Alinor sat down beside Evelyn with a breathy whine, the bow of her rose-colored bandage brushing Evelyn’s face. The forgotten sheep bleated from its pen as if in answer and Alinor turned longing yellow eyes to the rear of the hut.
Evelyn patted the wolf absently. “I think not, lovely.”
’Twould be nobler for Conall MacKerrick to take his own leave, although Evelyn doubted by the man’s heretofore incessant rudeness that he had any notion of the word’s meaning. Evelyn’s leg was healing, true, but too slowly to undertake a journey of any length. And her energy seemed to wane only moments after waking in the mornings, likely from lack of adequate food. Alinor was still recuperating from the attack and there was no other shelter for either of them in this deepest part of winter. The towering Scot had to have come from a village of some sort, and he could very well return to it posthaste. Surely, barbarian though he was, he did not expect to cohabitate with an unmarried lady in such intimate quarters.
Evelyn’s eyes instinctively flew to the narrow box bed at the end of the hut and she felt her face warm at the lurid possibilities the piece of furniture now evoked in her imagination. Smiling amber eyes and flashing white teeth caused her to shiver once more.
“Sinful,” she whispered aloud, and then crossed herself—an exercise she hadn’t performed in months—as if she’d come face-to-face with the devil himself.
And then she was decided. One way or another, Evelyn had to get away from Conall MacKerrick.
Conall could not let Evelyn get away.
He stepped over the dead wolf with care and crept across the narrow clearing, turning in slow circles with his sword at the ready, his eyes scanning the wall of trees that surrounded the hut like a stockade. His breath hung in steamy clouds ’round his head and he tried to stay focused on the task at hand, lest he be ambushed and killed before he had chance to work out his scheme properly.
Find the pack. Get the supplies…
But there was a Buchanan woman—a young, shapely, smart-mouthed, sneaky, uppity Buchanan woman—in his ownhouse! It was a bloody miracle. Perhaps—
A sound like the snapping of a twig underfoot startled Conall so that he jumped and gave a strangled cry. He swung his sword around in a wide arc and fell into a crouch, but the clearing was still empty. Sweat ran down his back in a slushy river.
Concentrate, damn you!
Conall sidestepped to the gentle bank on the edge of the clearing and let his eyes flick over the sloped shoulder. He saw the curve of his bow poking from a drift, and his pack lay where he’d dropped it; both appeared undisturbed save for the rutted paths of tracks circling them. It looked to Conall as if the wolves had indeed sniffed his belongings and perhaps turned them over on the packed snow, but the animals had not destroyed the precious items as Conall had feared.
He crouched down on the cusp of the bank for several moments, listening intently for any sound that might indicate that the bloodthirsty beasts were near. When all remained still, Conall dropped over the rise and scrambled through the snow to his pack.
He vowed to kill every last gray wolf in Scotland when he looked down upon the satchel and saw the dark puddle run off one bottom corner into a well of yellow snow.
Conall jerked the pack up by its strap and held it away from him, looking at it distastefully and biting off whispered curses.
“Nasty beasts,” he muttered, setting the pack back down in a clean patch of snow. He sheathed his sword and dropped to his haunches over the bag, quickly undoing the ties and peering inside. Satisfied that the contents still seemed wrapped securely in the pieces of oilcloth he’d packed them in, he allowed himself to pause with his thoughts.
Evelyn Godewin Buchanan—Angus Buchanan’s own…niece?Granddaughter?Conall felt a wave of dizziness come over him so that the snow on the bank seemed to advance and retreat in quick turn. Sweet God in Heaven—’twas rumored that Angus Buchanan’s daughter had fled to England those many years ago with Minerva Buchanan and had born a girl child. Could Evelyn be her? Now alone with Conall in the deepest, most dangerous thickness of the forest in high winter, and the Buchanan had no knowledge of it?
Conall wanted to shout, to laugh, to vomit on his boots from the nervous excitement that threatened to shake his bones from his flesh.
Only heartache and toil shall you reap, until a Buchanan bairn is born to rule the MacKerrick clan…
Conall thought of his crippled and dying town, his people sick and starving from the black curse that had smothered them these nearly two score years. He thought of the seasons of empty animal shelters and the smell of diseased cattle flesh being consumed on the charnel fires; of grain stalks moldering in flooded fields; of the dry, baked riverbeds in summer, where no fish swam to spawn.
He thought of the haggard faces and thin bodies of the people in his care, a people who had looked faithfully to him for longer than loyalty should have bidden them. He thought of Nonna and the wee girl bairn.
The weight of it all was crushing.
And now, the hag who had once damned them all had carried back with her the very cure for this evil fever and delivered it directly into Conall’s trembling hands.
One of those trembling hands went to the stiff leather knot tied ’round his neck. He gently rolled the small lump against the knuckle of his forefinger with his thumb.
Conall had lain with no other woman save Nonna the whole of his life, and he’d not lain with even his wife since the night she’d taken his seed which had bravely become their child. He closed his eyes against the pain that welled up inside him, the shame.
Conall pinched the bridge of his nose and drew a deep, shuddering breath before rising. He slung his bow, quiver, and pack over one shoulder and drew his sword once more. Gaining the crest of the bank in five great strides, he then paused to look at his uncle’s hunting cottage, thinking of the possibilities that rested with the woman beyond its sod walls.
Evelyn Godewin Buchanan.Eve.
Conall began the short walk across the trampled clearing, his mouth set.
The slain gray was gone.
