none of this would have—
“Hutch!” bawled a coarse voice from an upstairs window. “Is that my nephie come at last?”
“Aye, my lord,” the steward shouted back. “Just coming up.”
“See ye’re quick about it!”
Hunter smiled, the fear that had plagued him since receiving Jock’s call for help easing. “He sounds the same.”
“A bit testier is all.” Old Hutch herded them through the tower’s only entrance, a set of double doors, one of metal grating, the other made from thick oak planks banded with steel. “Go on up, ye know the way. Young Hutch’ll see yer men settled in the barracks building across the way. Tell Jock I’ll be along directly with ale and meat.”
“Come with me, Gavin.” Hunter led the way through a maze of kegs and oat sacks that filled the ground floor storage room to the turnpike stairs. The tightly coiled steps spiraled clockwise, so right-handed attackers would find their sword arms pinned against the wall as they tried to fight their way up.
“Practical folk, these Borderers,” Gavin mused, his steel-clad shoulders clanging on the close walls.
“Oh, aye, you’ll find they’re a breed apart, fiercer even in some ways than you Highlanders.”
“Ha, that I’d like to see.”
“Likely you will if I cannot persuade Uncle Jock to handle this matter my way.” Though why should he, when I mishandled things so badly last time? Hunter thought, sobered by the memory of his aunt’s abduction and subsequent death.
“Aye, well, your Border reivers will find this Highlander battle-trained and well protected.” Gavin thumbed his fist on the steel breastplate made in France of Spanish steel.
“Our armor is stronger than, their quilted leather jacks, but they’re a tough lot, hardened by a life spent constantly at war with reiving English and raiding Scots alike.”
They crested the stairs and found themselves in an entryway the size of a horse stall. It was as dark as one, too, the faint light of a single torch playing over walls whose only decoration was a coat of soot from a long-ago fire.
“Charming.” Gavin wrinkled his nose.
A muffled bellow turned both of them toward a heavy, iron-banded door, the worse for a few ax cuts.
“Coming, Uncle.” Hunter reached for the door latch and took a deep, steadying breath. It did nothing to ease the knot that had cramped his belly from the moment Jock McKie’s disheveled messenger had banged on the gates of Carmichael Castle. It wasn’t fear, it was the hunger for revenge dueling with his inbred sense of justice.
“The Murrays have paid for what they did to my sister,” his father had told him before he left. “Jock saw to that. There’s been enough blood spilled—on both sides,” added Ross Carmichael, a man of peace and reason. “Jock would not listen to my pleas he end the feud, but now that he’s sent for you, use that golden tongue of yours to make him see reason. More deaths will not bring our Brenna back.”
Nay, nothing would do that, Hunter thought, his hand tightening on the latch. But he would give all he owned—coin, property—to be cast back twelve years and have a chance to plunge his blade into Alex Murray’s black heart. He wrenched open the door and was driven back a step by the harsh light, the stench of smoke and unwashed bodies.
“Dieu,” Gavin whispered, goggle-eyed. “I’ve stayed in taverns that were more...”
“Civilized? Luncarty was once.” When his aunt was alive. And yet, the great hall was much as Hunter remembered—narrow, dark and low ceilinged, a peat fire smoldering in the corner hearth, hard-looking men in rough wool seated jowl to jowl at the scarred trestle tables, eating and arguing fit to raise the dead. It was a world away from Carmichael Castle with its linen-draped tables, tapestry-covered walls and multicourse meals served by liveried maids while a minstrel plucked at a harp and his parents spoke of books or his mother sang an ancient poem.
Hunter sighed. “When I came here to visit, I thought this the grandest place, so wild and free. Of course, with Aunt Brenna the lady here, things were much finer and cleaner.”
“Hunter? Damn and blast, where is that lad?”
“Here, Uncle.” Hunter squinted through the smoky pall to spy a big four-poster bed set square in the middle of the room.
“Does he not have a bedchamber?” Gavin whispered.
“Aye, he does, I expect, but Uncle Jock would have to be dead to stay away out of the thick of things.”
The man propped up in the bed was nearly as unchanged as his tower, Oh, time had dulled Jock’s black hair to steel gray and cut ragged lines in his square face, but the eyes staring from beneath beetled brows were as sharp as ever.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Ye’re bigger even than old Lionel Carmichael was. Come here, lad!” Jock waved an imperious arm.
Conscious of the grinning McKies, Hunter flushed and trailed across the room, feeling like a lad again.
“Aye, ye’ve your mama’s coloring, but yer grandsire’s size. Foul-tempered old bastard, he was. Always liked that about him. What of ye?” Jock grabbed hold of Hunter’s forearm and squeezed hard enough to draw a wince. “Not bad... not bad. See,” he shouted to the room at large. “I told ye he’d have been lifting something weightier than those bloody books of his da’s.”
“I—”
“Chief justice of the king’s court, he is.” Jock’s whiskered jowls lifted in a huge grin. “Mighty proud of ye, lad. Mighty proud. Aren’t we?”
The chorus of congratulation barely swelled when Jock cut across it. “Still ye must have found a few quarrels ye couldn’t settle with them fancy words yer da pounded into ye.”
“Actually, it was the university in Paris that did the pounding,” Hunter said dryly. His concerned parents had shipped him off to study only a few weeks after bringing him home from Luncarty—as much to prevent him from joining Jock’s war against the Murrays as to educate him. Distance, time and exposure to the fundamentals of law had accomplished their goals. He’d returned to Scotland four years ago a cautious, educated man who weighed the outcome of a step before venturing to take it.
Belatedly recalling his manners, Hunter turned and beckoned Gavin over. “This is Gavin Sutherland of Kinduin. You may recall that Aunt Elspeth wed Lucais Sutherland. Gavin is my second cousin, the son of Uncle Lucais’s—”
“Whatever. Welcome, Gavin. Robbie!” Jock bellowed, causing a young man to spring from those crowded around the bed. “See young Gavin has food and drink. And give my nephie and me a bit of privacy.” While the space around them cleared, Jock waved Hunter onto a stool beside the bed.
“’Tis good to see you looking better than I’d expected,” Hunter said.
“And glad I am to see ye.” Jock’s wide cheeks deflated. “Though I wish it’d been under better circumstances.” He waved at his left leg, a huge mound under the coarse blanket. “Broke it in two places trying to get away from Mad Danny Murray.”
Hunter sat forward on the stool. “He attacked you?”
“Aye, under a flag of truce.” Jock’s lids sagged. “I lost three men before we brought him down.”
“Your message said Daniel Murray was dead.”
Jock smiled. “Aye. The last of Alex Murray’s sons is dead.”
“So, it’s over, then.”
“Over!” Fire leaped into Jock’s eyes. “It’ll no’ be over till I’ve wiped out every one of the murdering bastards who stole my—”
“But the man who took Aunt Brenna is dead, and his sons, too. You burned the Murrays out of their tower five years ago,” Hunter added, summing up the facts as he did in many a case from the high bench. “So ’twould seem the feud is at an end.”
“Nay!” Jock sat up straighter, cheeks puffing, face red. “There’ll be no end to it till I’ve found and killed them all.”
“But, Uncle, there can be little left of the Murrays except old men, women and children.”
“Aye, what of it?”
“’Tis not Christian to make war on women and children.”
“Was it Christian for that rutter, Murray, to take my Brenna away from her home and family? Was it Christian of them to send her bones back to me when he was done with her?”
“Bones?” Hunter’s blood ran cold.
“Aye. Six years ago they sent her bones in a bag, her cross still around her neck, my ring on her finger.” He waved his left hand under Hunter’s nose, light glinting off the gold band on his little finger. “Dod, I wish I could kill Alex Murray again.”
Hunter shivered. Twelve years he’d spent trying to forget, now the pain and the rage flooded back. “I did not know of this. My father never said—”
“Likely trying to prevent ye from riding down here and helping me and the lads deal with these bastards.” Jock clapped Hunter on the knee. “Narry fear, lad, ye’re here now, and yer help’s most welcome, what with me unable to sit a horse.”
“What would you have me do?”
“We need to find out where they are holed up. They’re a wily lot, these Murrays, dodging and hiding from our patrols. Owen Murray will be leading them now we’ve finally gotten rid of Mad Danny, and Alex’s oldest daughter may be riding with them.”
“A woman reiver?”
“Aye, that Allisun Murray’s a hard bitch, and canny, too, they say, like her cursed sire.”
Hunter frowned, picturing an ugly crone dressed in riding leathers and wearing a sword.
“Rumor has it she was seen treating with Ill Will Bell.”
Air whistled between Hunter’s teeth.
“Ye’ve heard of him, even in Edinburgh, I see. Dod, the man’s a vicious beast. I dinna need to tell ye what’ll become of the McKies if Allisun seduces III Will into making war on us.”
“Nay,” Hunter said slowly. “I’ve a warrant outstanding against the Bells for kidnapping, ransom, thievery...”
“Oh, aye, and that’s only the evidence presented by folk who were brave enough to complain—or still alive to do it.”
“Why does Sir Andrew Kerr do nothing about this?”
Jock hawked and spat onto the rush-covered- floor. “Ill Will’s got Andy by the short hairs. Took his youngest daughter in a raid on Kelso last year. Threatened to send her back in pieces if Andy moved against him. ’Course—” Jock shrugged “—if she’s still alive, she’s doubtless in a bad way. Will’s got a taste for rape, they say.”
Disgust rose in Hunter, a bitter, choking wave. What kind of people lived like this?
“But—” Jock brightened “—we’ve set a wee trap for the Murrays. If they take the bait, ye can follow ’em home and wipe out every one of them,” he added with relish.
Bloody hell. The thought of killing women and children went against everything Hunter believed in. “I’ll take them and bring them to trial, Uncle.”
“Trial?” Jock shrieked. “My Brenna died unshriven, and ye blather about niceties like trials and such.” His eyes narrowed. “Or mayhap it’s that ye’re afeared to fight the Murrays. There were some who said that was why ye didn’t stop Alex from carrying off my Brenna all those years ago. I told them ye were no coward, just a wee lad. But ye’re a man grown, now, with strength aplenty to wield that sword ye wear.”
“I’m no coward.”
“Jock! Jock!” A flushed and sweaty clansman dashed into the room. “There’s a party of raiders sniffing about the cattle.”
“Murrays?” Jock demanded.
“Aye.” The man seized a cup of ale and drained it, panting as he wiped the foam from his mouth. “There’s twenty or so of them, dressed for reiving. I spotted Owen Murray and the one called Wee Harry, for sure.”
Jock crowed and clapped Hunter on the back. “Go to it, lad. But mind ye let the Murrays lift what cattle they will so as ye can follow them. Then—” he grinned wolfishly “—ye’ll get a chance to see how we Borderers deal with thieves.”
The McKies clansmen roared their approval of the plan and swarmed from the hall like angry bees, shouting for their horses and buckling on their swords.
Hunter nodded grimly to his uncle, then he and Gavin trailed after the clattering McKies.
Jock looked up at the one man who’d remained at his side. “Well, Cousin, has he not grown into a likely looking lad?”
“Humph.” Red Rowy McKie was younger than Jock by a dozen years, but just as burly and ruthless looking, his muscular body straining the seams of his leather jack. “Dinna see why ye had to send for him. I’m yer heir, I should be the one—”
“I’ve told ye a hundred times, ye great ox, Hunter’s here to lend a bit of respectability to our little venture.”
Red Rowy spat a curse. “We dinna need him.”
“Aye.” Jock’s smile turned calculating. “Aye, we do, if I’m right about what Alex Murray did with those tally sticks Brenna stole from me. Now go along with ye. I need ye to be there when they breach the Murrays’ hidey-hole. Ye know what to do?”
“Aye. I know.”
Chapter Two
The moon, which had guided the Murrays to the steep-sided ravine a quarter mile from the herders’ croft, had disappeared behind a bank of clouds, draping the land in dark shadows.
Allisun shivered, hoping it was not an ill omen.
From the shelter of a copse of trees atop the ridge, she anxiously watched the plain below, a narrow valley that meandered between the rolling hills. All was still and quiet, not so much as a leaf or a blade of grass stirring.
Ominously quiet.
A half mile distant lay the shielings, squat stone huts where the herders lived during the summer while their beasts gorged on long sweet grass. No light shone from the huts, and the McKies’ vast herd was bedded down for the night, hundreds of black dots sprawled across the valley floor. They made a tempting target, guarded only by four or five men who slept rolled in their cloaks around a tiny campfire.
Too tempting? she wondered, shivering again.
“I do not like it,” Owen had said when they’d arrived. “Things are too quiet, too—”
“The McKies have grown careless in their arrogance,” Black Gilbert had muttered. “We’ll cut out what we need to replace the beasts they stole and be away before they’re any the wiser.”
Owen had grudgingly agreed, but he’d refused to let Allisun go down with them. “Bad enough I let you come this far. You’ll not be lifting any cattle.” He’d overruled her objections and ordered her to wait on the hill with Wee Harry as guardsman.
“Ach, there they are,” Harry whispered.
Allisun looked where he pointed, down to the black slash of stone and brush that marked the ravine’s entrance. A low-slung shape crept from the mouth of the gorge. In a quick blur of motion, it slipped into the long grass, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it. Nay, there was another and another. The grass barely twitched as they crawled closer to their objective.
Her heart racing, her fingers clenched tight around her hobbler’s reins, she watched as her men rose suddenly from the grass and fell upon the slumbering guards. The scuffle was brief and nearly soundless, a single muffled thud the only outward sign the herd was now at the Murrays’ mercy.
Allisun breathed a sigh of relief when Owen stood and waved his arm, signaling the Murrays forward. They rode out from cover, leading the rest of the horses. As soon as they’d mounted, the men fanned out and moved slowly toward the herd. “They are going to do it,” she whispered.
“Dinna count them ours, yet.” Wee Harry frowned, dour as ever. “This is a chancy business. Cattle are queer things, like to take a fright over naught and run off or trample a man.”
“You are right, of course.” Sending up a silent prayer, Allisun rose in her stirrups, counting every step the men took. So absorbed was she in the drama unfolding below that she ignored the flicker of movement at the mouth of the ravine, thinking it must be a Murray left on guard.
The moon chose that moment to shake free of the encumbering clouds. Long, white fingers raced across the landscape, banishing the dark, lengthening the shadows, glinting briefly on something bright amongst the brush and bracken.
Allisun swung her head toward the gorge, saw moonlight sparkling off polished metal. Armor?
Lordy! It was armored knights ... the same ones she’d seen enter Luncarty a few hours ago. And with them came smaller, darker shapes. McKies!
“Harry! Harry, it’s a trap! Look there!” she cried.
Harry turned and cursed.
“We have to warn them.” Allisun set her heels into her mare’s ribs.
“Wait! Come back! Ye cannot go down there!”
Allisun knew there was no time to wait. Already the knights and the McKies were moving onto the plain. With the thick grass to muffle their hoofbeats, they’d take her kinsmen unaware.
“Owen!” Allisun shouted as she sent her stout hobbler clattering down the rocky slope. “Behind you! A trap!”
Her words, high and shrill with fear, shattered the still night, freezing men and turning heads across the narrow valley.
The Murrays paused in the act of rousting a score of prime beef, looked around and spied the knights. Over the hail of stones her horse kicked up, Allisun heard Owen roar the orders that set the Murrays to flight.
The knights looked up the hill toward her, cursed loudly and spurred their mounts to intercept her kinsmen.
The cattle, roused so rudely from sleep, snorted, heaved to their feet and stood, shivering with apprehension.
To Allisun, the outcome was as predictable as thunder following a bolt of lightning. The Murrays were badly outnumbered, the weary mounts that had brought them so far tonight no match for the sleek McKie horses. They’d be caught ere they reached the end of the valley. Unless...
Looking over her shoulder, she spied Wee Harry, his face white with dread, his teeth bared as he raced after her. “Stampede them,” she shouted to him, motioning toward the herd.
Harry looked, weighed the moment with the canniness of a man who’d lived long on the Borders. “Aye. I’ll see to it. Get yerself clear, lass. Head back up yon ravine and make for home.”
Allisun nodded, but she had no intention of leaving, not when two figures streaking out of the dark would the sooner set the wary cattle to flight. Just as she reached the herd, she stood in the stirrups and whooped, “Hey! Hey!”
The call was taken up by Wee Harry as he plunged into the thick of things. The cattle started, eyes rolling, whites showing. With snorts of bovine fright, they turned and ran, crashing into the uncertain mob behind them, starting a ripple that pulsed through the whole throng. Backs humped, tails lashing, the beasts fled, filling the air with panicked bellows and clods of soft turf.
Allisun was swept along on the fringe of the tide yet felt no fear, only elation. Her horse bumped along in harmony with the cattle. Over their homed heads, she spotted Wee Harry, urging the beasts on. To her right and a bit ahead, the McKies and their knights bobbed about, struggling to extricate themselves from the jostling mass so they might pursue the Murrays who, having been in front of the herd when it bolted, were getting clean away with a small knot of beeves.
In that moment of triumph, with her heart singing and her kinsmen’s escape all but a certainty, Allisun glimpsed something shiny out of the corner of her eye. Whipping her head around, she saw one of the knights had worked his way up alongside her.
The polished metal helm covered his face, but his eyes glowed like hellfire in the sockets. His breath steamed from the mouthpiece, misting like dragon’s smoke in the cool air.
“I’ve got you, at least.” He grabbed her arm.
Allisun screamed and tried to wrench away from the gloved fingers. The shift caused her horse to stumble. Clutching at the pommel, she fought gamely to keep her seat. But it was too late. She was going down into the churning mass of deadly hooves.
Hunter felt his captive slip, tightened his grip and yanked hard. A quick, expert twist and he had the Murray free of the saddle and anchored securely against his thigh, his arm around a surprisingly narrow waist.
Why, it was only a lad, Hunter thought. Then he noted the soft, unmistakable swell pressing into his arm and realized it was a woman he’d saved.
A woman reiver?
Dieu, what sort of people took a woman along on a raid? His opinion of the Murrays fell another notch. The woman was obviously too frightened to struggle. For which Hunter was thankful. He had his hands full trying to control his mount. Aggressive by nature, the warhorse had been taught to aid his master in battle by striking out at anything that came near. To Zeus, the roiling, grunting mass of cattle represented a terrible threat, one he tried to combat with teeth and hooves.
“Nay. Easy, easy,” Hunter repeated, fighting to keep his voice calm. He had his legs clamped tight around Zeus’s girth, but with only one hand on the reins, it was nearly impossible to direct the horse. “Damn, we’ll never get free of this.”
“Let go of me,” said a slightly breathy voice.
Hunter looked down at the top of the woman’s head, a mass of curls burnished red in the moonlight. “I cannot drop you.”
“Nor was I suggesting it,” she replied dryly, legs milling above the cattle. “Swing me astride before you.”
He eyed the jostling bovine backs. “Can you do it?”
“Oh, I’ve every incentive to try, I assure you.”
Despite their dire circumstances, Hunter chuckled. “At the count, then. One... two... three.”
In a move so smooth they might have practiced it, Hunter lifted her up. She swung her right leg over Zeus’s neck and settled before Hunter, secure between the pommel and his body.
“There.” Hunter grabbed the reins in both hands and drew sharply as Zeus gathered himself to strike. “None of that. Get us out of here, lad.” Pulling hard on the right leather, he tried to make for the edge of the herd.
“Head at the diagonal instead of trying to turn this giant, and cut straight across the herd,” commanded the woman.
Hunter raised his brows, surprised by her tone of authority, but he did as she suggested. It worked. Every step they took brought them closer and closer to the edge of the herd, till finally they burst free.
Zeus tossed his head and trumpeted a final challenge before obeying Hunter’s command to slow. Sides heaving with exertion, the horse expelled great puffs of mist into the air.
“He’s ill suited to herding,” commented the woman.
“Aye. They’re bred for strength, not racing.” He looked ahead, seeing his Carmichaels and the McKies, gamely trying to turn the cattle. The Murrays were doubtless miles in front with their purloined beef.
All except this one.
A minute shift in her weight was all the warning Hunter had before his captive swung a leg over Zeus’s neck and attempted to slide free.
