The bull was gone.
Panting, Ronan threw his sword onto the grass and bent over, his hands braced on his thighs. Sweat stung his eyes, near blinding him, and every muscle in his body burned. Screaming pain pulsed in his side where he’d slammed into the shattered tent pole, a heated agony so fierce he suspected he might have cracked a rib.
Not that he cared.
Lady Gelis’s dirk raging up from the rich black earth was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
Just as Buckie’s barking set his heart to soaring.
Both meant they were alive and unharmed.
Relief coursing through him, he straightened. Then he dragged his forearm across his brow before stooping again to retrieve his sword and thesgian dubh.
“Did I not tell you MacKenzies are bold?”
Gelis’s voice, ringing.
Ronan almost dropped both weapons.
He whirled around.
She stood before him, all high color and heaving breasts, her eyes bright and her wild, flame-red hair tangled and wind-tossed.
“Though,” she observed, speaking as lightly as if they stood before a cheery hearth fire, “it would seem our nuptial feast has been ruined again.”
Once more he felt the ground tilt beneath his feet, albeit for a very different reason.
He looked at her, now certain she could bring any man to his knees.
“Had my dirk not nicked your sword, we would have had him!” she declared, her dimples winking.
“Sweet thunder of heaven, lass! That bull could have had you —wantedyou!” He jammed his blade into its scabbard, shoved hersgian dubhbeneath his own low-slung sword belt. “Praise God you weren’t injured!”
He seized her, yanking her so swiftly in his arms that he lifted her off her feet.
“You are not, are you?”
“Nae.” She shook her head. “I am . . . well! Not even a bit shaken.”
“You could have been killed.” The very thought chilled him. “Seldom have I seen such an aggressive bull, attacking for no good cause or reason. No’ even in the wilds of Ettrick Forest, that bull-infested morass in the south.”
“There we agree.” A slight catch in her voice revealed her to be more shaken than she let on.
She’d slung her cloak around her shoulders and pulled it closer now, her fingers trembling a bit as she readjusted its clasp.
“I, too, doubt such a beast roams distant Ettrick!” she emphasized, her magnificent breasts clearly outlined beneath the drape of her mantle. “And, it was you, not I, who stood the gravest danger.” She paused, her amber eyes narrowing. “You are not hurt?”
He snorted.
His entire right side was on fire and every indrawn breath was a torture, but he’d sooner lop off his hand than admit it.
Most humiliating of all, judging by the flaming ache in his left foot, he suspected the bull had tromped on his toes in one of his thunderous passes.
“I saw how hard you fell onto the tent pole,” she said, making it worse. “Are you sure —”
“ ’Twas nothing,” he lied, grateful his voice wasn’t a wheeze. “I am much more concerned with you.”
“Then all is . . . good!”
