“Don’t kill it,” she pleaded, eyes immediately finding the tiny gray rodent with shiny black eyes, frozen and cowering between the sack of grain and the hut’s rear wall. It was so helpless and frightened. “I’ll catch it,” she promised, trying to pull MacKerrick away from the shelf, but it was as effective as attempting to move a mountain. “Please?”
To her relief, the highlander gave an exasperated sigh and stepped away. Evelyn released his arm and he tucked his blade back in his belt. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But doona lose it.”
Evelyn moved to the shelf slowly, looking into the mouse’s glistening eyes above its trembling whiskers.
“Hallow, lovely,” she whispered, ignoring the highlander’s snort behind her. “Don’t be frightened—I’ll not harm you.”
The mouse remained motionless. Evelyn stepped closer and tapped her tongue lightly behind her upper teeth. She cupped her palms and slowly moved them toward the animal.
“Come to me, lovely,” she whispered, then tapped her tongue again. “’Tis safe.” Her fingertips bumped the tiny mouse and it quite suddenly bumbled into her hands and froze again.
Evelyn smiled and cupped her palms completely around the small, warm body. “That was very brave of you,” she praised.
“I can see why the priory didna suit you, Eve,” MacKerrick said from behind her.
Evelyn’s heart rose to her throat and she turned, ready for the mockery of her gift. “And why is that, sir?”
MacKerrick was busied with sorting the rest of the supplies, but he nodded toward Evelyn’s cupped hands.
“They likely didn’t keep enough rodents.”
Evelyn let her breath out slowly. But the highlander was not finished.
“’Tis obvious you’re a Buchanan,” he said, more crossly now. “Witches, the whole lot of them. Likely as nae, you’d bewitch the thing and set it upon me in me sleep.”
Evelyn could not help the smile that spread across her face.
Witch, indeed.
Because she dared not disappoint his opinion of the Buchanans’ reputation, and also because she knew ’twould irritate the highlander, Evelyn let her eyes scan the hut for any suitable vessel.
“A fine idea, MacKerrick,” she said brightly. “I shall call him Whiskers.”
Chapter Seven
“Whiskers,” Conall muttered to himself and shook his head in disbelief as he set off from the hut again later in the day, his quiver and bow slung over one shoulder. She’d named a field mouse and was keeping the rodent in an old, wide wooden bowl she’d found discarded for a long crack in its bottom. Conall had tried to reason with the lass—’twould be but a matter of hours before the little blighter chewed through the piece of hole-punched leather Eve had fastened over the bowl, and then the mouse would be loose in the hut, befouling the barley once more and gnawing at the ticking.
But she wouldna listen. Nae, “Whiskers” was a wee, gray angel, sent from God for Eve to protect.
Conall rolled his eyes and crunched through the snow, nearing the spot where he’d left the first trap that morning, hoping in the back of his mind that a long, lean rabbit awaited him there.
Eve was proving a trial to Conall’s patience, but oddly, he didn’t mind so much. He needed the Buchanan lass to ensure his clan’s survival and he would put up with near any of her foolishness to endear himself to her.
Anything for his clan.
He tried not to think of the way her face softened when she spoke to one of the—nowthree—animals housed with them in the hut, or the way her long plait brushed over the curve of her hip, or the shy lilt of her voice when she had read to him from the Song of Solomon. He’d ask her to read more of the manuscript later that night, hopefully over a meal of rich rabbit stew. Surely a gentlewoman such as she would find the activity properly romantic. Perhaps she would even be moved to sit near Conall’s side. Perhaps their shoulders would brush together as she read…
Conall shook himself. He’d obviously been too long without a woman to be fantasizing about a half-English Buchanan lass who held queer ideas about the keeping of livestock.
He saw the bent gray twigs of the trap snuggled down between two pines and quickened his pace in anticipation.
Empty. And the bait was gone.
Conall cursed and crouched down before the trap. He reached into his pouch for another precious chunk of dried carrot and fastened it to the now-frayed twine dangling within the trap, the cold making his fingertips clumsy. The wind buffeted him as he rose and moved west toward the other trap.
That one was empty, as well. Conall rebaited the trap and made to circle back to the hut, angry as his foolish fantasy of sensual verses read over a hearty meal melted away.
He scrambled up a snowy ravine and looked at his surroundings. If Conall wasn’t mistaken, the great oak where Ronan was buried was ahead to his right.