“Nay!” Hunter caught her around the waist, plopped her back before him and anchored her there with his arm. “I’ve lost the others, but I’m keeping you. Who are you? What is your name?”
She stiffened and shook her head.
“You are a Murray.”
She remained stubbornly silent.
Not that it mattered. He had a fair idea it was Allisun Murray he held before him. But he judged it would do more harm than good to confront her here and risk a struggle. “Whoever you are,” he said, and looked toward the last of the cattle, just disappearing between the slim bottleneck created by two opposing hills, “you and yon men are thieves.”
“We are no such thing,” she said hotly. “We’re but taking back the eighteen head the McKie have stolen from us.”
“If that’s true, and mind, I’m not saying it is,” Hunter replied, rather enjoying the byplay, “you got rather more cattle than your due.”
She sniffed. “My men will have taken only eighteen. If the McKies lose more than that, it’ll be because they weren’t skilled enough to find them in the bracken.”
My men. “Is your husband a Murray?”
“I’m not wed.”
“But those men are your kin. You’d not have taken such a fool chance to warn them if they weren’t.”
“Is a blood bond the only kind a Lowlander recognizes?”
“Nay.” He was beginning to grow irritated by her evasions. “’Tis said that Borderers have no loyalty...even to their own.”
She tensed but said evenly, “You just accused me of risking my neck for my kinsmen.”
“So, they are your kin.”
She shrugged. “I thought we’d agreed they must be, or I’d not have lifted a finger to save them from you.”
“You’re a Murray, then.”
“Ah, but we’ve not established that they are Murrays.”
Hunter ground his teeth in exasperation. Many’s the time he’d fenced with words. He did not like finding them so expertly wielded by another. And by a woman, at that. A small woman, he thought as he urged Zeus toward the end of the valley. Her head came only to the center of his breastbone. How fragile she’d felt when he’d lifted her clear of her faltering horse. The memory merged with that of watching her race down the steep slope, calling a warning to her kinsmen.
A small, brave woman.
Hunter shook away the notion. He had no business admiring a woman who must surely be Allisun Murray.
The main body of the herd was gone by the time they entered the pass into the valley. A few head of cattle, the very young and the very old, had fallen by the wayside. Some stood about, horns lowered, puffing hard. Others had collapsed on the turf, mayhap never to rise again.
“We’ll be all night rounding up the stock,” Hunter muttered. “And I fear my uncle has lost a goodly num—”
“Uncle!” She jerked her head around, giving him a shadowed glimpse of a white face dominated by large, dark eyes. Her eyes were filled with horror. “Jock McKie is your uncle?”
“Aye. I’m—” His explanation ended in a curse as his prisoner erupted into a storm of flailing limbs. He wore full body armor, but only woolen hose on his legs and arms. It afforded little protection as her booted heel cracked down on his shin. “Ouch! Damn you!” His grip on her waist loosened fractionally. He felt rather than saw her go for the knife at her belt. “Nay!” Seizing her wrist in his rein hand, he wrapped the other around her throat.
“Damn you!” she wheezed, struggles ceasing.
“Drop the knife.”
“Nay.”
Her bones were so fragile he could break them with a flick of either hand. She knew it, too. The pulse in her throat beat a wild tattoo against his palm. The cadence of it jangled every nerve in his body. An unsettling awareness washed through him, a primitive urge to capture, to conquer. Dieu, he thought, shoving the notion away in disgust. Not even in the aftermath of battle, when blood lust drove some men to rape, had he felt this unholy stirring. It must be the violent Border air. “I do not want to hurt you,” he growled as much to reaffirm his civility as to reassure her.
“Aye, you do.” She swallowed, shivering slightly.
That small shudder awoke something else in him, something equally primitive. The urge to protect. “Nay. I came here to put a stop to this senseless bloodletting. To prove it, I will let you keep the knife.” Doubtless a grave mistake, but he needed to atone for his rapacious thoughts. “Providing you sheathe it.”
“This is some trick.”
“It is not, I assure you I—”
Hoofbeats sounded on the trail behind them. Over his shoulder, Hunter saw riders, coming fast. Leading them was a great bear of a man with a distinctive white streak in his dark, shaggy mane. Not McKies. Likely more Murrays.
“We’ll settle this later.” Hunter let go of her and kicked Zeus into a ground-eating gallop.
“Faster,” urged his prisoner, peering back behind them.
“Not your kin, then, I take it.”
“Dod! Far from it. That’s Ill Will Bell, next of kin to Old Cootie himself. He’ll rape me, pry you out of your fancy steel suit and roast you over a slow fire till you give up your gold.”
“Aye, I’ve heard of the man.” Hunter concentrated on the rough way ahead. They raced flat out over bleak moorland, following the trampled wake of the cattle. They couldn’t sustain this pace for long. In the distance, he saw more of the straggling herd and hoped to come upon his men and the McKies.
“Go to the left,” ordered the woman. “There, between those two boulders.”
“The herd...”
“Too far. Your horse won’t last.” She grabbed the left rein and tugged hard.
Conditioned to instant response, Zeus wheeled, slipped between two black rocks and plunged down a steep trail.
The woman turned to look back. “They have gone by.”
“Either they missed the turn in the dark...”
“Or they have decided to go after the cattle.”
Hunter grunted and focused on controlling their descent. The moon had disappeared again, and he had no idea what lay ahead. The path—more of an animal trail, he guessed—was rock strewn, the hillside covered with trees. Dewy branches slapped at .his helmet and tugged at his tabard. “Where does this trail go?” he asked, sawing back on the reins to slow their progress.
“I—I have no idea.” Her words were punctuated by groans as she absorbed the jolts. “I do not know the land hereabouts.”
“You knew where to turn off,” he said, wary of a trap.
“I saw a break in the hillside and thought it might provide us with a way out.”
“And into what?”
“I—I do not know.”
The trail veered sharply to the right. Hunter eased Zeus around the turn, then stopped.
“What is it?” She looked up over her shoulder at him. Her features were indistinct in the gloom—-a pale face, and wide dark eyes surrounded by tangled hair. Was she beautiful, this fey creature with the stout heart and canny mind?
A sound scattered his musing. “Listen.”
“I do not hear anything,” she said, voice hushed.
The stallion did. His ears pricked forward, his great head swung to look back up the trail.
Far above them, Hunter heard the faint crunch of stone. He leaned down and murmured, “They are coming.”
She nodded, her hair tickling his cheek, teasing his nostrils with the faint scent of woman and heather. “They are not many, I think. One...two, mayhap.”
“Aye.”
“Do we go or stay?”
Hunter looked around at the thick pines, the black rocks that lined the edge of the trail. “’Tis not a place I’d choose to make a stand.” He edged the stallion into a walk. A few paces they went, each one filled with tension. It radiated from the slender body bolt upright before him. He saw the glint of steel in her hand and realized she’d drawn the dirk again. Oddly he didn’t fear she meant to use it on him this time.
“They follow,” she whispered.
Hunter nodded.
The trail dipped. The stallion’s hooves flirted with the edge, sending a hail of stones into unseen darkness. Hunter counted the beats till they hit bottom. It seemed a far ways off. “Easy, lad.” He nudged a toe into the stallion’s ribs, moving him over.
In that instant, something broke from cover. A rabbit.
The stallion screamed and sidestepped.
Into nothingness...
As they went over the edge, Hunter cursed, grabbed hold of the woman and kicked his feet free of the stirrups.
He hit hard on his back, grunted as rock dented steel. He tried to brake with his heels, groaning as his foot caught on a rock. Pain radiated up his leg. They bounced off the rock and slid down, like rainwater off a slate roof. Gravel clawed at his unarmored rump and rattled against his helmet. He spared a moment’s thought for the woman, protected only by her woolen trews and tunic, and clutched her tighter against his chest.
“Hang on,” he growled.
“Where?” Her fingers groped at his chest, his waist. “You’re slick as a great metal pitcher.”
Hunter chuckled. But the bit of mirth was short-lived. His back slammed into something solid. The impact drove the air from his body. The night exploded in a shower of bright stars.
Allisun’s head hit his metal chest with a resounding clunk, jarring her teeth, addling her wits. A moment, maybe two, she lay there collecting herself. Then the unnatural stillness penetrated her stupor.
They’d stopped sliding, yet the massive arms that had held her during the fall were still clamped around her.
“You can let me go now,” she whispered, raising her head.
A bit of light filtered in through the canopy of leaves, gleaming softly on his armor. The visor of his helmet had come up. In the shadows it cast, she glimpsed a square jaw, aquiline nose and closed eyes.
“Sir knight?”
He neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“McKie?” She pushed his arms aside, alarmed they moved so easily, crawled off his chest and shook him. “McKie?”
Nothing.
Above them on the trail, however, she heard a sound that made her panicked heart skip a beat.
“They came down this way,” said a coarse voice.
“Aye, I heard ’em crashing about, but all’s quiet now.”
“Bloody hell. They got away, then. Curse the luck. I gave up my share of the cattle in hopes of getting his armor.”
Armor!
Allisun looked down at the expanse of metal shimmering traitorously in the pale light.
Gasping softly, she whipped off her cloak and flung it over the knight’s head and torso. His left side was still exposed. She threw herself down on it, praying her dark woolens would hide the rest.
Then she lay still, listening and praying.
Chapter Three
He could not be dead, Hunter thought, for he hurt everywhere. Still, he couldn’t move. When he forced his eyes open, it was to suffocating darkness.
“Dieu,” he groaned.
“Shh.”
Something covered his mouth. The woman’s voice came out of the black, “Be still. They are above us.”
“Am...am I blind?” he mumbled.
“Nay. Only covered so they won’t see us.”
Coarse voices grumbled above them, arguing, he thought.
The woman whimpered softly, her breathing shallow and raspy. Her slender body, pressed more closely against his left side, shuddering convulsively.
Instinctively he put an arm around her, grateful that it moved to his command. Mayhap he was not paralyzed after all. As he lay there in the dark, his mind leaped back over the night’s events: the cattle raid, the woman he’d rescued, the precipitous flight from a band of brigands and the fall that had ended here.
A voice intruded, loud and coarse. “That armor he was wearing would be worth a fortune.” Gravel crunched. “Looks like they went over the edge here.”
“Curse the luck,” said another harsh voice.
The Bells, Hunter thought. He should do something...get up, draw his sword and prepare to defend. But he could not marshal the strength to move. To a man of action, lying here totally defenseless, waiting for the enemy to strike, was pure torture. His body jerked as he tried to force it to move.
“Stay still.” The woman stroked his cheek. “I know it is hard to stay hidden here,” she whispered. “But we could not hope to prevail. against so many armed, ruthless animals.”
Hunter wanted to scream. At the moment, he could not have fought a week-old kitten.
“They could be hurt,” said one.
“Do ye think so?” the other Bell asked eagerly.
“Aye. They was fools to try this in the dark. If they aren’t dead, they’ll be sore hurt.”
“Easy pickings. What say, should we go down and see?”
“Idiot, I’m not chancing this trail at night. Besides, if they’re hurt, they won’t be going anyplace. We can go and get our share of the cattle, then sneak back later when it’s daylight and take what we want.”
Their footsteps faded away.
“They have gone.” She sat up, flinging off the cloak with which she’d covered them.
“Well, at least I am not blind,” Hunter grumbled, blinking against the moonlight filtering through the leaves.
“I am sorry, but I feared they’d spot that shiny armor of yours.” She slung the cloak around her shoulders and shifted to her knees beside him. “They will be back. We must leave as—”
“I cannot move.”
“What?” She leaned over him, frowning as she poked and prodded. “Small wonder, I’d say. You’re wedged in between a rock and the tree that broke your fall.”
“My back?”
“I do not think it’s broken.” She smiled faintly. “Your armor’s caught fast in the rocks. Here, let’s get this out of the way for a start.” She tugged off his helmet.
He swore as his head thumped on the stony ground. “Have a care what you are—”
“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.” She attacked the leather buckles holding the breastplate and back of his armor together. When they were loose, she cocked her head, grinning down at him. “You look a bit like a turtle I once trapped.”
“This is not amusing.”
“The turtle didna think so, either. He ended up in a soup.”
“Just get on with it, will you?”
“Aye, since you asked so nicely.” She approached the task with far more zeal than skill. It was no easy task for a small, inexperienced woman to extricate a prone man from a set of full battle plate. After much sweating and swearing on both their parts, she wrested the armor from his torso.
Freed of the encumbering weight, which had indeed been jammed between two rocks by the force of his fall, Hunter managed to sit up. “Damn.” He gingerly flexed first his shoulders, then his back. “Argh.” His hand went straight to the spot just above his waist where he’d met the tree.
“Hurt?” She circled around and lifted the hem of the padded gambeson he wore to protect against the chafing metal. “The skin’s not cut, but you’ll have a dandy bruise.”
“You say that so cheerily because it’s mine, not yours.”
She chuckled and came around to sit beside him. “It could have been much worse. Worthless as I find your armor, it did save you from greater injury.”
“Worthless?” Hunter bristled. “It will stop an arrow and even a slashing blow from a sword or lance.”
“Aye, but it weighs down a man and his mount and makes him far less agile in battle.”
Hunter grunted. He’d heard that argument from more than one Scot who preferred the traditional armaments to the armor popular in England and Europe. “This time, I’d say my plate was both blessing and potential curse. My thanks, for hiding me earlier and for getting me free.” Bracing his hand on a huge boulder, he stood. Pain stabbed through his left ankle, sending him back down.
“What is it?”
“My ankle.”
“Can you move it?”
Hunter warily rotated the foot, then nodded.
“Mayhap it is not broken, then.” She tugged off his boot.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Hunter endured her poking and prodding.
“A bad twist, I’d say.”
“Bloody hell!” Hunter gazed angrily around at the stark, wild land. Then a new worry intruded. “The stallion?”
“I—I do not know. I think he slid on past us, but I have not heard a sound, from below.”
They both turned to look at the wall of trees and rocks that hid the rest of the descending slope, then at each other. The same thought was in both their faces. The horse was dead.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I. My sire raised him from a colt.”
Tears glinted in her eyes. “I could go down and search.”
“Nay.” The tightness in Hunter’s chest expanded to fill his throat. “He must be dead. An injured horse is not quiet.”
“We cannot stay here.”
“I know.” Hunter glared balefully at his swollen ankle. If worse came to worst, he’d walk on it and damn the agony.
“It may not hold you.”
“It will,” he snapped. “But there is no sense blundering about in the dark. Mayhap a few hours’ rest will improve it.”
“Hmm.” Allisun doubted that but saw no reason to argue. A poultice might aid the healing, but the herbs she’d brought with her in case anyone was injured were lost with her horse. “I could walk up to the trailhead and—”
“Return with your kin.” His face and voice were as fierce as they’d been when he’d rescued heir.
“Nay, that is not what I meant.” But she knew he didn’t believe her. Why should he? Though they’d worked together to escape the stampede and the Bells, they were enemies.
“They will come looking for you?” he asked.
“Aye. Of a certainty they will.” Providing they were alive and free. Sweet Mary, what if they weren’t? What if—?
“Just as my men will search for me.”
“Providing the Bells did not get them all.”
He snorted. “My men are more than a match for that rabble.”
“That rabble is the most ruthless fighting force about.”
“My men will best them.”
Arrogant ass. Allisun glared at him. “The Bells may be more interested in cattle stealing than fighting.”
“Let’s hope so, for all our sakes. But it may be some time before my men find us.” He gazed up the mountain, then back at her. “We should get what rest we can.”
Allisun glared right back at him. “I have no intention of sitting here, waiting on a bunch of McKies.”
“Because of the feud.”
“Of course.”
“So, you are a Murray.”
“I never said—”
“Allisun Murray?”
She gasped. “How can you know that?”
“My uncle said that with your brother gone, you would lead your kinsmen in their raids. I thought him wrong to accuse a woman of such heathenish ways, but I was mistaken.”
“Aye, you were.” Allisun leaped up. “About so much.” She whirled to leave.
He grabbed her ankle, bringing her to the ground with a plop and a grunt of pain. “You are my prisoner, and so you’ll stay.”
“Nay.” She lashed out at him with her free foot. He captured that, too.
Holding both her ankles in one wide hand, he whipped off his belt with the other. “You are my prisoner.”
“I saved your life,” she exclaimed. “I could have left you here, unconscious, for the Bells to find.”
“And I could have let you fall to the stampede.” He hauled her closer, looped one end of the belt around her right wrist, the other around his left. “I would say we are even.”
Fury overcame her fear. “You McKies owe me for the deaths of my father and brothers.” She reached for her knife.
Before the blade cleared the scabbard, he seized her hand and held it fast. My name is Carmichael, not McKie.”
“Carmichael?” Her face turned whiter; her eyes widened.
“Hunter Carmichael,” he said with relish.
“You were there that day.”
“Aye,” he snapped. “I saw your father take my aunt.”
The color rushed back into her cheeks. “You saw, but you know nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “This feud was your fault. Had you not raised a hue and cry—”
“Your lecherous sire would have gotten away with my aunt and no one would have known whom to blame for the heinous deed.”
She laughed, the sound choked, wild and bitter. “How little you know,” she whispered.
“I know what I saw.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
Not to a man who had always dealt in facts. “I was there.”
“So you were.” Her shoulders slumped. She bent her head and repeated the phrase softly, sadly. “And because you were, my family has been hounded—”
“With good reason.”
“So you say.”
Hunter stared at her; trying to pierce the veil of hair that hung before her delicate profile. “What are you saying?”
She turned, tossing the hair from her face, her eyes intent, burning into his. “Nothing, except that you are completely wrong about what happened.”
Hunter glared right back at her. He felt guilty for not having saved his aunt, but he’d not shoulder the blame for starting this feud. Alex Murray had done that when he had kidnapped his aunt. “You’d best try to sleep,” he said tersely. “We must try to leave here before dawn.”
Her head came up at that, like a fighter sensing a challenge. “Oh, I will be ready, sir knight.”
He slept.
Allisun listened to the rhythmic rasp of the knight’s breathing and knew exhaustion had overridden his wariness.
Slowly, cautiously, she bent to slide her hand down the, outside of her left leg. There, in the top of her boot, was the small knife no Borderer went without. One eye on her enemy, she eased the dirk free. If the past twelve years had taught her one thing, it was patience. She applied it now, pressing the sharp blade ever so gently to the leather that bound her to him.
Long minutes passed.
An owl called out from the branches above. Its mate answered, and the pair set out, gliding from the trees on silent wings, hunting in perfect accord.
Her parents had been like that, Allisun reflected as she worked at the bindings. Two bodies, one mind. One heart. Their love had been a thing of beauty, till her mother sickened and her father turned to Brenna for solace. Aye, the Murrays’ miseries, past and present, could be laid at the feet of that sorceress, Brenna. But she was gone, and there was no way to make Hunter understand that without seeming to vilify the dead.
She sliced through the last bit of leather, then held her breath, watching, waiting to see if he’d rouse. He was a handsome man, she thought, staring at his sleep-softened features, the square, stubborn jaw and full, expressive mouth. It was his eyes, though, that had fascinated her. So deep a shade of brown they looked black by moonlight, and so intent they seemed to see clear through her.
When he did not move, Allisun crept from beneath the cloak he’d draped over them for warmth and stole away. It had originally been her plan to climb up to the trailhead and wait in concealment for her men to ride by. But the fate of Hunter’s horse weighed heavily on her mind. What if it was alive but unable to cry out? The thought of so noble a beast in pain sent her toward the base of the gulch.
Keeping low to the ground, moving from tree to tree as Danny had taught her, she reached the base of the mountain. Here the woods were fed by a bubbling burn, the water sweet and cool to her parched throat. As she drank, she thought of Hunter Carmichael, who doubtless hungered and thirsted, too.
Bah. The McKies would find him come morn and carry him back to Luncarty, there to feed him and tend his ankle.
Rising, she turned away from the stream, and nearly fell over the body of the great stallion.
“Poor thing.” She touched its forehead.
“What are you doing?”
Allisun whirled around, the knife clutched in her hand.
Hunter Carmichael stood a few feet away, leaning heavily on a thick tree branch.
“How did you get here without my hearing?”
“Because I am as good at sneaking about as you are.” Limping forward, he knelt on the stallion’s other side and gently stroked the satiny shoulder. “Broken neck.”
