She gulped.Not her father.That was her worst nightmare.
“But first,” he added, punching a fist into his palm, “we’re goin’ to show ye what we do to filthy caterans.”
Carenza gasped.
Sweet Mary!Did they intend to beat her?
Fear drained the blood from her face.She couldn’t breathe.Couldn’t move.
For one horrible instant, she wondered if she would die on this hill.If all her father would find of her when he went out riding the next morn would be her bloody and battered corpse.
Then, as the bullying brothers grew near, she glimpsed their bloodthirsty sneers and their vicious eyes.She suddenly saw them for what they were.Spineless, entitled cowards who preyed on the weak.
Slowly, her fear curdled into rage.How dared these dunderheads trespass on her father’s land?How dared they threaten her with violence?Who did they think they were?
She wasn’t going to let them ruin her best-laid plans.
She couldn’t fight them on her own, of course.She had neither the muscle nor the mass to do battle against this ox-sized pair of brutes.But she had friends who did.
Still calming Hamish, she began waving her free arm about wildly.Then she took a deep breath and let out a loud, long, wolf-like howl.
As she expected, the sound pushed the rest of the cattle to the edge of panic.Lowing in alarm, they rocked up onto their hooves.They danced in confused agitation, kicking up moss and gravel as they bolted in all directions.
The Boyles, intimidated by the deadly thunder of hooves rumbling on the sod, yelped and separated, fleeing for their lives.
Carenza wasn’t afraid.She knew these beasts.They might charge about wildly for a while, shaking off the dregs of fright.But they’d never hurt her.Carenza was practically part of their clan.
And while the brothers were looking after their own safety, dodging the rush of cattle, she could steal away into the night as planned.Unrecognized.Uncaptured.Unbeaten.
Allowing herself a small smile of triumph, she gave Hamish a soothing scratch behind the ear and tugged him forward.“Come on, Hamish.’Tis all right now.”
“Stay where you are, lad!”a new voice called out to her.“I’ll come to you!”
Carenza’s smile instantly drooped into a frown.Now what?
She wasn’t about to stay where she was.She’d already outsmarted the Boyle brothers.She wasn’t going to let anything else stand in her way.
But before she defied his command, shewouldsteal a sidelong peek at the new arrival.
Her breath caught.
He was big.Bold.Brawny.His hair shone like wheat in the moonlight as he strode across the sod between the great black charging beasts.He had the face, not of a berserker as she’d expected, but of a god.
For a brief yet impressionable sliver of time, she stood stunned.Breathless.Enthralled.Overwhelmed by the magnificent cut of his jaw.The furrowed determination in his brow.The dark promise in his eyes.Then, in the next instant, her gaze fell to the axe clenched in his fist, and fear struck her heart.
This must be the Viking warrior.Sir Hew of Rivenloch.The prospective bridegroom she was supposed to invite to Samhain three nights hence.
Thank God they’d never actually met.If a Rivenloch warrior discovered the daughter of Dunlop reiving cattle, her reputation—and that of her father and her clan—would be ruined.
Ballocks.This was a disaster.
Chapter 7
Hew tightened his grip on the axe.
There was a benefit to being hotheaded.Passion made one fearless.
It was passion that had made him boldly follow the monk to Dunlop.