“Aye. He did not suffer,” Allisun offered.
“That is something, I suppose.” His hand stilled. “I have two colts and a filly from him, but...”
“It is hard to lose someone you love.”
Hunter looked up at her, surprised by the understanding, the compassion in her face. Most people would have scoffed at the loss of a horse. Allisun Murray was different in a way that tugged at him. He couldn’t let it matter. “Why did you come down here instead of going up the tail?,
“I thought he might be suffering.”
The tug twisted deep in his gut. “He didn’t.”
“Nay. I am glad of that, Still...” A single tear glistened on her cheek. “’Tis a sad end to so magnificent a beast.”
Hunter stared at her a moment, wondering how a man as heinous as Alexander Murray, the kidnapper he’d hated for years, could have raised so gentle a daughter. Dismissing the notion, he turned away and removed Zeus’s trappings.
“You cannot carry the saddle, not with that ankle.”
“I’ve no intention of trying. I’ll hide it and the lance in yonder brush, then cover his body with branches.”
“Why?”
“If the Bells come down here looking for us and find the horse, they’ll know we are afoot.”
“If they don’t see him, they’ll assume we rode on.” Allisun nodded, her mind racing. A half hour’s climb would put her at the top of the trail. She was fairly certain the rocks there would conceal her while she waited for her kin.
“Go, if you want,” said Hunter. “I’ll not stop you.”
She looked at his foot, braced gingerly against a rock, then up at the strong, clean lines of his face. “What of you?”
“I will soak my ankle in the cold burn till daylight, then. climb up to the trailhead and watch for my men.”
“What if my kin come along first?”
He grinned, his teeth a white slash in his tanned face. “Then I’ll have to hope you’ll intercede with them on my behalf.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re a fair-minded wench.”
Allisun scowled. “We are enemies.”
“Whom fate has thrown together. You’ve two sound legs to walk about. I’ve a sword for defense and food.” He dangled a pouch before her. “Oatcakes, dried beef and a flask of whiskey.”
“I’m not hung—” Her stomach growled in disagreement. There was never enough to eat, and she was always hungry.
Hunter chuckled. “What say we declare a truce, Allisun Murray? Just till we’re rescued.”
“What happens then?” she asked warily.
“I swear that if my men find us first, we’ll either leave you here unharmed or take you to wherever you want to go.”
She sniffed. “Jock McKie’ll not abide by that.”
“My uncle is back home at Luncarty. His leg was badly smashed when your brother ambushed him.”
“What?” Allisun exclaimed, torn between outrage at the accusation and joy that their nemesis was wounded. “If Danny fought, ’twas only after Old Jock attacked him. And them riding under a flag of truce.”
“My uncle says differently.”
“Then he lies,” she snapped. “My brother is not here to defend himself, but I will tell you this—Danny was a gentle lad, only a year older than I am, who had hoped to become a priest. This damned feud shattered that dream, as it did our lives, but Danny still hated killing. He’d not have struck first.”
Hunter hesitated, weighing her earnestness against his uncle’s earlier impassioned tale. Jock was loud and crude, but he had a reputation for honesty. And this woman was a stranger, an enemy. “It matters little what happened in the past. Fate has trapped us here, afoot in an area teeming with rapacious Bells. Our best chance of survival lies in working together. My offer of a truce between us still holds.”
She eyed him narrowly. “That is what Old Jock offered when he lured my brother to his doom.”
“Dieu,” Hunter exclaimed, raking his thick hair back with an exasperated hand. “You are a hard, suspicious thing.”
“Thank you. I’d not have survived otherwise. Still, I suppose there is naught to be gained by squabbling. So, I agree to the truce. But just till we’re rescued, mind.”
With her chin tilted up, her jaw set, Hunter could see there was much of the fighter in Allisun Murray, too. “I agree to your terms.”
To his surprise, they worked well together. Still it took time for a small woman and a limping man to do what must be done. Dawn was lightening the sky above the trees by the time they’d gotten the horse covered and the armaments hidden.
Hunter ducked behind a bush to remove his hose, then limped to the bank of the stream wearing only his thigh-length quilted tunic. The ankle was bruised, swollen to twice its normal size and throbbed like a bad tooth. He hoped it was just twisted and not broken. Sitting down on a rock, he eased his foot into the swift-running water. Air hissed between his teeth. “Ach, ’tis cold as ice.” He pulled his foot out again.
“Just what’s needed to bring down the swelling.” Allisun knelt beside him, grasped his calf and pushed the foot back in.
The feel of her hands on his bare skin sent a shiver up his leg, stirring something he had no right feeling for Alexander Murray’s daughter. Desire. But the body cared little for grudges and feuds. She was young and beautiful, in a wild, untamed way he found oddly appealing. The baggy trews that had disgusted him the night before molded temptingly to a surprisingly shapely rump as she bent to examine his injury.
Hunter groaned softly and tried to pull away.
“Easy.” Her grip on his leg tightened, and so did other, less discerning muscles farther up his leg. “I just want to see...” She rotated the ankle.
“Ach!” Hunter yelped as pain exploded.
“Does it hurt here?”
“Of course it does. Damn thing’s likely broken.” And then where would he be? Crippled, if it wasn’t set properly. “If only my Aunt Elspeth were here. She’s a skilled herb woman.”
“If I were wishing, it’d be for two horses.”
“I suppose you are right.” He leaned forward, peering at his dripping foot. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“Nay, I think...” She turned, and suddenly their faces were only a scant inch apart. The heat from his body, the faint scent of his skin teased her senses and made her insides draw tight as a bowstring. Fear? Nay, nor was it the hatred she wanted to feel. An odd sort of excitement ruffled through her, quickening her pulse, raising the fine hairs on her arms and neck.
Hunter watched her blue eyes darken and knew she felt the same sensual tug he did. The spark that arced between them kindled an unexpected heat deep in his belly. Lust stirred, dulling his brain, heightening his senses.
Her hair had come loose from its thick braid and straggled down her back. He wanted to thrust his hands into the tangled mass and see if it was as soft as it looked. He yearned to press her tense little body to the aching length of his and cover her mouth with his own. He longed to kiss her till they were both mindless and breathless with desire.
“Allisun,” he whispered, lowering his head.
“What?” She blinked and shook her head, then flinched. back away from him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“This.” He moved closer, a hairbreadth from her lips.
She gasped and dodged aside. “Is this the way you keep your truce, by...by attacking me the moment my guard is down?”
“I was merely giving us what we both want.”
“Want?” She dropped his leg back into the water. “You are mad! This unholy lust must run in the Carmichael blood. But I am not as easy a mark as my poor father was.”
“You will cease implying that my aunt was some sort of—”
“Whore!” Allisun sneered. “Adulteress. Is that not what they call a woman who steals another woman’s bus—”
“Hello, there!” called a loud male voice.
Hunter whipped his head up, shocked to find a band of mounted men watching them from across the stream. There must be a score, at least, dressed in leather jacks and trews, swords at their sides, riding sleek horses.
Allisun cursed ripely under her breath and reached for the knife she’d set on the bank.
“Not Murrays, I take it?” Hunter whispered.
“Nay. Nor Bells, either, but they’re not the only vermin hereabouts.” She scrambled to her feet, her knife held before her. “Stay back.”
Hunter grabbed his sword from the stony riverbank, for all the good he’d be on only one leg.
Chapter Four
“Who are you?” Hunter demanded.
The foremost man, a stout fellow with graying hair and a wide, florid face, smiled and held both his hands up, palms out. “Easy...easy. We mean ye no harm.”
“English,” Allisun hissed.
Hunter scowled. “How can you tell? He sounds like a Scot.”
“To you, mayhap, but a Borderer can hear the difference.” Allisun glared at the newcomers. “Be on your way, Englishman.”
“Derk Neville,” the man replied, directing a puzzled glance at Allisun before returning his attention to Hunter. “And the lass is right, I was born across the Tweed. Like many men, I’ve land on both sides of the river. Last year, I bought a fine Scottish tower, and that’s where I make my home at present. We are on our way back there from Kelso.” He gestured at his troop, which included a few heavily laden packhorses. “Went there to fetch some goods my wife ordered.”
“How many men have you got sneaking around behind us?” Allisun demanded.
“None.” Derk looked affronted. “We came down to water our beasts and saw ye two, er, doing whatever ye’re doing.”
Hunter flushed. “I’ve twisted my—”
“He’s washing his feet,” Allisun said.
Derk grinned. “Oh, aye. Well, we’ll just give the beasts a wee sip and be on our way.”
“Don’t come any clos—”
Hunter clamped a hand on her leg. “You’ll have to excuse her curtness. We were set upon by brigands.”
“Was it Bells?” Derk exclaimed.
“Aye,” Hunter said slowly, neither trusting nor distrusting. “How did you know?”
“Well, most of the ill deeds done hereabouts can be laid at Ill Will’s door, but,” he said as he glanced around, “truth to tell, we’d not be taking this trail through the glen if my scouts hadn’t spotted Will and his bunch up on the moor.”
“What were they doing?” Hunter and Allisun both asked.
“Roasting a haunch of beef.”
“You are certain ’twas not a man?” Allisun asked.
“The lass knows Ill Will, I see. Nay, ’twas a steer. They had a good-size herd standing about nearby. Will’s men looked right busy keeping an eye on them, but my lads and I decided we’d not take a chance the Bells had time to rob us.” He grinned. “My Morna’d have a fit if I lost that thick Turkish carpet before she’s had a chance to walk on it.”
Hunter smiled back and laid his sword down. “We understand. Come ahead and water your stock, Derk Neville.”
“Nay,” Allisun softly cried. “What if he’s lying?”
“Shh.” Hunter motioned her down beside him. “The truth is, if Derk wanted to kill us, there is not a damn thing I could do to stop him,” he whispered. It galled, for he was a man who prided himself on his ability to cope with any situation. “I might take one or two with me,” he added, watching out of the corner of his eye as the Nevilles dismounted and brought their mounts to drink at the stream. “But I’d not win.”
“Us,” she hissed back. “I know how to use this, and if I had a sword—”
“Allisun.” He closed his hand over her clenched fist. “Even if we had two swords apiece, they’d best us.”
She glared hatred at the Nevilles. “What do we do?”
Derk Neville hailed them from across the stream. “Couldn’t help noticing ye’ve no horses about.”
“They are grazing,” Allisun replied.
Hunter squeezed her hand, then looked at Derk. “Actually, we lost both mounts getting away from the Bells.”
“Ah. Ye’re lucky to be alive. Ye hurt yer foot?” At Hunter’s nod, Derk frowned. “If ye like, we could juggle our load and free up a horse for the pair of ye to ride.”
“Aye,” said Hunter.
“Nay,” said Allisun.
“We must. No telling how long before our kinsmen can safely look for us,” Hunter said through his teeth. No telling if they were even alive. Then louder he said, “Thanks. We accept.”
Allisun spat a curse that would have made a trooper blush.
“Did your mother never tell you swearing isn’t ladylike?”
“She died when I was six.”
Hunter’s anger leached away. “I am sorry.” Recalling the gentle guidance and unswerving love of his own mother, Hunter felt a stab of pity for this prickly lass. With his free hand, he gently grazed her cheek.
She knocked his hand aside, her eyes flashing blue fire, her chin mutinously high. “I’m not going with you.”
Beneath her defiance, Hunter saw a flicker of fear. It stabbed at his conscience, reminding him that he was responsible for her safety. Whether she liked it or not. “Aye, you are. I’ll not leave you here alone and on foot with the Bells—”
“You are not responsible for me,” she snapped.
“Lovers’ quarrel?” Derk asked, grinning as he waded across the stream.
Allisun glared at Derk and tried vainly to wrench her hand from Hunter’s grip. “We are not—”
“Of a sort,” Hunter interjected, seeing an answer to the questions he knew Derk would pose about who they were. “We were running away.” Beside him, he heard Allisun draw breath to protest. He stilled it by wrapping a loverlike arm around her waist and squeezing... hard.
“Humph,” Allisun wheezed, exhaling noisily.
“Her family does not approve of me.” Hunter grinned in response to her outraged expression. Under cover of dropping a kiss on her brow, he whispered, “If you do not go along with me, he may learn you’re a Murray and decide to collect the reward Uncle Jock has offered for you.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth snapped shut.
“Truly?” Derk climbed the bank, water streaming from his knee-high boots. His sharp gaze moved from Hunter’s equally fine boots and Spanish-made sword to Allisun’s worn tunic.
Hunter’s nimble mind seized a likely response. “I’m a Highlander,” he confided. “Her kin feared I’d take her north, and they’d never see her again.”
“Highlander, ye say. What clan?”
“Sutherland. I am Hunt Sutherland of Kinduin,” he added, borrowing his Uncle Lucais’s surname and estate.
Derk nodded his head in acknowledgment and turned to Allisun. “And ye, lass?”
“Allie...Allie Hall.”
“Hall?” Derk rubbed his thick gray beard. “From where?”
“Over Moffat way,” she said grudgingly, glaring at Hunter.
“Allie Sutherland, she is now.” Hunter met her scowls with a wide grin. “We are handfasted,” he added, to prevent her from being branded a loose woman.
Allie made a choking sound, her eyes wide with horror. Do you realize what you have done? they silently asked.
Hunter was a little shocked himself. The words had just slipped out before he’d had a chance to think...really think... about the consequences. In some places, merely declaring themselves wed before witnesses was enough to unite a couple for a year and a day. Then if the marriage did not suit them, the couple could separate. They’d be parting much sooner than that, Hunter thought. “’Tis just till we can find a priest and be properly wed,” he added, and hoped Derk would think lack of a permanent ceremony the reason for Allie’s outburst.
“Women set store by that,” Derk said. “’Tis pleased I am to meet ye both. Ah, here come the lads with the horses.”
While Derk went to meet his men, Hunter levered himself to his feet. “I am sorry for that,” he whispered to Allisun. “But I could not have him think you were a...a—”
“Better a whore than your wife,” she snapped.
“You are not the mate I’d choose, either,” Hunter said through set teeth. “But ’tis only for a few days, till my ankle heals and we can go our separate ways.”
“If they will let us.” Fear shadowed her eyes, and her lips trembled slightly as she watched the Nevilles close in on them.
Hunter felt another unwelcome stab of sympathy. Poor thing, she’d been hunted and hounded most of her life. “Do not be afraid.” He put an arm around her. “I will not abandon you.”
Allisun. threw off his arm and glared up at him. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“Aye.” Twelve years ago he’d been unable to save his aunt. He would not fail another woman.
“We are enemies,” she hissed as the Nevilles led forth a horse. “Why should you care what happens to me?”
“I do not know.” Hunter studied her delicate profile, the high cheekbones, haughty nose and willful chin. She was a complex lass, her bravery unquenched by hardship, her beauty undimmed by poverty. But the years had marked her, he thought, recalling the lush mouth that was made to smile but seldom did, the eyes so often shuttered and unreadable.
What was it about her that moved him?
The storm that had threatened the night before began in earnest as they set out.
The cool drizzle suited Allisun’s mood exactly. She wanted to feel as miserable on the outside as she did on the inside, torn by concern for her kinsmen and apprehension for herself.
“Here, this will keep off the rain.” Hunter draped over them both an oiled cloth he’d had in his saddle roll.
“I am used to being wet.” Allisun flung back the cloth.
“Allie, ’tis possible they are back home, safe and dry.”
“Our roof leaks,” she snapped.
“I am sorry for that.”
“Jock is not. He burned us out of our tower.” The memory of that chaotic night, filled with fire and screams of pain, bolstered her anger against Hunter.
“Getting sick yourself will not change that.” He tucked the oiled cloth securely around her, then clamped an arm about her waist to keep it there.
Allisun fumed, trapped against the hard wall of his chest. It was like being enveloped by a furnace. She tried to maintain her stiff posture, but the heat from his body seeped in to banish the cold from hers. Lulled by the warmth and the horse’s rolling gait, her tired muscles sagged and her weary mind drifted back over the night’s events.
Damn Hunter for being so confounding. His words, his actions confused her. She did not like him, but her reasons for hating him were no longer as clear as they had been. When he’d first guessed her identity, she’d expected to be abused or even killed. After all, he’d spent the past twelve years believing her father had murdered his aunt. But instead of taking his anger out on her, he had treated her with gentleness and respect. Oh, his high-handedness grated on her independent spirit, but his dry wit tickled her latent sense of humor. And that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. How could a man be infuriating and amusing at the same time?
Well, there was nothing humorous about the situation in which she now found herself. Handfasted to Hunter Carmichael.
Her parents and brothers were doubtless turning over in their graves. The only consolation she could offer to them, and to herself, was that it was temporary. As soon as they reached Derk Neville’s tower, she’d find a way to escape.
“Allie?”
“Hmm?” Realizing she’d slumped into him, she stiffened.
“Nay. Lean back, rest. I but wanted to tell you—”
“I am not tired.” She sat bolt upright.
The sudden movement overset their mount, who shied and sidestepped on the narrow trail.
“Easy.” Hunter’s arm tightened around Allisun’s waist. His muscular thighs bunched beneath her rump as he brought the horse under control.
Allisun was abruptly, vividly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Through the layers of wool that separated them, she could feel the muscles of his chest supporting her back. It unsettled her to find the measured cadence of his heartbeat echoing hers. For some reason the heat radiating from his body made her skin feel too warm and a size too small. Restless, she tried to sit forward.
“Sit still, or you’ll rile our horse,” Hunter murmured. His breath stirred the hair at her temple, sending gooseflesh tingling down her cheek and neck.
Allisun shivered. Was she sickening?
“Are you cold?” He held her closer. The pressure of his arm on her waist scrambled her insides and made the quivering in her belly worse.
“Nay, I tremble with hatred for you.” She wished it were true. Wished she did not like him. “You are my enemy,” she added, as much to remind herself of that.
“I have never done you ill.” He managed to sound hurt.
Allisun bypassed the obvious—that had he not raised the alarm, Jock would never have known whom to blame for Brenna’s disappearance. “You snatched me from my horse, tumbled us down a ravine and tied me to you with this handfasting.”
Hunter’s temper flared, goaded as much by pain and lack of sleep as her accusations. “Ingrate! In all this, I have but tried to protect you. Would you rather I told Derk who you are?” he whispered. “I am not the one with a price on my head.”
She sagged in his arms and shook her head.
Oddly, that small sign of defeat deflated Hunter’s fury. Who could blame her for being prickly and defiant, given what she’d told him about her life. Orphaned. Driven from her home. Forced to dress in rags and live under a leaky roof. Once he might have thought such hardships no more than the Murrays’ due, but that was before he’d met this rare, brave lass. Strangely, he wanted to make it up to her, but he knew she’d reject his sympathy even more vehemently than she did his offers of help. “I wanted to tell you,” he said in a stern voice, parent to child, “that when we reach Derk’s home, I will offer to buy this horse from him so we can leave immediately.”
“You have coin?”
“Aye.” His father had taught him to carry a bit of gold in his boot, just in case. “Not a fortune, but enough to buy—”
“Two horses. I do not like being hemmed in like this.”
Hunter grinned ruefully, glad his thick tunic kept her from knowing how he felt about the forced intimacy. What was it about this grubby, rebellious lass that made him want to forget the feud? His desire for her was inappropriate and inconvenient. Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore it. “Two horses then.”
“And once we’ve got them, we’ll go our separate ways.”
“After I take you home.”
She swiveled her head, pinning him with wide blue eyes. “Nay, you cannot know where I live.”
“Nor can I let you wander about the countryside alone. What if you chanced upon the Bells?”
“Better that than to lead Jock McKie to our hideaway.”
I would not betray you. But Hunter knew she wouldn’t believe him. “Let us take each step in turn.”
Allisun snorted and faced front again. “You can take whatever steps you like, but I’ll not be showing you our camp.” Despite her brave words, she was shaking inside, her mind racing to find a way out of this damnable situation.
“I do not think Derk Neville will harm us,” Hunter said after a few moments. “He seems a decent man.”
“Looks can be deceiving, especially hereabouts.”
“Aye,” Hunter mused. “I’ve heard Borderers are a rough lot. Constant feuds. Raiding, arson, kidnapping. ’Tis said robbery and blackmail are so common they’re considered callings.”
“That is not true.”
“Nay? What of the Elliots and the Armstrongs?”
“They are riding families.”
“Meaning?”
“They make their way by raiding and reiving.”
“My point exactly.”
“But not everyone is like them. Most folk tend to their herds and their hearths.”
“Unless someone steals their stock,” said Hunter. “In which case, they ride hard after the raiders.”
“Aye. The hot trod, we call it.”
“Legalized cattle rustling, more like.”
“The hot trod is only to reclaim what was stolen. Would you deny folk the right to get back what was theirs?”
“And mayhap take a bit more into the bargain?”
“Some might, especially if they had kinfolk hurt or killed in the original raid, but my da never held with such things.”
Hunter listened to the passion with which she spoke of her father. Again he wondered what sort of man Alexander Murray had been. His own memory of the one time they’d met was bitter. “You cannot convince me your father never took what was not his.”
“Well, he never took your aunt. She came willingly.”
“I do not believe you.” Yet he vaguely recalled Jock saying something about Alex sniffing around Brenna at a Truce Day meet.
“I wish it were not true. I wish it had never happened.”
“But why? She and Jock had not been married long.” Through his mind drifted the sounds of their voices raised in argument. A quarrel, one they had made up. He remembered, too, the sounds of their lovemaking.
“They were in love,” Allie said nastily.
Lust, more likely. It had been leading couples astray since Adam and Eve. It struck Hunter that he could be falling into the same trap. “Can you prove he did not kidnap her?”
“No more than you can prove he did.”
Hunter scowled.
“Foul weather, ain’t it,” said Derk, coming to ride alongside them.
“Aye,” Hunter muttered.
“The raiding season’ll soon be upon us.” Derk wiped a drop of water from his bulbous nose. “Hard times then.”
“Is the threat so constant?” Hunter asked idly.
“Oh, aye.” Derk shrugged. “There’s little chance a band of broken men would attack a tower as stout and well guarded as mine, but if the great riding families take it in their mind to come this way...well, then it’d be fight or pay blackmail.”
“Because you’re English?”
“Don’t matter much. Does it, lass?” He winked at Allisun. “There’s English reivers just as like to cross the Tweed and burn me out as attack my Scots neighbors.”
What a revolting way to live. “The Border Wardens?”
“Do what they can. Last year Rob Croser and his band ravaged the land around Jedburgh. Killed ten, left another dozen bad hurt. Andy Kerr caught him driving a herd of stolen stock. Hanged thirty Crosers on the spot, the Warden did.”
“Without a trial?”
“Well, Andy feared if they waited about for that, Rob’s son would gather up his men and their Nixon kin and get Rob free.”
Border justice, Hunter thought, gut tightening with revulsion. His father had said that in this wild land, men were both victim and conqueror. “Such constant strife breeds hard men and women,” Ross Carmichael had added.
Thinking of the woman seated before him, Hunter could only agree. And yet he wondered what would become of Allisun when they parted company. Would she die? Would his uncle be the one to kill her or order her killed?
Much as he wanted to avenge his aunt’s kidnapping, Hunter did not know if he could live with that. It had been much easier to hate the Murrays when they were a faceless foe.
“Dinna fret about yer safety,” said Derk. “Ye’re welcome to stay with us till yer ankle’s healed, then I’ll give ye a pair of horses and a guide to get ye where ye’re going.”
“My thanks. That is most generous, is it not, Allie?”
Suspiciously so. Allisun grunted and watched Derk closely.
“Not at all,” Derk said expansively. “We’ve plenty of room now the repairs have finally been completed. The tower was in such deplorable shape my wife spoke against buying it. But it came cheap and is so well located I figured it would be worth the trouble and expense of fixing it. ’Tis situated on a bluff that commands a sweeping view of the valley. No chance of anyone sneaking up on my tower. The fields have not been grazed in several years, and provide rich feed for my stock. The river nearby is filled with salmon. What more could a man ask?”
“It sounds a veritable paradise,” said Hunter.
Allisun was less charmed. As the two men chatted about defenses, she watched the Neville out of the corner of her eye, searching for some sign of evil in his manner. By the time Derk called a halt, she was jumpy and grumpy.
Hunter reined in their horse beside the meandering stream. Dismounting, he reached up for her. “You’ll feel better once you’ve, er, stretched your legs.”
“I am fine.” Allisun ducked under his hands and slid to the ground. Her legs wobbled, but she caught hold of the horse’s stirrup to steady herself. “Just fine.”
“I can see that.” Humor danced in his eyes.
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Suzanne Barclay
PRIDE OF LIONS A Blood Feud Had Ruled Her Lands For More Years Than Anyone Could Remember And Allisun Murry, chieftain of her clan, would not rest until her murdered kin were avenged. Yet the sight of Hunter Carmichael as he rode from the midst of her enemies gave her pause.For the King's man had proven his bravery in the face of certain death, and captured her unsuspecting heart. Allisun Murry stirred Hunter's blood in a way no woman had before. For the magnificent beauty was living proof that ancient warrior queens had once roamed the Scottish hills.Yet would a woman so hellbent on vengeance ever willingly lay down her sword and give in to the passions that now raged between them?
“Get out of my bed,” Allisun snapped. (#u97a32cdf-3f71-5bc9-b9e2-cf4491278472)Letter to Reader (#ufe26a7b9-aade-56e9-ac69-1e08bf9a38be)Title Page (#u16886e59-587f-5cba-a9a2-441c88b966ed)About the Author (#uc33565da-c3d5-547c-b79e-193ac24006e2)Dedication (#u7aa2b535-ef8b-5b1d-8407-9dd9383018bb)Prologue (#ufe0231c3-aa8e-5d41-8ce0-077ed6a97359)Chapter One (#u249f30c8-c8ec-59a9-9548-1cdaed4d4d28)Chapter Two (#u3b018c2e-9c00-58a5-a404-dd3bccdc1e11)Chapter Three (#u7483f047-fd46-5507-bc8e-c836886d2a3b)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Get out of my bed,” Allisun snapped.
Hunter shook his head, his midnight brown eyes glowing with sympathy. “There’s only the one, and my ankle—”
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” She made to bolt from the bed, but he was quicker, one hand snagging her wrist. She tried to wrench free. “You’re hurting me.”
“Nay, you are hurting yourself by struggling.”
Allisun stilled, but her pulse beat wildly as she stared at her enemy. His eyes bored into hers with an intensity that stripped away everything but this moment. She was vividly conscious of his superior strength, held in check by the force of his will. Inside her, a primitive fear stirred. He could do with her whatever he wanted. None of the tactics her father and brothers had taught her could help her now. She was utterly powerless. But she would not beg. Lifting her chin, she snapped, “Attack me and have done with it.”
Dear Reader,
If you’ve never read a Harlequin Historical novel, you’re in for a treat. We offer compelling, richly developed stories that let you escape to the past—written by some of the best writers in the field!
We are very excited about Pride of Lions, a new Scottish medieval novel and the latest in THE SUTHERLAND SERIES by Suzanne Barclay. Critics have described her work as “Pure gold!”, “Magical!” and “Totally satisfying.” In her latest, a knight and a warrioress from enemy clans join forces and fall in love when they are lost within the territory of an evil laird. Don’t miss it!
Be sure to look for The Heart of a Here, a darling Western by Judith Stacy. Here, a bad boy turned rancher has thirty days to prove he’ll be a good father to his niece and nephew, and enlists the help of the new schoolmarm. The Knight’s Bride by rising talent Lyn Stone is a heartwarming and humorous tale of a very true knight who puts his honorable reputation on the line when he promises to marry the beautiful widow of his best friend.
Rounding out the month is Burke’s Rules, book two of THE GUARDSMEN series by Pat Tracy. Set in Denver, this story features a perfectly mannered schoolmistress who falls for the “protective” bachelor banker who helps her fund her school. Don’t miss this wonderful, sensuous story!
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical
novel.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor
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Pride Of Lions
Suzanne Barclay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SUZANNE BARCLAY
Suzanne Barclay considers herself sublimely lucky to be writing historical romances. What other career would allow her to watch old Errol Flynn movies and call it research? Or daydream and call it work?
On those rare moments when she can tear herself away from the stories she is creating, she enjoys walking in the woods with her two dogs, Max and Duffy, whipping up exotic meals for her husband of twenty-three years and pawing through the local antique marts for special pieces to decorate her office/study.
Be sure to watch for the next installment in the Sutherland series, Taming the Lion, coming out in June, 1999.
Suzanne freely admits that she has trouble keeping track of all the Sutherlands and Carmichaels who people her stories, and has prepared an updated family tree detailing the various characters, their marriages and their children. To receive a copy, send a large SASE to: Suzanne Barclay, P.O. Box 92054, Rochester, NY 14692.
To my family,
a constant source of pride and joy.
Prologue
Luncarty Tower, the Scottish Borders
July, 1381
The setting sun bathed the crests of the Cheviot Hills in red fire and deepened the shadows in the woods along the creek that flowed past the tower. Soon it would be full dark, and everyone knew the land about was wild and dangerous.
So why in the world was his aunt leaving the safety of Luncarty’s stout walls?
His belly tight with apprehension, Hunter Carmichael crept after her, careful to stay well back as she negotiated the steep trail down to the edge of the burn. Her movements were quick and jerky, which was not at all like his graceful aunt, his favorite among his father’s five brothers and sisters. But then, she had not been acting like herself all day.
Hunter frowned. Could it be Uncle Jock’s fault?
Last night Hunter had heard Brenna and her husband arguing. The sounds of raised voices and weeping had roused him from sleep. He’d lain there in the dark, in the little wall chamber down the hall from theirs and wondered what to do. His parents sometimes disagreed, but they never shouted, and his father would not have made his mother cry.
A shaft of longing knifed through him. He’d enjoyed his summer here with his beloved aunt, but he wished he was home at Carmichael Castle with his parents. He missed his mother’s gentle smiles, his father’s sage advice and even Father Matthew’s lessons in reading and writing and scripture. Uncle Jock didn’t hold much with book learning, and had allowed Hunter to roam about, fishing and riding and doing as he pleased. He’d liked that very much indeed, but just now, thinking of home made his throat tighten and his eyes prickle.
Bah, he was ten and three, nearly a man. And it was a man’s duty to protect his family, particularly the woman-folk, his father, Ross, had taught him. The memory of those lessons drove Hunter from his warm bed and down the chilly, dark corridor to knock on the door of the master chamber.
“Who the hell’s there?” Uncle Jock demanded.
“H-Hunter.”
There was some grumbling and cursing, but the door opened. Jock McKie’s burly body filled the doorway, clad in loose breeks and a rumpled tunic. “What do ye want?” he demanded.
“I...I heard voices.” Hunter peered around his uncle to where his aunt stood by the hearth, her eyes red, her hair tumbling like a black curtain to the waist of her tightly belted bed robe. She looked no older than he, though she was near thirty. The sight of her, so small and unhappy, roused his protective instincts. Pushing past Jock, he went to take her icy hands.
“Are you all right?” Hunter whispered.
“Of course she is,” Jock snapped, coming up behind him. “We were just discussing something, were we not, Brenna?”
“Aye, that’s true,” she said at once.
Hunter was relieved not to see any bruises on her face. They’d had a soldier at Carmichael who had beaten one of the maids. Bram was his name, and he’d claimed women needed to be hit to keep them in line. Hunter’s father had disagreed vehemently. Ross had whipped the man and dismissed him, but the lesson had stayed with Hunter. Though Jock was a head taller than him and weighed twice as much, Hunter decided that if he’d been beating Brenna, he’d thrash Jock. Or try to.
“We were having words, as married people sometimes do, and lost our tempers,” his aunt added. “I’m sorry we woke you.”
Hunter had pondered that for a moment. “Papa says the rest of us are cursed with Grandfather Lionel’s hot temper.”
“Meaning Ross does not have one?” she had teased.
“He does, but Mama says it takes longer to come to the boil.” Hunter had grinned. “He’s trying to teach me to master mine, but...”
“Bah, a bit of fire in a man’s gut is what makes him a man,” said the Borderer whose clansmen jumped when he spoke. Aye, Jock McKie ruled Luncarty with an iron fist, but in the two months he’d been here, Hunter had never seen him raise his voice or his hand to his wife.
It must be as she’d said, an argument.
Hunter had returned to his room, but he had kept his door open and his ears, too. There’d been no repeat of the loud voices, but after a short time, he had heard hoarse, rhythmic groans. Before this summer, he’d not have known what they were, but two weeks ago, he’d chanced upon a stable lad and a maid trysting behind the barn.
Feeling hot, flustered and a little ashamed to think they were doing that at their advanced ages, Hunter had closed his door. His aunt and uncle had obviously made up their quarrel.
But come morning, his aunt had behaved strangely. She’d been too busy for their usual walk, too busy even to sit and talk with him. At first, Hunter had felt as dejected as an abandoned pup. Then he feared that Aunt Brenna knew he’d overheard them coupling last night. But she didn’t act embarrassed, more like nervous and preoccupied. She snapped at her maids and harried the servants into what seemed to him, and apparently to them, an unwarranted cleaning spurt.
The mattresses were dragged out to air, the old rushes scraped off the floor of the great hall and a party sent out to cut new ones from along the creek bank. There would be no hot meal that day, declared Brenna the tyrant, for the cook and his helpers were scrubbing down the kitchen.
Jock, chased from the hall by the army of cleaners, had gathered his troopers and ridden off in search of a tavern where they could drink and dice in peace. And doubtless do a bit of wenching, too, judging from the remarks some of the men made.
“Take Hunter with you,” Brenna had commanded.
Jock had readily agreed. “’Bout time the lad completed his education,” he’d said, winking lewdly.
The notion had been tempting, indeed, for lately Hunter had found himself fascinated by the maids at Luncarty. Young or old, pretty or ugly, the sway of their hips and breasts caused a wild, uncontrollable stirring in his lower body. A longing he was more than curious to satisfy, but his sense of duty was stronger. Hunter had pleaded a bad belly and stayed behind to watch his aunt. For what? He did not know.
She had spent a long time sequestered in Uncle Jock’s counting room. When she’d emerged, she was carrying a covered basket. Upon spotting him lurking about, Brenna had sent Hunter on an errand to the blacksmith. He had pretended to go, ducking around a corner to watch for her. When she’d donned her cloak, taken a small basket and headed out of Luncarty, he’d followed covertly.
“I am going down to gather water betony plants,” he’d heard her tell the guard on duty at the gate. The man had waved her past with a reminder not to linger too long. After all, Lady Brenna was answerable only to Jock.
Hunter had felt no such strictures. He was her closest kin, and with Jock away, it was up to him to guard his aunt. Especially since she seemed to have gone a bit mad, he thought.
Pulling himself from his musings, Hunter concentrated on his quarry. From Wee Wat Carmichael, the wizened tracker who must be a hundred years old, he had learned the art of following someone without being caught.
Hunter made a game of it, crawling from rock to rock, and bush to bush. But when his aunt entered the woods, her black cloak blended with the shadows, and he nearly lost her. The cracking of a twig to his right gave her away, and he was soon behind her again. Careful to stay back, he watched as she worked her way along the creek bank. She did not pause to look for herbs, but moved quickly through the trees.
The terrain grew rougher and steeper, huge rocks blocking the path as though tossed there by a careless giant. Hunter crawled over and around them, worried because he could not hear Brenna up ahead over the gush of rushing water. The moon had risen, its light peering through the thick canopy of leaves to light the way. Likely Jock was back by now. He’d be worried. Hunter quickened his pace, determined to catch her and coax her into abandoning this search or offering to help her.
He rounded a towering boulder and stopped in his tracks, transfixed by the sight of his aunt...caught fast in a man’s arms.
The man was tall and broad shouldered, his red hair gleaming like fire in the moonlight. Some of the McKies were redheaded, but this man was a stranger to Hunter.
Who was he? What was he doing here with Aunt Brenna?
She suddenly moved, pushing free of the man’s embrace to stare up at him. Even at this distance, the distress on her face was plain. “Nay. I cannot go with you.”
“You must.” The man grabbed hold of her shoulders.
“Nay.” Brenna twisted in his grip.
Hunter didn’t wait to see more. Pulling the sword from his scabbard, he clambered up the rocks. He wished he had more than a light practice blade, but his father had declared he was not yet strong enough to yield a two-handed claymore. Just now, he felt capable of hefting two in her defense. “Let her go!” he cried.
The man whirled, shoving Brenna behind him and drawing his own weapon. The huge claymore gleamed ominously in the half light. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“’Tis my nephew!” Brenna tried to step around the man, but he caught her wrist with his left hand.
“Release her,” Hunter shouted, surprised his voice didn’t come out a squeak. His opponent was not only larger and better armed, he held the high ground. To reach him, Hunter would have to fight uphill over the rocks. But he’d do it.
“Bloody hell!” the man exclaimed.
“Please.” Brenna extended a beseeching hand. “Please go, Hunter, I do not want anything to happen to you.”
“I cannot leave you here.” Hunter took a step forward, but was stopped by the press of cold steel against his throat.
“Well, well, what have we here?” a deep voice growled in his ear.
Brenna cried out.
“Do not harm him, Owen,” ordered the other man.
“Why the hell not?” this Owen grumbled.
“’Tis her nephew. Drop the weapon, lad.”
Hunter hesitated, weighing his chances.
“Alex told ye to drop it,” Owen repeated, his blade pressing the point.
Whispering a curse, Hunter let his sword clatter to the stones. His eyes locked on his aunt’s wide blue ones across the short distance separating them. I’m sorry, he mouthed. Then he transferred his gaze to the man who held her.
Alex’s eyes were a paler shade of blue than Aunt Brenna’s but sharp and canny. He was well dressed in a wool tunic and leather breeks. His weapon was costly, his speech less coarse than Owen’s. But for all that, he was a fiend bent on abducting a beautiful woman.
“I’ll fight you, man to man,” Hunter growled.
Behind him, Owen laughed, the sound cold and ugly. “Cheeky lad. I say we run him through and get out of here.”
“Nay.” Brenna broke free of her captor and started forward, hands stretched out. “Run, Hunter! Get away from here!”
As if he could do that. But her bid for freedom caught their captors off guard. Wrenching the knife from his belt, Hunter spun and leaped for Owen’s throat.
The man was big and bulky, with a barrel chest, long black hair and a blunt-featured face Hunter would never forget. “What the hell!” Owen put up a beefy arm to deflect the blow. With the other arm, he caught Hunter in the chest and sent him flying.
Hunter landed in the rocks. His head struck something hard. The night went bright, then dark. The last thing he heard before the inky blackness sucked him down was Aunt Brenna’s scream...high, wild and anguished.
The scream still echoed in Hunter’s brain when he clawed his way back to consciousness.
“Aunt Brenna?”
Only the burbling of the burn answered.
His head pounding, Hunter sat up. He was alone beside the creek, his sword and knife gone.
“Aunt Brenna?”
Nothing.
His stomach rolling, his vision blurry, he crawled to the creek and submerged his aching head in the icy water. It cleared his head but did not ease the guilt strangling his very soul.
He had to find her. Pulling himself up on a rock, he took two staggering steps, tripped and rolled down the hill. The rocks battered him all the way to the bottom. Vaguely. he heard someone screaming and realized it was him. He landed in a heap against a huge boulder and lay there, too hurt to move. There was blood in his mouth, a sharp pain in his left leg.
“Hunter! Hunter, by all that’s holy!” Uncle Jock materialized out of the woods, a dozen McKies at his back. “Bloody hell, what happened to ye?”
“Aunt Brenna...kidnapped,” Hunter said weakly.
“The hell ye say.” Jock roared the orders that sent his men crashing through the woods. “Do ye know who it was? Where they might have taken her?”
“Two men ... Alex ... tall ... a nobleman, I think... red hair. The other...” Hunter turned his head and spat out blood. His uncle’s face was hazy, and he knew he was likely to faint again. “Black hair...ugly...Owen. Owen’s his name.”
Jock McKie cursed, leaped up and kicked a nearby rock. “’Tis Alex and Owen Murray. Bloody hell, I should have known, what with the way Alex was sniffing around my Brenna at the last Truce Day.”
“She knows him?” That made an odd sort of sense to Hunter’s battered brain. “Mayhap he won’t hurt her.”
Jock cursed again. “Faithless jade. I should have seen this coming.” He seized hold of Hunter’s shoulder. “Did she have anything with her? A ledger? Tally sticks?”
“Nay.” Memories dipped dizzily in and out of focus. “Wait. She... she was in your counting room for a time. When she came out, she was carrying the basket.”
“Dod! Where is it now?” Jock rose with a roar. He shouted for his men, and when they’d assembled, gave orders for some to carry Hunter back to Luncarty while the rest came with him. “Alex Murray’ll rue this night’s work.”
“You’ll get Aunt Brenna back, won’t you?” Hunter whispered.
“Aye, that I’ll surely do, then I’ll make certain Alex Murray pays for taking what’s mine.”
Chapter One
Scottish Middle Marches
August, 1393
A thin crescent moon shed pale light on the Cheviots. Desolate and treeless, the hills stretched toward the horizon like a great rumpled quilt, pocked by narrow valleys and steep bluffs. Atop the most prominent sat Luncarty Tower, its stark stone walls blending with the hillside that plunged fifty feet to the Lune Water.
Stretched out on her belly in the coarse grass of a neighboring hillock, Allisun Murray scanned the fortress domain of her clan’s most hated enemy. Jock McKie’s ancestors had chosen the site well.
Small ravines guarded the approaches on either side of the tower, and the only entrance was a winding trail up the face of the bluff to a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch. On the other side stood the tall gatehouse, its stout door tightly shut, a pair of arrow slits staring out like giant, malevolent eyes. A single McKie manned the open battlements above, his round helmet and long spear gleaming in the moonlight as he paced to and fro.
“It’ll no’ be easy getting in and back out again with our stock,” muttered Owen Murray.
Allisun sighed and shifted fractionally on the hard ground, her muscles cramped, her bones jarred by the hard ride from their hideaway at Tadlow. But she dared not let her fatigue show. Though the death of her brother, Daniel, had made her head of their small clan, no Scot would follow a woman into battle. She was here only because she’d insisted and Owen, Daniel’s captain, had backed her. “We must find a way,” she said.
“I’m for throwing our scaling hooks over the back wall, climbing in and fighting for what’s ours,” growled Black Gilbert, hunkered down behind a pile of rock to her left.
A murmur of agreement swept through the thirty Murrays sprawled along the hill’s summit, clad in riding leathers and armed for battle, their faces bleak with fury and frustration.
Allisun understood both. For twelve years the feud between the Murrays and the McKies had raged. She’d lost first her father, then her home and finally, her two brothers, Sandie and Daniel to Jock McKie’s punishing raids. Daniel’s death had cut the deepest, for he’d been only twenty and a gentle soul. “Aye, let’s give them a taste of Border justice,” she muttered.
Owen caught her arm with a wide, scarred hand. “Easy, lass,” he whispered. “I know how you feel, but ’twould be suicide. Getting ourselves killed will not bring Danny back.”
“Have you forgotten how that foul, deceitful old man lured Danny into meeting him with promises of a truce, then tortured and killed him?” She shuddered, torn by the memory of her peace-loving brother, lying broken and bloody in a high meadow twenty miles from here.
“Nay, I’ve not forgotten a single one of Jock McKie’s crimes against us. Each death is carved into my heart. But young Danny withstood Jock’s brutality for our sakes.”
Allisun nodded. She knew full well why Jock had tortured her brother—to learn the whereabouts of their camp so he might finish what he’d started so long ago.
“We cannot let his sacrifice be for naught,” Owen added. “You’ll be remembering Danny’s last words ere he rode out.”
She looked up at the weathered face of the man who’d been like a father to her since her own had been killed by the McKies five years ago. Before leaving to meet with Jock and, hopefully, forge a truce, Danny had ordered them not to avenge him if something went awry. “I cannot let it pass,” she said.
“You must. You and your sister are all that’s left of your family. What of her and the others waiting for us back at Tadlow Mountain?” Owen asked roughly. “Who will hunt for them, who will protect them, if aught happens to us?”
Duty dulled the hunger for revenge that clawed at her. Privately Danny had urged her to take Carina and leave the Borders if he was killed. That she could not do, but neither could she let Danny’s death pass. “They do outnumber us.”
“Pair of weak-willed women, ye are,” Black Gil taunted, his scowl as black as his hair. Though five years younger than Owen’s forty, he was as hard as the land, the wicked scar bisecting his cheek a memento of the feud. “I say we go in and kill as many McKies as we can.”
“Aye,” growled a chorus of Murrays.
“We’ve got to strike back,” muttered Wee Harry, the giant who served as their blacksmith. else they’ll keep picking us off one by one till there’s not a Murray left alive.”
That, Allisun knew, was Jock’s goal, his obsession. And Wee Harry was right. They had to do something to keep the McKies at bay. To do that, they needed food. Meat, preferably, to keep their fighters strong and their bairns alive through the long winter. They had no coin to buy sheep or cattle to replace those lost to McKie raids this year. Eighteen head, to be exact. Allisun was determined to get them back. “Where do you think he’s got the stock penned?”
“In the barmkin beyond yon walls,” snapped Black Gilbert. “Which is why we’ve got to go in.”
“What of that shieling we skirted on the way here?” Allisun asked, recalling the large huts they’d bypassed to avoid having anyone sound the alarm and alert the countryside to their presence. “I heard cattle near there. We could relieve the crofter of eighteen head to replace ours.”
“What of Jock McKie?” snarled Black Gil. “Does it not trouble yer conscience that he lives free and clear whilst yer father and brothers molder in the ground?”
“Of course it does.” Allisun felt the tears gather behind her eyes but blinked them back. “And we’ll have our revenge against the McKie. That I swear,” she added, looking around the circle of hard-faced men. She’d known them all her life, lived with them from the good days at Keastwicke Tower before the feud began and the McKies burned them out. They’d been driven from one hovel to the next, forced to take shelter in burned-out towers and abandoned huts. How hard she and Carina had worked to turn them into some semblance of a home, only to be forced out into the hills each time Jock found them.
Tough living, it was, and it had scarred them all. Short rations turned their bodies thin and wiry. The constant threat of discovery bred children who seldom cried and never laughed. Allisun’s heart bled for them. Somehow, someway, she was going to make Jock McKie pay for what he’d done.
Allisun glanced at Owen, drawing strength from the approval in his dark eyes. Throwing up her chin, she challenged Black Gil. “There must be a hundred McKies behind Luncarty’s walls. To venture within would be tantamount to suicide, and we can ill afford to lose even one man. Nay, we will wait till we can lure Jock McKie out into the open where we stand a fair chance of winning.” Seeing her men nod in agreement, she added, “Mayhap the raid on Jock’s herds will do just that.”
“Aye.” Gibb’s Martin, tall and lanky as his sire had been before he’d caught a McKie spear in the chest, turned to crawl back down the hill. “Allisun has the right of it. We’ll attack the croft, lure the bastards from their tower, then cut them down as they did our kinfolk.”
“Wait,” Allisun said as the others made to follow. “We’ll not succeed if we go crashing off through the woods. Let us ride to that hillock behind the croft. We will wait there while Owen and Mouse scout the area to judge where their guards are posted. When we’re sure of success, we’ll strike.”
Owen smiled. “Exactly right. You’ve as canny a mind as your da, God asoul him.”
Allisun flushed, warmed by his praise. Though her father and brothers had forbidden her to ride out with them, she’d spent many an hour listening while they talked strategy. Little did any of them realize she’d need those lessons.
Black Gilbert grunted. “I still say we should—”
A shout from Luncarty Tower sent the Murrays scrambling up the hill to observe a party of mounted men hailing the tower. Allisun counted twenty in the band. Even from this distance, their horses looked enormous, great black beasts draped in red blankets. Their riders were no less amazing, tall men clad entirely in metal that gleamed like fire in the moonlight.
“Who do you suppose they are?” she asked.
“Knights,” Owen replied. “French, likely. Or English.”
“English.” Allisun savored the word. “If we could prove Jock is treating with the English, Andrew Kerr would be forced to investigate, wouldn’t he?” The Warden of the Scots Middle March was charged with keeping the peace, but he had rejected the Murrays’ complaints against the McKies because Jock paid Sir Andy a handsome quarterly bribe.
“But we know proof is hard to come by,” said Owen.
“Aye.” How different things might have been had that not been the case, Allisun thought.
The guards at Luncarty called out, no doubt asking the identity of the newcomers.
The foremost man, more richly dressed than the others, his armor covered by a sleeveless tabard, removed his helmet and shouted something back. His reply was inaudible to the Murrays, but it sent the guards scrambling to lower the drawbridge.
Allisun eyed the leader of this band. His hair gleamed bright as newly minted gold in the light of wind-whipped torches, but it was his bearing that impressed her. He sat taller in the saddle than any man she’d ever seen, his back straight as a pikestaff. Arrogance, she decided. Aye, he carried himself like a man who owned the world., “Do you think he is an Englishman?” she asked.
Owen shrugged. “Possible. Though I’d not have thought lock so foolish as to trade openly with them.”
“The standard they carry, the black lion on red, I’ve seen it before,” said Black Gil.
“Where?”
“I do not know. ’Twas a long time ago, but I’ll remember.”
Owen scowled. “Mayhap we should stay and see what they do.”
“I say we go after those cattle,” Gilbert grumbled.
“Agreed,” Allisun said, but as the Murrays began to creep down the hill, she looked back at the armored knights walking their mounts over the drawbridge. “Those metal suits look vastly heavy.”
“Aye, and cumbersome. Ill suited to the sort of fighting that goes on hereabouts.” Owen kept pace with her during the descent. At the base of the hillock, he spoke gravely. “Once we’re back at Tadlow, I’m going to see about getting you and Carina away someplace safe.”
“Nay.” Allisun cursed and spun away from him.
Owen caught her arm. “Mind your tongue. Your poor lady mother is likely spinning in her grave to see how I’ve let you forget all she taught you about being a fine lady.”
“Lady.” Allisun spat the word. “What good are lessons in reading and playing the harp with my menfolk dead and the McKies hounding us? Better you teach me to wield a sword.”
“Nay.” Owen enclosed her icy, knotted fist with his warm, callused one. “I swore to Danny that I’d take you away to live in Edinburgh before I’d let aught happen to you.”
Allisun shook her head so vigorously her thick red braid beat against her back. “Never. I—”
“This is no’ the time, nor the place to discuss this.” Owen rubbed a hand across his whiskered jaw. “But our time is running out. Clearly Danny did not tell Jock where we’re hiding, but someday soon the old bastard will find us, and then—”
The McKie would not only kill them all, he’d discover the secret her father, brothers and countless other Murrays had died to protect. “Before it comes to that, I’ll take Will Bell up on his offer of protection,” she teased.
Owen’s eyes rounded in horror. “You cannot be serious, lass. Desperate we may be, but III Will Bell is—”
“A disgusting old reprobate.” And leader of the most infamous reiving family on the Borders. It had been her bad luck to be spotted by Ill Will one day when she and Danny were in Kelso fetching supplies. The old coot had . leered at her and offered to aid the Murrays in their little disagreement with the McKies. The price of that help had been patently obvious. Shuddering, Allisun thrust away the memory. “Come, if we’re going to lift a few head of McKie stock, what better time than whilst Old Jock is busy entertaining these knights.”
“Does it seem strange to be back here?” asked Gavin Sutherland as the party cantered over the wooden drawbridge.
“Aye. If Uncle Jock had not sent for me, I’d have been content never to set foot here again.” Hunter Carmichael’s mouth was held in a grim line, torchlight flickering on features as bleak as the land they’d traveled to reach this place.
Gavin knew full well what had caused his usually jovial cousin to look so dour. “Not since Aunt Brenna disappeared.” Though Brenna Carmichael McKie, sister to Hunter’s father, Ross, had not really been Gavin’s blood kin, the Carmichael and Sutherland clans were as close-knit as the dark Highland plaids both men carried rolled behind their saddles.
“Not since she was kidnapped—” Hunter corrected him “—by those cursed Murrays.”
“It has been a bloody feud.”
“One I vow to end—permanently.” Hunter’s oath echoed hollowly off the stone passageway that led them under the gatehouse and thence to the barmkin.
It was no idle threat, Gavin mused as he followed his cousin through the open meadow, bounded by Luncarty’s high walls and filled with grazing sheep. This second son born to Lady Megan and Ross, Laird of the Carmichaels, carried on the family tradition for valor and ferocity. While his older brother, Ewan, distinguished himself on the field of battle, Hunter was a warrior with words. Chief justice of King Richard’s high court at the age of five and twenty, so fiercely did he defend the cause of justice that he was often called the King’s Lion.
None outside the family knew that Hunter’s obsession with justice stemmed from the guilt he felt over that fateful moment twelve years ago when his aunt had been taken by the Murrays while Hunter, a youth of three and ten, watched helplessly.
He was not helpless now, Gavin thought as they passed under the portcullis and into the tower’s courtyard. Standing well over six feet tall, with muscles honed by hours of rigorous swordplay, and a razor-sharp mind, Hunter was a match for any man, be he statesman or swordsman. Almost, Gavin pitied the Murrays whom Hunter had come to punish for this latest outrage against poor Jock.
“Dieu, Luncarty’s a dour-looking place.” Gavin gazed up at three stories of sheer gray stone, broken only by a pair of tiny, shuttered windows on the uppermost floors.
“Aye, the peel towers are drear and poorly furnished,” Hunter said, glad for the change of subject. “Especially after what we’re used to at Carmichael Castle. And though you’ll not believe it when we get inside, Luncarty is finer than most Border peels. Uncle Jock’s a wealthy man. We’ve been riding on his land for nearly half the day, and those cattle herds we passed are his, too.”
“Pity he has no son to inherit all this.”
Hunter nodded. Walter, Jock’s son by his first wife, had died the year before he wed Brenna. That union had been too brief to bear fruit, nor had any of his mistresses quickened. There were some who speculated that Jock’s seed was dead.
“Why, ’tis wee Hunter, all grown-up,” said the old man who’d come out of the tower to greet them.
“Hutcheson, isn’t it?” Hunter swung down and handed the reins of his warhorse to his squire.
“’Tis Old Hutch, now, my lord. This is Young Hutch, my son. He’ll be steward after me.”
A skinny youth with his father’s pale eyes and hooked nose stepped forward and nodded. “We’ve put ye in the new tower.” He waved toward a two-story structure of gleaming gray stone.
Hunter smiled, grateful to be spared the room he’d stayed in the last time. “My uncle?” he asked anxiously.
“Ach, the old bird’s too tough to kill,” said Old Hutch. “But ’twas a near thing.” He shook his head dolefully.
“They say he’ll no’ walk again,” added Young Hutch. “The Murrays took a Jedburgh ax to him. Crushed his leg, it did.”
“Aye. He’s lucky to be alive,” said Old Hutch.
“He does not see it that way.” Young Hutch’s features tightened. “Better dead than crippled, he says.”
Hunter’s belly cramped, recalling the big, energetic man who had taught him to fish and trap. If only he’d been stronger, quicker himself twelve years ago, none of this would have—
“Hutch!” bawled a coarse voice from an upstairs window. “Is that my nephie come at last?”
“Aye, my lord,” the steward shouted back. “Just coming up.”
“See ye’re quick about it!”
Hunter smiled, the fear that had plagued him since receiving Jock’s call for help easing. “He sounds the same.”
“A bit testier is all.” Old Hutch herded them through the tower’s only entrance, a set of double doors, one of metal grating, the other made from thick oak planks banded with steel. “Go on up, ye know the way. Young Hutch’ll see yer men settled in the barracks building across the way. Tell Jock I’ll be along directly with ale and meat.”
“Come with me, Gavin.” Hunter led the way through a maze of kegs and oat sacks that filled the ground floor storage room to the turnpike stairs. The tightly coiled steps spiraled clockwise, so right-handed attackers would find their sword arms pinned against the wall as they tried to fight their way up.
“Practical folk, these Borderers,” Gavin mused, his steel-clad shoulders clanging on the close walls.
“Oh, aye, you’ll find they’re a breed apart, fiercer even in some ways than you Highlanders.”
“Ha, that I’d like to see.”
“Likely you will if I cannot persuade Uncle Jock to handle this matter my way.” Though why should he, when I mishandled things so badly last time? Hunter thought, sobered by the memory of his aunt’s abduction and subsequent death.
“Aye, well, your Border reivers will find this Highlander battle-trained and well protected.” Gavin thumbed his fist on the steel breastplate made in France of Spanish steel.
“Our armor is stronger than, their quilted leather jacks, but they’re a tough lot, hardened by a life spent constantly at war with reiving English and raiding Scots alike.”
They crested the stairs and found themselves in an entryway the size of a horse stall. It was as dark as one, too, the faint light of a single torch playing over walls whose only decoration was a coat of soot from a long-ago fire.
“Charming.” Gavin wrinkled his nose.
A muffled bellow turned both of them toward a heavy, iron-banded door, the worse for a few ax cuts.
“Coming, Uncle.” Hunter reached for the door latch and took a deep, steadying breath. It did nothing to ease the knot that had cramped his belly from the moment Jock McKie’s disheveled messenger had banged on the gates of Carmichael Castle. It wasn’t fear, it was the hunger for revenge dueling with his inbred sense of justice.
“The Murrays have paid for what they did to my sister,” his father had told him before he left. “Jock saw to that. There’s been enough blood spilled—on both sides,” added Ross Carmichael, a man of peace and reason. “Jock would not listen to my pleas he end the feud, but now that he’s sent for you, use that golden tongue of yours to make him see reason. More deaths will not bring our Brenna back.”
Nay, nothing would do that, Hunter thought, his hand tightening on the latch. But he would give all he owned—coin, property—to be cast back twelve years and have a chance to plunge his blade into Alex Murray’s black heart. He wrenched open the door and was driven back a step by the harsh light, the stench of smoke and unwashed bodies.
“Dieu,” Gavin whispered, goggle-eyed. “I’ve stayed in taverns that were more...”
“Civilized? Luncarty was once.” When his aunt was alive. And yet, the great hall was much as Hunter remembered—narrow, dark and low ceilinged, a peat fire smoldering in the corner hearth, hard-looking men in rough wool seated jowl to jowl at the scarred trestle tables, eating and arguing fit to raise the dead. It was a world away from Carmichael Castle with its linen-draped tables, tapestry-covered walls and multicourse meals served by liveried maids while a minstrel plucked at a harp and his parents spoke of books or his mother sang an ancient poem.
Hunter sighed. “When I came here to visit, I thought this the grandest place, so wild and free. Of course, with Aunt Brenna the lady here, things were much finer and cleaner.”
“Hunter? Damn and blast, where is that lad?”
“Here, Uncle.” Hunter squinted through the smoky pall to spy a big four-poster bed set square in the middle of the room.
“Does he not have a bedchamber?” Gavin whispered.
“Aye, he does, I expect, but Uncle Jock would have to be dead to stay away out of the thick of things.”
The man propped up in the bed was nearly as unchanged as his tower, Oh, time had dulled Jock’s black hair to steel gray and cut ragged lines in his square face, but the eyes staring from beneath beetled brows were as sharp as ever.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Ye’re bigger even than old Lionel Carmichael was. Come here, lad!” Jock waved an imperious arm.
Conscious of the grinning McKies, Hunter flushed and trailed across the room, feeling like a lad again.
“Aye, ye’ve your mama’s coloring, but yer grandsire’s size. Foul-tempered old bastard, he was. Always liked that about him. What of ye?” Jock grabbed hold of Hunter’s forearm and squeezed hard enough to draw a wince. “Not bad... not bad. See,” he shouted to the room at large. “I told ye he’d have been lifting something weightier than those bloody books of his da’s.”
“I—”
“Chief justice of the king’s court, he is.” Jock’s whiskered jowls lifted in a huge grin. “Mighty proud of ye, lad. Mighty proud. Aren’t we?”
The chorus of congratulation barely swelled when Jock cut across it. “Still ye must have found a few quarrels ye couldn’t settle with them fancy words yer da pounded into ye.”
“Actually, it was the university in Paris that did the pounding,” Hunter said dryly. His concerned parents had shipped him off to study only a few weeks after bringing him home from Luncarty—as much to prevent him from joining Jock’s war against the Murrays as to educate him. Distance, time and exposure to the fundamentals of law had accomplished their goals. He’d returned to Scotland four years ago a cautious, educated man who weighed the outcome of a step before venturing to take it.
Belatedly recalling his manners, Hunter turned and beckoned Gavin over. “This is Gavin Sutherland of Kinduin. You may recall that Aunt Elspeth wed Lucais Sutherland. Gavin is my second cousin, the son of Uncle Lucais’s—”
“Whatever. Welcome, Gavin. Robbie!” Jock bellowed, causing a young man to spring from those crowded around the bed. “See young Gavin has food and drink. And give my nephie and me a bit of privacy.” While the space around them cleared, Jock waved Hunter onto a stool beside the bed.
“’Tis good to see you looking better than I’d expected,” Hunter said.
“And glad I am to see ye.” Jock’s wide cheeks deflated. “Though I wish it’d been under better circumstances.” He waved at his left leg, a huge mound under the coarse blanket. “Broke it in two places trying to get away from Mad Danny Murray.”
Hunter sat forward on the stool. “He attacked you?”
“Aye, under a flag of truce.” Jock’s lids sagged. “I lost three men before we brought him down.”
“Your message said Daniel Murray was dead.”
Jock smiled. “Aye. The last of Alex Murray’s sons is dead.”
“So, it’s over, then.”
“Over!” Fire leaped into Jock’s eyes. “It’ll no’ be over till I’ve wiped out every one of the murdering bastards who stole my—”
“But the man who took Aunt Brenna is dead, and his sons, too. You burned the Murrays out of their tower five years ago,” Hunter added, summing up the facts as he did in many a case from the high bench. “So ’twould seem the feud is at an end.”
“Nay!” Jock sat up straighter, cheeks puffing, face red. “There’ll be no end to it till I’ve found and killed them all.”
“But, Uncle, there can be little left of the Murrays except old men, women and children.”
“Aye, what of it?”
“’Tis not Christian to make war on women and children.”
“Was it Christian for that rutter, Murray, to take my Brenna away from her home and family? Was it Christian of them to send her bones back to me when he was done with her?”
“Bones?” Hunter’s blood ran cold.
“Aye. Six years ago they sent her bones in a bag, her cross still around her neck, my ring on her finger.” He waved his left hand under Hunter’s nose, light glinting off the gold band on his little finger. “Dod, I wish I could kill Alex Murray again.”
Hunter shivered. Twelve years he’d spent trying to forget, now the pain and the rage flooded back. “I did not know of this. My father never said—”
“Likely trying to prevent ye from riding down here and helping me and the lads deal with these bastards.” Jock clapped Hunter on the knee. “Narry fear, lad, ye’re here now, and yer help’s most welcome, what with me unable to sit a horse.”
“What would you have me do?”
“We need to find out where they are holed up. They’re a wily lot, these Murrays, dodging and hiding from our patrols. Owen Murray will be leading them now we’ve finally gotten rid of Mad Danny, and Alex’s oldest daughter may be riding with them.”
“A woman reiver?”
“Aye, that Allisun Murray’s a hard bitch, and canny, too, they say, like her cursed sire.”
Hunter frowned, picturing an ugly crone dressed in riding leathers and wearing a sword.
“Rumor has it she was seen treating with Ill Will Bell.”
Air whistled between Hunter’s teeth.
“Ye’ve heard of him, even in Edinburgh, I see. Dod, the man’s a vicious beast. I dinna need to tell ye what’ll become of the McKies if Allisun seduces III Will into making war on us.”
“Nay,” Hunter said slowly. “I’ve a warrant outstanding against the Bells for kidnapping, ransom, thievery...”
“Oh, aye, and that’s only the evidence presented by folk who were brave enough to complain—or still alive to do it.”
“Why does Sir Andrew Kerr do nothing about this?”
Jock hawked and spat onto the rush-covered- floor. “Ill Will’s got Andy by the short hairs. Took his youngest daughter in a raid on Kelso last year. Threatened to send her back in pieces if Andy moved against him. ’Course—” Jock shrugged “—if she’s still alive, she’s doubtless in a bad way. Will’s got a taste for rape, they say.”
Disgust rose in Hunter, a bitter, choking wave. What kind of people lived like this?
“But—” Jock brightened “—we’ve set a wee trap for the Murrays. If they take the bait, ye can follow ’em home and wipe out every one of them,” he added with relish.
Bloody hell. The thought of killing women and children went against everything Hunter believed in. “I’ll take them and bring them to trial, Uncle.”
“Trial?” Jock shrieked. “My Brenna died unshriven, and ye blather about niceties like trials and such.” His eyes narrowed. “Or mayhap it’s that ye’re afeared to fight the Murrays. There were some who said that was why ye didn’t stop Alex from carrying off my Brenna all those years ago. I told them ye were no coward, just a wee lad. But ye’re a man grown, now, with strength aplenty to wield that sword ye wear.”
“I’m no coward.”
“Jock! Jock!” A flushed and sweaty clansman dashed into the room. “There’s a party of raiders sniffing about the cattle.”
“Murrays?” Jock demanded.
“Aye.” The man seized a cup of ale and drained it, panting as he wiped the foam from his mouth. “There’s twenty or so of them, dressed for reiving. I spotted Owen Murray and the one called Wee Harry, for sure.”
Jock crowed and clapped Hunter on the back. “Go to it, lad. But mind ye let the Murrays lift what cattle they will so as ye can follow them. Then—” he grinned wolfishly “—ye’ll get a chance to see how we Borderers deal with thieves.”
The McKies clansmen roared their approval of the plan and swarmed from the hall like angry bees, shouting for their horses and buckling on their swords.
Hunter nodded grimly to his uncle, then he and Gavin trailed after the clattering McKies.
Jock looked up at the one man who’d remained at his side. “Well, Cousin, has he not grown into a likely looking lad?”
“Humph.” Red Rowy McKie was younger than Jock by a dozen years, but just as burly and ruthless looking, his muscular body straining the seams of his leather jack. “Dinna see why ye had to send for him. I’m yer heir, I should be the one—”
“I’ve told ye a hundred times, ye great ox, Hunter’s here to lend a bit of respectability to our little venture.”
Red Rowy spat a curse. “We dinna need him.”
“Aye.” Jock’s smile turned calculating. “Aye, we do, if I’m right about what Alex Murray did with those tally sticks Brenna stole from me. Now go along with ye. I need ye to be there when they breach the Murrays’ hidey-hole. Ye know what to do?”
“Aye. I know.”
Chapter Two
The moon, which had guided the Murrays to the steep-sided ravine a quarter mile from the herders’ croft, had disappeared behind a bank of clouds, draping the land in dark shadows.
Allisun shivered, hoping it was not an ill omen.
From the shelter of a copse of trees atop the ridge, she anxiously watched the plain below, a narrow valley that meandered between the rolling hills. All was still and quiet, not so much as a leaf or a blade of grass stirring.
Ominously quiet.
A half mile distant lay the shielings, squat stone huts where the herders lived during the summer while their beasts gorged on long sweet grass. No light shone from the huts, and the McKies’ vast herd was bedded down for the night, hundreds of black dots sprawled across the valley floor. They made a tempting target, guarded only by four or five men who slept rolled in their cloaks around a tiny campfire.
Too tempting? she wondered, shivering again.
“I do not like it,” Owen had said when they’d arrived. “Things are too quiet, too—”
“The McKies have grown careless in their arrogance,” Black Gilbert had muttered. “We’ll cut out what we need to replace the beasts they stole and be away before they’re any the wiser.”
Owen had grudgingly agreed, but he’d refused to let Allisun go down with them. “Bad enough I let you come this far. You’ll not be lifting any cattle.” He’d overruled her objections and ordered her to wait on the hill with Wee Harry as guardsman.
“Ach, there they are,” Harry whispered.
Allisun looked where he pointed, down to the black slash of stone and brush that marked the ravine’s entrance. A low-slung shape crept from the mouth of the gorge. In a quick blur of motion, it slipped into the long grass, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it. Nay, there was another and another. The grass barely twitched as they crawled closer to their objective.
Her heart racing, her fingers clenched tight around her hobbler’s reins, she watched as her men rose suddenly from the grass and fell upon the slumbering guards. The scuffle was brief and nearly soundless, a single muffled thud the only outward sign the herd was now at the Murrays’ mercy.
Allisun breathed a sigh of relief when Owen stood and waved his arm, signaling the Murrays forward. They rode out from cover, leading the rest of the horses. As soon as they’d mounted, the men fanned out and moved slowly toward the herd. “They are going to do it,” she whispered.
“Dinna count them ours, yet.” Wee Harry frowned, dour as ever. “This is a chancy business. Cattle are queer things, like to take a fright over naught and run off or trample a man.”
“You are right, of course.” Sending up a silent prayer, Allisun rose in her stirrups, counting every step the men took. So absorbed was she in the drama unfolding below that she ignored the flicker of movement at the mouth of the ravine, thinking it must be a Murray left on guard.
The moon chose that moment to shake free of the encumbering clouds. Long, white fingers raced across the landscape, banishing the dark, lengthening the shadows, glinting briefly on something bright amongst the brush and bracken.
Allisun swung her head toward the gorge, saw moonlight sparkling off polished metal. Armor?
Lordy! It was armored knights ... the same ones she’d seen enter Luncarty a few hours ago. And with them came smaller, darker shapes. McKies!
“Harry! Harry, it’s a trap! Look there!” she cried.
Harry turned and cursed.
“We have to warn them.” Allisun set her heels into her mare’s ribs.
“Wait! Come back! Ye cannot go down there!”
Allisun knew there was no time to wait. Already the knights and the McKies were moving onto the plain. With the thick grass to muffle their hoofbeats, they’d take her kinsmen unaware.
“Owen!” Allisun shouted as she sent her stout hobbler clattering down the rocky slope. “Behind you! A trap!”
Her words, high and shrill with fear, shattered the still night, freezing men and turning heads across the narrow valley.
The Murrays paused in the act of rousting a score of prime beef, looked around and spied the knights. Over the hail of stones her horse kicked up, Allisun heard Owen roar the orders that set the Murrays to flight.
The knights looked up the hill toward her, cursed loudly and spurred their mounts to intercept her kinsmen.
The cattle, roused so rudely from sleep, snorted, heaved to their feet and stood, shivering with apprehension.
To Allisun, the outcome was as predictable as thunder following a bolt of lightning. The Murrays were badly outnumbered, the weary mounts that had brought them so far tonight no match for the sleek McKie horses. They’d be caught ere they reached the end of the valley. Unless...
Looking over her shoulder, she spied Wee Harry, his face white with dread, his teeth bared as he raced after her. “Stampede them,” she shouted to him, motioning toward the herd.
Harry looked, weighed the moment with the canniness of a man who’d lived long on the Borders. “Aye. I’ll see to it. Get yerself clear, lass. Head back up yon ravine and make for home.”
Allisun nodded, but she had no intention of leaving, not when two figures streaking out of the dark would the sooner set the wary cattle to flight. Just as she reached the herd, she stood in the stirrups and whooped, “Hey! Hey!”
The call was taken up by Wee Harry as he plunged into the thick of things. The cattle started, eyes rolling, whites showing. With snorts of bovine fright, they turned and ran, crashing into the uncertain mob behind them, starting a ripple that pulsed through the whole throng. Backs humped, tails lashing, the beasts fled, filling the air with panicked bellows and clods of soft turf.
Allisun was swept along on the fringe of the tide yet felt no fear, only elation. Her horse bumped along in harmony with the cattle. Over their homed heads, she spotted Wee Harry, urging the beasts on. To her right and a bit ahead, the McKies and their knights bobbed about, struggling to extricate themselves from the jostling mass so they might pursue the Murrays who, having been in front of the herd when it bolted, were getting clean away with a small knot of beeves.
In that moment of triumph, with her heart singing and her kinsmen’s escape all but a certainty, Allisun glimpsed something shiny out of the corner of her eye. Whipping her head around, she saw one of the knights had worked his way up alongside her.
The polished metal helm covered his face, but his eyes glowed like hellfire in the sockets. His breath steamed from the mouthpiece, misting like dragon’s smoke in the cool air.
“I’ve got you, at least.” He grabbed her arm.
Allisun screamed and tried to wrench away from the gloved fingers. The shift caused her horse to stumble. Clutching at the pommel, she fought gamely to keep her seat. But it was too late. She was going down into the churning mass of deadly hooves.
Hunter felt his captive slip, tightened his grip and yanked hard. A quick, expert twist and he had the Murray free of the saddle and anchored securely against his thigh, his arm around a surprisingly narrow waist.
Why, it was only a lad, Hunter thought. Then he noted the soft, unmistakable swell pressing into his arm and realized it was a woman he’d saved.
A woman reiver?
Dieu, what sort of people took a woman along on a raid? His opinion of the Murrays fell another notch. The woman was obviously too frightened to struggle. For which Hunter was thankful. He had his hands full trying to control his mount. Aggressive by nature, the warhorse had been taught to aid his master in battle by striking out at anything that came near. To Zeus, the roiling, grunting mass of cattle represented a terrible threat, one he tried to combat with teeth and hooves.
“Nay. Easy, easy,” Hunter repeated, fighting to keep his voice calm. He had his legs clamped tight around Zeus’s girth, but with only one hand on the reins, it was nearly impossible to direct the horse. “Damn, we’ll never get free of this.”
“Let go of me,” said a slightly breathy voice.
Hunter looked down at the top of the woman’s head, a mass of curls burnished red in the moonlight. “I cannot drop you.”
“Nor was I suggesting it,” she replied dryly, legs milling above the cattle. “Swing me astride before you.”
He eyed the jostling bovine backs. “Can you do it?”
“Oh, I’ve every incentive to try, I assure you.”
Despite their dire circumstances, Hunter chuckled. “At the count, then. One... two... three.”
In a move so smooth they might have practiced it, Hunter lifted her up. She swung her right leg over Zeus’s neck and settled before Hunter, secure between the pommel and his body.
“There.” Hunter grabbed the reins in both hands and drew sharply as Zeus gathered himself to strike. “None of that. Get us out of here, lad.” Pulling hard on the right leather, he tried to make for the edge of the herd.
“Head at the diagonal instead of trying to turn this giant, and cut straight across the herd,” commanded the woman.
Hunter raised his brows, surprised by her tone of authority, but he did as she suggested. It worked. Every step they took brought them closer and closer to the edge of the herd, till finally they burst free.
Zeus tossed his head and trumpeted a final challenge before obeying Hunter’s command to slow. Sides heaving with exertion, the horse expelled great puffs of mist into the air.
“He’s ill suited to herding,” commented the woman.
“Aye. They’re bred for strength, not racing.” He looked ahead, seeing his Carmichaels and the McKies, gamely trying to turn the cattle. The Murrays were doubtless miles in front with their purloined beef.
All except this one.
A minute shift in her weight was all the warning Hunter had before his captive swung a leg over Zeus’s neck and attempted to slide free.
“Nay!” Hunter caught her around the waist, plopped her back before him and anchored her there with his arm. “I’ve lost the others, but I’m keeping you. Who are you? What is your name?”
She stiffened and shook her head.
“You are a Murray.”
She remained stubbornly silent.
Not that it mattered. He had a fair idea it was Allisun Murray he held before him. But he judged it would do more harm than good to confront her here and risk a struggle. “Whoever you are,” he said, and looked toward the last of the cattle, just disappearing between the slim bottleneck created by two opposing hills, “you and yon men are thieves.”
“We are no such thing,” she said hotly. “We’re but taking back the eighteen head the McKie have stolen from us.”
“If that’s true, and mind, I’m not saying it is,” Hunter replied, rather enjoying the byplay, “you got rather more cattle than your due.”
She sniffed. “My men will have taken only eighteen. If the McKies lose more than that, it’ll be because they weren’t skilled enough to find them in the bracken.”
My men. “Is your husband a Murray?”
“I’m not wed.”
“But those men are your kin. You’d not have taken such a fool chance to warn them if they weren’t.”
“Is a blood bond the only kind a Lowlander recognizes?”
“Nay.” He was beginning to grow irritated by her evasions. “’Tis said that Borderers have no loyalty...even to their own.”
She tensed but said evenly, “You just accused me of risking my neck for my kinsmen.”
“So, they are your kin.”
She shrugged. “I thought we’d agreed they must be, or I’d not have lifted a finger to save them from you.”
“You’re a Murray, then.”
“Ah, but we’ve not established that they are Murrays.”
Hunter ground his teeth in exasperation. Many’s the time he’d fenced with words. He did not like finding them so expertly wielded by another. And by a woman, at that. A small woman, he thought as he urged Zeus toward the end of the valley. Her head came only to the center of his breastbone. How fragile she’d felt when he’d lifted her clear of her faltering horse. The memory merged with that of watching her race down the steep slope, calling a warning to her kinsmen.
A small, brave woman.
Hunter shook away the notion. He had no business admiring a woman who must surely be Allisun Murray.
The main body of the herd was gone by the time they entered the pass into the valley. A few head of cattle, the very young and the very old, had fallen by the wayside. Some stood about, horns lowered, puffing hard. Others had collapsed on the turf, mayhap never to rise again.
“We’ll be all night rounding up the stock,” Hunter muttered. “And I fear my uncle has lost a goodly num—”
“Uncle!” She jerked her head around, giving him a shadowed glimpse of a white face dominated by large, dark eyes. Her eyes were filled with horror. “Jock McKie is your uncle?”
“Aye. I’m—” His explanation ended in a curse as his prisoner erupted into a storm of flailing limbs. He wore full body armor, but only woolen hose on his legs and arms. It afforded little protection as her booted heel cracked down on his shin. “Ouch! Damn you!” His grip on her waist loosened fractionally. He felt rather than saw her go for the knife at her belt. “Nay!” Seizing her wrist in his rein hand, he wrapped the other around her throat.
“Damn you!” she wheezed, struggles ceasing.
“Drop the knife.”
“Nay.”
Her bones were so fragile he could break them with a flick of either hand. She knew it, too. The pulse in her throat beat a wild tattoo against his palm. The cadence of it jangled every nerve in his body. An unsettling awareness washed through him, a primitive urge to capture, to conquer. Dieu, he thought, shoving the notion away in disgust. Not even in the aftermath of battle, when blood lust drove some men to rape, had he felt this unholy stirring. It must be the violent Border air. “I do not want to hurt you,” he growled as much to reaffirm his civility as to reassure her.
“Aye, you do.” She swallowed, shivering slightly.
That small shudder awoke something else in him, something equally primitive. The urge to protect. “Nay. I came here to put a stop to this senseless bloodletting. To prove it, I will let you keep the knife.” Doubtless a grave mistake, but he needed to atone for his rapacious thoughts. “Providing you sheathe it.”
“This is some trick.”
“It is not, I assure you I—”
Hoofbeats sounded on the trail behind them. Over his shoulder, Hunter saw riders, coming fast. Leading them was a great bear of a man with a distinctive white streak in his dark, shaggy mane. Not McKies. Likely more Murrays.
“We’ll settle this later.” Hunter let go of her and kicked Zeus into a ground-eating gallop.
“Faster,” urged his prisoner, peering back behind them.
“Not your kin, then, I take it.”
“Dod! Far from it. That’s Ill Will Bell, next of kin to Old Cootie himself. He’ll rape me, pry you out of your fancy steel suit and roast you over a slow fire till you give up your gold.”
“Aye, I’ve heard of the man.” Hunter concentrated on the rough way ahead. They raced flat out over bleak moorland, following the trampled wake of the cattle. They couldn’t sustain this pace for long. In the distance, he saw more of the straggling herd and hoped to come upon his men and the McKies.
“Go to the left,” ordered the woman. “There, between those two boulders.”
“The herd...”
“Too far. Your horse won’t last.” She grabbed the left rein and tugged hard.
Conditioned to instant response, Zeus wheeled, slipped between two black rocks and plunged down a steep trail.
The woman turned to look back. “They have gone by.”
“Either they missed the turn in the dark...”
“Or they have decided to go after the cattle.”
Hunter grunted and focused on controlling their descent. The moon had disappeared again, and he had no idea what lay ahead. The path—more of an animal trail, he guessed—was rock strewn, the hillside covered with trees. Dewy branches slapped at .his helmet and tugged at his tabard. “Where does this trail go?” he asked, sawing back on the reins to slow their progress.
“I—I have no idea.” Her words were punctuated by groans as she absorbed the jolts. “I do not know the land hereabouts.”
“You knew where to turn off,” he said, wary of a trap.
“I saw a break in the hillside and thought it might provide us with a way out.”
“And into what?”
“I—I do not know.”
The trail veered sharply to the right. Hunter eased Zeus around the turn, then stopped.
“What is it?” She looked up over her shoulder at him. Her features were indistinct in the gloom—-a pale face, and wide dark eyes surrounded by tangled hair. Was she beautiful, this fey creature with the stout heart and canny mind?
A sound scattered his musing. “Listen.”
“I do not hear anything,” she said, voice hushed.
The stallion did. His ears pricked forward, his great head swung to look back up the trail.
Far above them, Hunter heard the faint crunch of stone. He leaned down and murmured, “They are coming.”
She nodded, her hair tickling his cheek, teasing his nostrils with the faint scent of woman and heather. “They are not many, I think. One...two, mayhap.”
“Aye.”
“Do we go or stay?”
Hunter looked around at the thick pines, the black rocks that lined the edge of the trail. “’Tis not a place I’d choose to make a stand.” He edged the stallion into a walk. A few paces they went, each one filled with tension. It radiated from the slender body bolt upright before him. He saw the glint of steel in her hand and realized she’d drawn the dirk again. Oddly he didn’t fear she meant to use it on him this time.
“They follow,” she whispered.
Hunter nodded.
The trail dipped. The stallion’s hooves flirted with the edge, sending a hail of stones into unseen darkness. Hunter counted the beats till they hit bottom. It seemed a far ways off. “Easy, lad.” He nudged a toe into the stallion’s ribs, moving him over.
In that instant, something broke from cover. A rabbit.
The stallion screamed and sidestepped.
Into nothingness...
As they went over the edge, Hunter cursed, grabbed hold of the woman and kicked his feet free of the stirrups.
He hit hard on his back, grunted as rock dented steel. He tried to brake with his heels, groaning as his foot caught on a rock. Pain radiated up his leg. They bounced off the rock and slid down, like rainwater off a slate roof. Gravel clawed at his unarmored rump and rattled against his helmet. He spared a moment’s thought for the woman, protected only by her woolen trews and tunic, and clutched her tighter against his chest.
“Hang on,” he growled.
“Where?” Her fingers groped at his chest, his waist. “You’re slick as a great metal pitcher.”
Hunter chuckled. But the bit of mirth was short-lived. His back slammed into something solid. The impact drove the air from his body. The night exploded in a shower of bright stars.
Allisun’s head hit his metal chest with a resounding clunk, jarring her teeth, addling her wits. A moment, maybe two, she lay there collecting herself. Then the unnatural stillness penetrated her stupor.
They’d stopped sliding, yet the massive arms that had held her during the fall were still clamped around her.
“You can let me go now,” she whispered, raising her head.
A bit of light filtered in through the canopy of leaves, gleaming softly on his armor. The visor of his helmet had come up. In the shadows it cast, she glimpsed a square jaw, aquiline nose and closed eyes.
“Sir knight?”
He neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“McKie?” She pushed his arms aside, alarmed they moved so easily, crawled off his chest and shook him. “McKie?”
Nothing.
Above them on the trail, however, she heard a sound that made her panicked heart skip a beat.
“They came down this way,” said a coarse voice.
“Aye, I heard ’em crashing about, but all’s quiet now.”
“Bloody hell. They got away, then. Curse the luck. I gave up my share of the cattle in hopes of getting his armor.”
Armor!
Allisun looked down at the expanse of metal shimmering traitorously in the pale light.
Gasping softly, she whipped off her cloak and flung it over the knight’s head and torso. His left side was still exposed. She threw herself down on it, praying her dark woolens would hide the rest.
Then she lay still, listening and praying.
Chapter Three
He could not be dead, Hunter thought, for he hurt everywhere. Still, he couldn’t move. When he forced his eyes open, it was to suffocating darkness.
“Dieu,” he groaned.
“Shh.”
Something covered his mouth. The woman’s voice came out of the black, “Be still. They are above us.”
“Am...am I blind?” he mumbled.
“Nay. Only covered so they won’t see us.”
Coarse voices grumbled above them, arguing, he thought.
The woman whimpered softly, her breathing shallow and raspy. Her slender body, pressed more closely against his left side, shuddering convulsively.
Instinctively he put an arm around her, grateful that it moved to his command. Mayhap he was not paralyzed after all. As he lay there in the dark, his mind leaped back over the night’s events: the cattle raid, the woman he’d rescued, the precipitous flight from a band of brigands and the fall that had ended here.
A voice intruded, loud and coarse. “That armor he was wearing would be worth a fortune.” Gravel crunched. “Looks like they went over the edge here.”
“Curse the luck,” said another harsh voice.
The Bells, Hunter thought. He should do something...get up, draw his sword and prepare to defend. But he could not marshal the strength to move. To a man of action, lying here totally defenseless, waiting for the enemy to strike, was pure torture. His body jerked as he tried to force it to move.
“Stay still.” The woman stroked his cheek. “I know it is hard to stay hidden here,” she whispered. “But we could not hope to prevail. against so many armed, ruthless animals.”
Hunter wanted to scream. At the moment, he could not have fought a week-old kitten.
“They could be hurt,” said one.
“Do ye think so?” the other Bell asked eagerly.
“Aye. They was fools to try this in the dark. If they aren’t dead, they’ll be sore hurt.”
“Easy pickings. What say, should we go down and see?”
“Idiot, I’m not chancing this trail at night. Besides, if they’re hurt, they won’t be going anyplace. We can go and get our share of the cattle, then sneak back later when it’s daylight and take what we want.”
Their footsteps faded away.
“They have gone.” She sat up, flinging off the cloak with which she’d covered them.
“Well, at least I am not blind,” Hunter grumbled, blinking against the moonlight filtering through the leaves.
“I am sorry, but I feared they’d spot that shiny armor of yours.” She slung the cloak around her shoulders and shifted to her knees beside him. “They will be back. We must leave as—”
“I cannot move.”
“What?” She leaned over him, frowning as she poked and prodded. “Small wonder, I’d say. You’re wedged in between a rock and the tree that broke your fall.”
“My back?”
“I do not think it’s broken.” She smiled faintly. “Your armor’s caught fast in the rocks. Here, let’s get this out of the way for a start.” She tugged off his helmet.
He swore as his head thumped on the stony ground. “Have a care what you are—”
“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.” She attacked the leather buckles holding the breastplate and back of his armor together. When they were loose, she cocked her head, grinning down at him. “You look a bit like a turtle I once trapped.”
“This is not amusing.”
“The turtle didna think so, either. He ended up in a soup.”
“Just get on with it, will you?”
“Aye, since you asked so nicely.” She approached the task with far more zeal than skill. It was no easy task for a small, inexperienced woman to extricate a prone man from a set of full battle plate. After much sweating and swearing on both their parts, she wrested the armor from his torso.
Freed of the encumbering weight, which had indeed been jammed between two rocks by the force of his fall, Hunter managed to sit up. “Damn.” He gingerly flexed first his shoulders, then his back. “Argh.” His hand went straight to the spot just above his waist where he’d met the tree.
“Hurt?” She circled around and lifted the hem of the padded gambeson he wore to protect against the chafing metal. “The skin’s not cut, but you’ll have a dandy bruise.”
“You say that so cheerily because it’s mine, not yours.”
She chuckled and came around to sit beside him. “It could have been much worse. Worthless as I find your armor, it did save you from greater injury.”
“Worthless?” Hunter bristled. “It will stop an arrow and even a slashing blow from a sword or lance.”
“Aye, but it weighs down a man and his mount and makes him far less agile in battle.”
Hunter grunted. He’d heard that argument from more than one Scot who preferred the traditional armaments to the armor popular in England and Europe. “This time, I’d say my plate was both blessing and potential curse. My thanks, for hiding me earlier and for getting me free.” Bracing his hand on a huge boulder, he stood. Pain stabbed through his left ankle, sending him back down.
“What is it?”
“My ankle.”
“Can you move it?”
Hunter warily rotated the foot, then nodded.
“Mayhap it is not broken, then.” She tugged off his boot.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Hunter endured her poking and prodding.
“A bad twist, I’d say.”
“Bloody hell!” Hunter gazed angrily around at the stark, wild land. Then a new worry intruded. “The stallion?”
“I—I do not know. I think he slid on past us, but I have not heard a sound, from below.”
They both turned to look at the wall of trees and rocks that hid the rest of the descending slope, then at each other. The same thought was in both their faces. The horse was dead.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I. My sire raised him from a colt.”
Tears glinted in her eyes. “I could go down and search.”
“Nay.” The tightness in Hunter’s chest expanded to fill his throat. “He must be dead. An injured horse is not quiet.”
“We cannot stay here.”
“I know.” Hunter glared balefully at his swollen ankle. If worse came to worst, he’d walk on it and damn the agony.
“It may not hold you.”
“It will,” he snapped. “But there is no sense blundering about in the dark. Mayhap a few hours’ rest will improve it.”
“Hmm.” Allisun doubted that but saw no reason to argue. A poultice might aid the healing, but the herbs she’d brought with her in case anyone was injured were lost with her horse. “I could walk up to the trailhead and—”
“Return with your kin.” His face and voice were as fierce as they’d been when he’d rescued heir.
“Nay, that is not what I meant.” But she knew he didn’t believe her. Why should he? Though they’d worked together to escape the stampede and the Bells, they were enemies.
“They will come looking for you?” he asked.
“Aye. Of a certainty they will.” Providing they were alive and free. Sweet Mary, what if they weren’t? What if—?
“Just as my men will search for me.”
“Providing the Bells did not get them all.”
He snorted. “My men are more than a match for that rabble.”
“That rabble is the most ruthless fighting force about.”
“My men will best them.”
Arrogant ass. Allisun glared at him. “The Bells may be more interested in cattle stealing than fighting.”
“Let’s hope so, for all our sakes. But it may be some time before my men find us.” He gazed up the mountain, then back at her. “We should get what rest we can.”
Allisun glared right back at him. “I have no intention of sitting here, waiting on a bunch of McKies.”
“Because of the feud.”
“Of course.”
“So, you are a Murray.”
“I never said—”
“Allisun Murray?”
She gasped. “How can you know that?”
“My uncle said that with your brother gone, you would lead your kinsmen in their raids. I thought him wrong to accuse a woman of such heathenish ways, but I was mistaken.”
“Aye, you were.” Allisun leaped up. “About so much.” She whirled to leave.
He grabbed her ankle, bringing her to the ground with a plop and a grunt of pain. “You are my prisoner, and so you’ll stay.”
“Nay.” She lashed out at him with her free foot. He captured that, too.
Holding both her ankles in one wide hand, he whipped off his belt with the other. “You are my prisoner.”
“I saved your life,” she exclaimed. “I could have left you here, unconscious, for the Bells to find.”
“And I could have let you fall to the stampede.” He hauled her closer, looped one end of the belt around her right wrist, the other around his left. “I would say we are even.”
Fury overcame her fear. “You McKies owe me for the deaths of my father and brothers.” She reached for her knife.
Before the blade cleared the scabbard, he seized her hand and held it fast. My name is Carmichael, not McKie.”
“Carmichael?” Her face turned whiter; her eyes widened.
“Hunter Carmichael,” he said with relish.
“You were there that day.”
“Aye,” he snapped. “I saw your father take my aunt.”
The color rushed back into her cheeks. “You saw, but you know nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “This feud was your fault. Had you not raised a hue and cry—”
“Your lecherous sire would have gotten away with my aunt and no one would have known whom to blame for the heinous deed.”
She laughed, the sound choked, wild and bitter. “How little you know,” she whispered.
“I know what I saw.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
Not to a man who had always dealt in facts. “I was there.”
“So you were.” Her shoulders slumped. She bent her head and repeated the phrase softly, sadly. “And because you were, my family has been hounded—”
“With good reason.”
“So you say.”
Hunter stared at her; trying to pierce the veil of hair that hung before her delicate profile. “What are you saying?”
She turned, tossing the hair from her face, her eyes intent, burning into his. “Nothing, except that you are completely wrong about what happened.”
Hunter glared right back at her. He felt guilty for not having saved his aunt, but he’d not shoulder the blame for starting this feud. Alex Murray had done that when he had kidnapped his aunt. “You’d best try to sleep,” he said tersely. “We must try to leave here before dawn.”
Her head came up at that, like a fighter sensing a challenge. “Oh, I will be ready, sir knight.”
He slept.
Allisun listened to the rhythmic rasp of the knight’s breathing and knew exhaustion had overridden his wariness.
Slowly, cautiously, she bent to slide her hand down the, outside of her left leg. There, in the top of her boot, was the small knife no Borderer went without. One eye on her enemy, she eased the dirk free. If the past twelve years had taught her one thing, it was patience. She applied it now, pressing the sharp blade ever so gently to the leather that bound her to him.
Long minutes passed.
An owl called out from the branches above. Its mate answered, and the pair set out, gliding from the trees on silent wings, hunting in perfect accord.
Her parents had been like that, Allisun reflected as she worked at the bindings. Two bodies, one mind. One heart. Their love had been a thing of beauty, till her mother sickened and her father turned to Brenna for solace. Aye, the Murrays’ miseries, past and present, could be laid at the feet of that sorceress, Brenna. But she was gone, and there was no way to make Hunter understand that without seeming to vilify the dead.
She sliced through the last bit of leather, then held her breath, watching, waiting to see if he’d rouse. He was a handsome man, she thought, staring at his sleep-softened features, the square, stubborn jaw and full, expressive mouth. It was his eyes, though, that had fascinated her. So deep a shade of brown they looked black by moonlight, and so intent they seemed to see clear through her.
When he did not move, Allisun crept from beneath the cloak he’d draped over them for warmth and stole away. It had originally been her plan to climb up to the trailhead and wait in concealment for her men to ride by. But the fate of Hunter’s horse weighed heavily on her mind. What if it was alive but unable to cry out? The thought of so noble a beast in pain sent her toward the base of the gulch.
Keeping low to the ground, moving from tree to tree as Danny had taught her, she reached the base of the mountain. Here the woods were fed by a bubbling burn, the water sweet and cool to her parched throat. As she drank, she thought of Hunter Carmichael, who doubtless hungered and thirsted, too.
Bah. The McKies would find him come morn and carry him back to Luncarty, there to feed him and tend his ankle.
Rising, she turned away from the stream, and nearly fell over the body of the great stallion.
“Poor thing.” She touched its forehead.
“What are you doing?”
Allisun whirled around, the knife clutched in her hand.
Hunter Carmichael stood a few feet away, leaning heavily on a thick tree branch.
“How did you get here without my hearing?”
“Because I am as good at sneaking about as you are.” Limping forward, he knelt on the stallion’s other side and gently stroked the satiny shoulder. “Broken neck.”
“Aye. He did not suffer,” Allisun offered.
“That is something, I suppose.” His hand stilled. “I have two colts and a filly from him, but...”
“It is hard to lose someone you love.”
Hunter looked up at her, surprised by the understanding, the compassion in her face. Most people would have scoffed at the loss of a horse. Allisun Murray was different in a way that tugged at him. He couldn’t let it matter. “Why did you come down here instead of going up the tail?,
“I thought he might be suffering.”
The tug twisted deep in his gut. “He didn’t.”
“Nay. I am glad of that, Still...” A single tear glistened on her cheek. “’Tis a sad end to so magnificent a beast.”
Hunter stared at her a moment, wondering how a man as heinous as Alexander Murray, the kidnapper he’d hated for years, could have raised so gentle a daughter. Dismissing the notion, he turned away and removed Zeus’s trappings.
“You cannot carry the saddle, not with that ankle.”
“I’ve no intention of trying. I’ll hide it and the lance in yonder brush, then cover his body with branches.”
“Why?”
“If the Bells come down here looking for us and find the horse, they’ll know we are afoot.”
“If they don’t see him, they’ll assume we rode on.” Allisun nodded, her mind racing. A half hour’s climb would put her at the top of the trail. She was fairly certain the rocks there would conceal her while she waited for her kin.
“Go, if you want,” said Hunter. “I’ll not stop you.”
She looked at his foot, braced gingerly against a rock, then up at the strong, clean lines of his face. “What of you?”
“I will soak my ankle in the cold burn till daylight, then. climb up to the trailhead and watch for my men.”
“What if my kin come along first?”
He grinned, his teeth a white slash in his tanned face. “Then I’ll have to hope you’ll intercede with them on my behalf.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re a fair-minded wench.”
Allisun scowled. “We are enemies.”
“Whom fate has thrown together. You’ve two sound legs to walk about. I’ve a sword for defense and food.” He dangled a pouch before her. “Oatcakes, dried beef and a flask of whiskey.”
“I’m not hung—” Her stomach growled in disagreement. There was never enough to eat, and she was always hungry.
Hunter chuckled. “What say we declare a truce, Allisun Murray? Just till we’re rescued.”
“What happens then?” she asked warily.
“I swear that if my men find us first, we’ll either leave you here unharmed or take you to wherever you want to go.”
She sniffed. “Jock McKie’ll not abide by that.”
“My uncle is back home at Luncarty. His leg was badly smashed when your brother ambushed him.”
“What?” Allisun exclaimed, torn between outrage at the accusation and joy that their nemesis was wounded. “If Danny fought, ’twas only after Old Jock attacked him. And them riding under a flag of truce.”
“My uncle says differently.”
“Then he lies,” she snapped. “My brother is not here to defend himself, but I will tell you this—Danny was a gentle lad, only a year older than I am, who had hoped to become a priest. This damned feud shattered that dream, as it did our lives, but Danny still hated killing. He’d not have struck first.”
Hunter hesitated, weighing her earnestness against his uncle’s earlier impassioned tale. Jock was loud and crude, but he had a reputation for honesty. And this woman was a stranger, an enemy. “It matters little what happened in the past. Fate has trapped us here, afoot in an area teeming with rapacious Bells. Our best chance of survival lies in working together. My offer of a truce between us still holds.”
She eyed him narrowly. “That is what Old Jock offered when he lured my brother to his doom.”
“Dieu,” Hunter exclaimed, raking his thick hair back with an exasperated hand. “You are a hard, suspicious thing.”
“Thank you. I’d not have survived otherwise. Still, I suppose there is naught to be gained by squabbling. So, I agree to the truce. But just till we’re rescued, mind.”
With her chin tilted up, her jaw set, Hunter could see there was much of the fighter in Allisun Murray, too. “I agree to your terms.”
To his surprise, they worked well together. Still it took time for a small woman and a limping man to do what must be done. Dawn was lightening the sky above the trees by the time they’d gotten the horse covered and the armaments hidden.
Hunter ducked behind a bush to remove his hose, then limped to the bank of the stream wearing only his thigh-length quilted tunic. The ankle was bruised, swollen to twice its normal size and throbbed like a bad tooth. He hoped it was just twisted and not broken. Sitting down on a rock, he eased his foot into the swift-running water. Air hissed between his teeth. “Ach, ’tis cold as ice.” He pulled his foot out again.
“Just what’s needed to bring down the swelling.” Allisun knelt beside him, grasped his calf and pushed the foot back in.
The feel of her hands on his bare skin sent a shiver up his leg, stirring something he had no right feeling for Alexander Murray’s daughter. Desire. But the body cared little for grudges and feuds. She was young and beautiful, in a wild, untamed way he found oddly appealing. The baggy trews that had disgusted him the night before molded temptingly to a surprisingly shapely rump as she bent to examine his injury.
Hunter groaned softly and tried to pull away.
“Easy.” Her grip on his leg tightened, and so did other, less discerning muscles farther up his leg. “I just want to see...” She rotated the ankle.
“Ach!” Hunter yelped as pain exploded.
“Does it hurt here?”
“Of course it does. Damn thing’s likely broken.” And then where would he be? Crippled, if it wasn’t set properly. “If only my Aunt Elspeth were here. She’s a skilled herb woman.”
“If I were wishing, it’d be for two horses.”
“I suppose you are right.” He leaned forward, peering at his dripping foot. “Do you think it’s broken?”
“Nay, I think...” She turned, and suddenly their faces were only a scant inch apart. The heat from his body, the faint scent of his skin teased her senses and made her insides draw tight as a bowstring. Fear? Nay, nor was it the hatred she wanted to feel. An odd sort of excitement ruffled through her, quickening her pulse, raising the fine hairs on her arms and neck.
Hunter watched her blue eyes darken and knew she felt the same sensual tug he did. The spark that arced between them kindled an unexpected heat deep in his belly. Lust stirred, dulling his brain, heightening his senses.
Her hair had come loose from its thick braid and straggled down her back. He wanted to thrust his hands into the tangled mass and see if it was as soft as it looked. He yearned to press her tense little body to the aching length of his and cover her mouth with his own. He longed to kiss her till they were both mindless and breathless with desire.
“Allisun,” he whispered, lowering his head.
“What?” She blinked and shook her head, then flinched. back away from him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“This.” He moved closer, a hairbreadth from her lips.
She gasped and dodged aside. “Is this the way you keep your truce, by...by attacking me the moment my guard is down?”
“I was merely giving us what we both want.”
“Want?” She dropped his leg back into the water. “You are mad! This unholy lust must run in the Carmichael blood. But I am not as easy a mark as my poor father was.”
“You will cease implying that my aunt was some sort of—”
“Whore!” Allisun sneered. “Adulteress. Is that not what they call a woman who steals another woman’s bus—”
“Hello, there!” called a loud male voice.
Hunter whipped his head up, shocked to find a band of mounted men watching them from across the stream. There must be a score, at least, dressed in leather jacks and trews, swords at their sides, riding sleek horses.
Allisun cursed ripely under her breath and reached for the knife she’d set on the bank.
“Not Murrays, I take it?” Hunter whispered.
“Nay. Nor Bells, either, but they’re not the only vermin hereabouts.” She scrambled to her feet, her knife held before her. “Stay back.”
Hunter grabbed his sword from the stony riverbank, for all the good he’d be on only one leg.
Chapter Four
“Who are you?” Hunter demanded.
The foremost man, a stout fellow with graying hair and a wide, florid face, smiled and held both his hands up, palms out. “Easy...easy. We mean ye no harm.”
“English,” Allisun hissed.
Hunter scowled. “How can you tell? He sounds like a Scot.”
“To you, mayhap, but a Borderer can hear the difference.” Allisun glared at the newcomers. “Be on your way, Englishman.”
“Derk Neville,” the man replied, directing a puzzled glance at Allisun before returning his attention to Hunter. “And the lass is right, I was born across the Tweed. Like many men, I’ve land on both sides of the river. Last year, I bought a fine Scottish tower, and that’s where I make my home at present. We are on our way back there from Kelso.” He gestured at his troop, which included a few heavily laden packhorses. “Went there to fetch some goods my wife ordered.”
“How many men have you got sneaking around behind us?” Allisun demanded.
“None.” Derk looked affronted. “We came down to water our beasts and saw ye two, er, doing whatever ye’re doing.”
Hunter flushed. “I’ve twisted my—”
“He’s washing his feet,” Allisun said.
Derk grinned. “Oh, aye. Well, we’ll just give the beasts a wee sip and be on our way.”
“Don’t come any clos—”
Hunter clamped a hand on her leg. “You’ll have to excuse her curtness. We were set upon by brigands.”
“Was it Bells?” Derk exclaimed.
“Aye,” Hunter said slowly, neither trusting nor distrusting. “How did you know?”
“Well, most of the ill deeds done hereabouts can be laid at Ill Will’s door, but,” he said as he glanced around, “truth to tell, we’d not be taking this trail through the glen if my scouts hadn’t spotted Will and his bunch up on the moor.”
“What were they doing?” Hunter and Allisun both asked.
“Roasting a haunch of beef.”
“You are certain ’twas not a man?” Allisun asked.
“The lass knows Ill Will, I see. Nay, ’twas a steer. They had a good-size herd standing about nearby. Will’s men looked right busy keeping an eye on them, but my lads and I decided we’d not take a chance the Bells had time to rob us.” He grinned. “My Morna’d have a fit if I lost that thick Turkish carpet before she’s had a chance to walk on it.”
Hunter smiled back and laid his sword down. “We understand. Come ahead and water your stock, Derk Neville.”
“Nay,” Allisun softly cried. “What if he’s lying?”
“Shh.” Hunter motioned her down beside him. “The truth is, if Derk wanted to kill us, there is not a damn thing I could do to stop him,” he whispered. It galled, for he was a man who prided himself on his ability to cope with any situation. “I might take one or two with me,” he added, watching out of the corner of his eye as the Nevilles dismounted and brought their mounts to drink at the stream. “But I’d not win.”
“Us,” she hissed back. “I know how to use this, and if I had a sword—”
“Allisun.” He closed his hand over her clenched fist. “Even if we had two swords apiece, they’d best us.”
She glared hatred at the Nevilles. “What do we do?”
Derk Neville hailed them from across the stream. “Couldn’t help noticing ye’ve no horses about.”
“They are grazing,” Allisun replied.
Hunter squeezed her hand, then looked at Derk. “Actually, we lost both mounts getting away from the Bells.”
“Ah. Ye’re lucky to be alive. Ye hurt yer foot?” At Hunter’s nod, Derk frowned. “If ye like, we could juggle our load and free up a horse for the pair of ye to ride.”
“Aye,” said Hunter.
“Nay,” said Allisun.
“We must. No telling how long before our kinsmen can safely look for us,” Hunter said through his teeth. No telling if they were even alive. Then louder he said, “Thanks. We accept.”
Allisun spat a curse that would have made a trooper blush.
“Did your mother never tell you swearing isn’t ladylike?”
“She died when I was six.”
Hunter’s anger leached away. “I am sorry.” Recalling the gentle guidance and unswerving love of his own mother, Hunter felt a stab of pity for this prickly lass. With his free hand, he gently grazed her cheek.
She knocked his hand aside, her eyes flashing blue fire, her chin mutinously high. “I’m not going with you.”
Beneath her defiance, Hunter saw a flicker of fear. It stabbed at his conscience, reminding him that he was responsible for her safety. Whether she liked it or not. “Aye, you are. I’ll not leave you here alone and on foot with the Bells—”
“You are not responsible for me,” she snapped.
“Lovers’ quarrel?” Derk asked, grinning as he waded across the stream.
Allisun glared at Derk and tried vainly to wrench her hand from Hunter’s grip. “We are not—”
“Of a sort,” Hunter interjected, seeing an answer to the questions he knew Derk would pose about who they were. “We were running away.” Beside him, he heard Allisun draw breath to protest. He stilled it by wrapping a loverlike arm around her waist and squeezing... hard.
“Humph,” Allisun wheezed, exhaling noisily.
“Her family does not approve of me.” Hunter grinned in response to her outraged expression. Under cover of dropping a kiss on her brow, he whispered, “If you do not go along with me, he may learn you’re a Murray and decide to collect the reward Uncle Jock has offered for you.”
Her eyes widened, and her mouth snapped shut.
“Truly?” Derk climbed the bank, water streaming from his knee-high boots. His sharp gaze moved from Hunter’s equally fine boots and Spanish-made sword to Allisun’s worn tunic.
Hunter’s nimble mind seized a likely response. “I’m a Highlander,” he confided. “Her kin feared I’d take her north, and they’d never see her again.”
“Highlander, ye say. What clan?”
“Sutherland. I am Hunt Sutherland of Kinduin,” he added, borrowing his Uncle Lucais’s surname and estate.
Derk nodded his head in acknowledgment and turned to Allisun. “And ye, lass?”
“Allie...Allie Hall.”
“Hall?” Derk rubbed his thick gray beard. “From where?”
“Over Moffat way,” she said grudgingly, glaring at Hunter.
“Allie Sutherland, she is now.” Hunter met her scowls with a wide grin. “We are handfasted,” he added, to prevent her from being branded a loose woman.
Allie made a choking sound, her eyes wide with horror. Do you realize what you have done? they silently asked.
Hunter was a little shocked himself. The words had just slipped out before he’d had a chance to think...really think... about the consequences. In some places, merely declaring themselves wed before witnesses was enough to unite a couple for a year and a day. Then if the marriage did not suit them, the couple could separate. They’d be parting much sooner than that, Hunter thought. “’Tis just till we can find a priest and be properly wed,” he added, and hoped Derk would think lack of a permanent ceremony the reason for Allie’s outburst.
“Women set store by that,” Derk said. “’Tis pleased I am to meet ye both. Ah, here come the lads with the horses.”
While Derk went to meet his men, Hunter levered himself to his feet. “I am sorry for that,” he whispered to Allisun. “But I could not have him think you were a...a—”
“Better a whore than your wife,” she snapped.
“You are not the mate I’d choose, either,” Hunter said through set teeth. “But ’tis only for a few days, till my ankle heals and we can go our separate ways.”
“If they will let us.” Fear shadowed her eyes, and her lips trembled slightly as she watched the Nevilles close in on them.
Hunter felt another unwelcome stab of sympathy. Poor thing, she’d been hunted and hounded most of her life. “Do not be afraid.” He put an arm around her. “I will not abandon you.”
Allisun. threw off his arm and glared up at him. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“Aye.” Twelve years ago he’d been unable to save his aunt. He would not fail another woman.
“We are enemies,” she hissed as the Nevilles led forth a horse. “Why should you care what happens to me?”
“I do not know.” Hunter studied her delicate profile, the high cheekbones, haughty nose and willful chin. She was a complex lass, her bravery unquenched by hardship, her beauty undimmed by poverty. But the years had marked her, he thought, recalling the lush mouth that was made to smile but seldom did, the eyes so often shuttered and unreadable.
What was it about her that moved him?
The storm that had threatened the night before began in earnest as they set out.
The cool drizzle suited Allisun’s mood exactly. She wanted to feel as miserable on the outside as she did on the inside, torn by concern for her kinsmen and apprehension for herself.
“Here, this will keep off the rain.” Hunter draped over them both an oiled cloth he’d had in his saddle roll.
“I am used to being wet.” Allisun flung back the cloth.
“Allie, ’tis possible they are back home, safe and dry.”
“Our roof leaks,” she snapped.
“I am sorry for that.”
“Jock is not. He burned us out of our tower.” The memory of that chaotic night, filled with fire and screams of pain, bolstered her anger against Hunter.
“Getting sick yourself will not change that.” He tucked the oiled cloth securely around her, then clamped an arm about her waist to keep it there.
Allisun fumed, trapped against the hard wall of his chest. It was like being enveloped by a furnace. She tried to maintain her stiff posture, but the heat from his body seeped in to banish the cold from hers. Lulled by the warmth and the horse’s rolling gait, her tired muscles sagged and her weary mind drifted back over the night’s events.
Damn Hunter for being so confounding. His words, his actions confused her. She did not like him, but her reasons for hating him were no longer as clear as they had been. When he’d first guessed her identity, she’d expected to be abused or even killed. After all, he’d spent the past twelve years believing her father had murdered his aunt. But instead of taking his anger out on her, he had treated her with gentleness and respect. Oh, his high-handedness grated on her independent spirit, but his dry wit tickled her latent sense of humor. And that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. How could a man be infuriating and amusing at the same time?
Well, there was nothing humorous about the situation in which she now found herself. Handfasted to Hunter Carmichael.
Her parents and brothers were doubtless turning over in their graves. The only consolation she could offer to them, and to herself, was that it was temporary. As soon as they reached Derk Neville’s tower, she’d find a way to escape.
“Allie?”
“Hmm?” Realizing she’d slumped into him, she stiffened.
“Nay. Lean back, rest. I but wanted to tell you—”
“I am not tired.” She sat bolt upright.
The sudden movement overset their mount, who shied and sidestepped on the narrow trail.
“Easy.” Hunter’s arm tightened around Allisun’s waist. His muscular thighs bunched beneath her rump as he brought the horse under control.
Allisun was abruptly, vividly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Through the layers of wool that separated them, she could feel the muscles of his chest supporting her back. It unsettled her to find the measured cadence of his heartbeat echoing hers. For some reason the heat radiating from his body made her skin feel too warm and a size too small. Restless, she tried to sit forward.
“Sit still, or you’ll rile our horse,” Hunter murmured. His breath stirred the hair at her temple, sending gooseflesh tingling down her cheek and neck.
Allisun shivered. Was she sickening?
“Are you cold?” He held her closer. The pressure of his arm on her waist scrambled her insides and made the quivering in her belly worse.
“Nay, I tremble with hatred for you.” She wished it were true. Wished she did not like him. “You are my enemy,” she added, as much to remind herself of that.
“I have never done you ill.” He managed to sound hurt.
Allisun bypassed the obvious—that had he not raised the alarm, Jock would never have known whom to blame for Brenna’s disappearance. “You snatched me from my horse, tumbled us down a ravine and tied me to you with this handfasting.”
Hunter’s temper flared, goaded as much by pain and lack of sleep as her accusations. “Ingrate! In all this, I have but tried to protect you. Would you rather I told Derk who you are?” he whispered. “I am not the one with a price on my head.”
She sagged in his arms and shook her head.
Oddly, that small sign of defeat deflated Hunter’s fury. Who could blame her for being prickly and defiant, given what she’d told him about her life. Orphaned. Driven from her home. Forced to dress in rags and live under a leaky roof. Once he might have thought such hardships no more than the Murrays’ due, but that was before he’d met this rare, brave lass. Strangely, he wanted to make it up to her, but he knew she’d reject his sympathy even more vehemently than she did his offers of help. “I wanted to tell you,” he said in a stern voice, parent to child, “that when we reach Derk’s home, I will offer to buy this horse from him so we can leave immediately.”
“You have coin?”
“Aye.” His father had taught him to carry a bit of gold in his boot, just in case. “Not a fortune, but enough to buy—”
“Two horses. I do not like being hemmed in like this.”
Hunter grinned ruefully, glad his thick tunic kept her from knowing how he felt about the forced intimacy. What was it about this grubby, rebellious lass that made him want to forget the feud? His desire for her was inappropriate and inconvenient. Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore it. “Two horses then.”
“And once we’ve got them, we’ll go our separate ways.”
“After I take you home.”
She swiveled her head, pinning him with wide blue eyes. “Nay, you cannot know where I live.”
“Nor can I let you wander about the countryside alone. What if you chanced upon the Bells?”
“Better that than to lead Jock McKie to our hideaway.”
I would not betray you. But Hunter knew she wouldn’t believe him. “Let us take each step in turn.”
Allisun snorted and faced front again. “You can take whatever steps you like, but I’ll not be showing you our camp.” Despite her brave words, she was shaking inside, her mind racing to find a way out of this damnable situation.
“I do not think Derk Neville will harm us,” Hunter said after a few moments. “He seems a decent man.”
“Looks can be deceiving, especially hereabouts.”
“Aye,” Hunter mused. “I’ve heard Borderers are a rough lot. Constant feuds. Raiding, arson, kidnapping. ’Tis said robbery and blackmail are so common they’re considered callings.”
“That is not true.”
“Nay? What of the Elliots and the Armstrongs?”
“They are riding families.”
“Meaning?”
“They make their way by raiding and reiving.”
“My point exactly.”
“But not everyone is like them. Most folk tend to their herds and their hearths.”
“Unless someone steals their stock,” said Hunter. “In which case, they ride hard after the raiders.”
“Aye. The hot trod, we call it.”
“Legalized cattle rustling, more like.”
“The hot trod is only to reclaim what was stolen. Would you deny folk the right to get back what was theirs?”
“And mayhap take a bit more into the bargain?”
“Some might, especially if they had kinfolk hurt or killed in the original raid, but my da never held with such things.”
Hunter listened to the passion with which she spoke of her father. Again he wondered what sort of man Alexander Murray had been. His own memory of the one time they’d met was bitter. “You cannot convince me your father never took what was not his.”
“Well, he never took your aunt. She came willingly.”
“I do not believe you.” Yet he vaguely recalled Jock saying something about Alex sniffing around Brenna at a Truce Day meet.
“I wish it were not true. I wish it had never happened.”
“But why? She and Jock had not been married long.” Through his mind drifted the sounds of their voices raised in argument. A quarrel, one they had made up. He remembered, too, the sounds of their lovemaking.
“They were in love,” Allie said nastily.
Lust, more likely. It had been leading couples astray since Adam and Eve. It struck Hunter that he could be falling into the same trap. “Can you prove he did not kidnap her?”
“No more than you can prove he did.”
Hunter scowled.
“Foul weather, ain’t it,” said Derk, coming to ride alongside them.
“Aye,” Hunter muttered.
“The raiding season’ll soon be upon us.” Derk wiped a drop of water from his bulbous nose. “Hard times then.”
“Is the threat so constant?” Hunter asked idly.
“Oh, aye.” Derk shrugged. “There’s little chance a band of broken men would attack a tower as stout and well guarded as mine, but if the great riding families take it in their mind to come this way...well, then it’d be fight or pay blackmail.”
“Because you’re English?”
“Don’t matter much. Does it, lass?” He winked at Allisun. “There’s English reivers just as like to cross the Tweed and burn me out as attack my Scots neighbors.”
What a revolting way to live. “The Border Wardens?”
“Do what they can. Last year Rob Croser and his band ravaged the land around Jedburgh. Killed ten, left another dozen bad hurt. Andy Kerr caught him driving a herd of stolen stock. Hanged thirty Crosers on the spot, the Warden did.”
“Without a trial?”
“Well, Andy feared if they waited about for that, Rob’s son would gather up his men and their Nixon kin and get Rob free.”
Border justice, Hunter thought, gut tightening with revulsion. His father had said that in this wild land, men were both victim and conqueror. “Such constant strife breeds hard men and women,” Ross Carmichael had added.
Thinking of the woman seated before him, Hunter could only agree. And yet he wondered what would become of Allisun when they parted company. Would she die? Would his uncle be the one to kill her or order her killed?
Much as he wanted to avenge his aunt’s kidnapping, Hunter did not know if he could live with that. It had been much easier to hate the Murrays when they were a faceless foe.
“Dinna fret about yer safety,” said Derk. “Ye’re welcome to stay with us till yer ankle’s healed, then I’ll give ye a pair of horses and a guide to get ye where ye’re going.”
“My thanks. That is most generous, is it not, Allie?”
Suspiciously so. Allisun grunted and watched Derk closely.
“Not at all,” Derk said expansively. “We’ve plenty of room now the repairs have finally been completed. The tower was in such deplorable shape my wife spoke against buying it. But it came cheap and is so well located I figured it would be worth the trouble and expense of fixing it. ’Tis situated on a bluff that commands a sweeping view of the valley. No chance of anyone sneaking up on my tower. The fields have not been grazed in several years, and provide rich feed for my stock. The river nearby is filled with salmon. What more could a man ask?”
“It sounds a veritable paradise,” said Hunter.
Allisun was less charmed. As the two men chatted about defenses, she watched the Neville out of the corner of her eye, searching for some sign of evil in his manner. By the time Derk called a halt, she was jumpy and grumpy.
Hunter reined in their horse beside the meandering stream. Dismounting, he reached up for her. “You’ll feel better once you’ve, er, stretched your legs.”
“I am fine.” Allisun ducked under his hands and slid to the ground. Her legs wobbled, but she caught hold of the horse’s stirrup to steady herself. “Just fine.”
“I can see that.” Humor danced in his eyes.
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Suzanne Barclay
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: PRIDE OF LIONS A Blood Feud Had Ruled Her Lands For More Years Than Anyone Could Remember And Allisun Murry, chieftain of her clan, would not rest until her murdered kin were avenged. Yet the sight of Hunter Carmichael as he rode from the midst of her enemies gave her pause.For the King′s man had proven his bravery in the face of certain death, and captured her unsuspecting heart. Allisun Murry stirred Hunter′s blood in a way no woman had before. For the magnificent beauty was living proof that ancient warrior queens had once roamed the Scottish hills.Yet would a woman so hellbent on vengeance ever willingly lay down her sword and give in to the passions that now raged between them?