The farmer looked back over the clearing as if he heard his lad returning. “There’s nae need fer two of us to be trapped in the mud. And the blacksmith’s likely all the way to the loch, by now.”
“Ye did notice that Brady trotted off to Strouth, when MacKittrick’s closer. Ye ken he means to get a good look at Tessa Dinwoddie’s bosom before he returns, aye?” The boy was fourteen. They’d likely never see him again if he got an eyeful of Tessa’s breasts.
“What does th—”
“Remain calm!” a male, decidedly un-Scottish voice bellowed. “If you struggle, you’ll only sink faster!”
Straining against the sucking pull of the mud, Fiona turned around. A tall, broad-shouldered man in the crisp red coat of the British army skidded down the bank toward her, one arm outstretched for balance. Black hair cut not quite short enough to disguise its wave, a flash of pale gray eyes, a hard mouth, and a thin scar running down the left side of his face—her heart jumped into her throat, and not entirely from surprise. Ares, she decided instantly. The god of war. And he’d appeared out of thin air to claim her for his queen.
“Go away!” she yelled belatedly, backing up against the cow’s rump. For Boudicca’s sake, an Englishman in uniform charging at her should have been the stuff of nightmares.Wasthe stuff of nightmares, she corrected herself, no matter how instantly… compelling he looked. And upended by his arrival or not, Sassenach or not, she had to admit that he was toe-curlingly magnificent. Where the devil had he come from? And what in the world was he doing here?
He paused just long enough to catch the end of a rope thrown by a second soldier farther up the bank and still on horseback. “You’re in distress. I’m here to rescue you,” he returned, cocking his head at her as if she were the one who’d lost her mind.
If she was imagining English soldiers to be gods of war, perhaps shehadgone mad. Fiona shook herself. “I’m nae in distress.” She did have a sudden flash of the sight she must be, up to her armpits in mud, more muck likely spattered on her face and in her hair. Glancing up at the far bank to send a glare at Brian Maxwell, she caught sight of the farmer’s backside as he ran off in the direction of the village.Damnation.He’d left her alone to deal with a Sassenach. A military one whose mere appearance seemed to have turned her brains to mush.
She scowled as he waded closer, his white trousers disappearing into the dark brown muck. “Go away,” she repeated, and turned back to shove at the heifer again. If she could get the red beastie out of the mud, he’d have no reason to come any closer. Because if he touched her, bad things would happen. She was abruptly certain of that.
The first sign of anything resembling civilization in over two hours, and it came in the form of a woman in mud up to her tits. “Kelgrove, back Union Jack on my order,” Gabriel Forrester continued, wading deeper into the cold muck as he knotted a loop into the rope he carried.
She’d returned to shoving at the cow’s backside, though why she thought a slip of a female like her could budge the big animal, he had no idea. For God’s sake, he imagined she barely came to his chin. “Stay still, miss,” he ordered, tossing the loop over her head and down her shoulders.
“Ye bastard!” she exclaimed. “Dunnae—”
“My apologies,” he interrupted, stepping closer to her before she could lose her balance and fall. A woman wriggling against him was nothing new, but he abruptly realized that it had been a while. As he reached around her to lower the rope to her waist, his hand brushed across one breast, leaving a muddy handprint. Eyes darker than fine, melted chocolate glared daggers at him as she twisted, and he fought the unexpected, heady urge to bend down and kiss her on those fine, full lips currently scowling at him.
Gabriel shook himself. Most of the rescues he performed involved weapons, and there was nothing soft and warm about them. He had no time for lust in the middle of a mud hole. “Slow and steady, Sergeant. Pull.”
“Stay clear of the rope, Major,” Adam returned from up on the bank.
“Don’t fret, miss. I’ll have you out in a moment,” he said, as calmly as he could. Then the rope went taut, pulling her back hard against him. With a grunt he lost his footing and nearly went in over his head. Grabbing onto her, he steadied himself, then had to deal with her squirming in his arms like a landed catfish.
If all rescues resulted in him having a woman in his arms, he wouldn’t mind performing more of them. Even the thrashing felt… invigorating. She might claim not to need a rescue, but any damned fool could see that she required help. He hoped that once they got out of the mud she’d be grateful for the assistance. That dark, dusky hair needed fingers run through it, and someone would have to peel her out of that clinging, muddy gown.
“Damn ye,” she snapped, catching him with a flailing smack to the shoulder, but the rope held as Jack dragged the two of them backward toward the bank.
She stumbled again, and he swept both arms around her ribs. Her breasts seemed magnets to his hands, but that was hardly his fault. And he refused to feel guilty for enjoying it. He was performing a good deed, after all. “All safe now, miss,” he said in her ear, setting her upright again. Abruptly she jabbed her elbow backward into his ribs. “Damnation,” he grunted, pinning her folded arms against her chest in a hard bear hug and beginning to think she might be partly insane—a shame considering how pretty she was.
“I didnae ask fer yer aid, Sassanach,” she retorted, staggering free as soon as they reached the bank and he half tossed her to solid ground. She loosened the rope enough that she could lift it over her head, then whipped around to face him again. “Now I have to go back in for the beastie, yeamadan.”
She had a surprisingly delicate face, he decided, especially considering the curses spewing from her attractive mouth. “The cow?” He’d half forgotten Sergeant Kelgrove, much less the heifer.
The lass shook mud from her arms. “Aye, the cow,” she stated, still not sounding the least bit grateful. “Why the devil do ye ken I went wading in the first place? Fer a bath?”
“I’ll see to the animal.” Her black gaze held his for a heartbeat, then he wrenched his attention away to take the rope from her hands and push past her.
“I dunnae ken what’s so amusing, Sassenach,” she shot after him, annoyance and affront in every slender ounce of her.
Amusing?He was grinning, he realized. “I didn’t expect my day to include rescuing lasses or cows,” he returned, wading back into the muck. “Does she have a name?” he asked, dropping the modified noose around the animal’s wide-spaced horns. The beast had a definite quizzical look to her, with one horn curved up and the other turned down. Poor thing. Likely no one took her seriously with a permanent jester’s hat on her head.
“We call her ‘Cow.’ Because she’s a cow,” the young woman returned, in the same biting tone she’d used before. “Do the Sassenach name their milk cows, then? Or is it that ye think all Highlanders have quaint names for their beasts? Ye already think us fools and idiots and baby eaters, so why nae that?”
“I only asked if she had a name.” He knew they were fairly close to Lattimer Castle, but this woman would clearly be safe from the part of the curse that said death waited for English allies. He had the distinct impression that she wouldn’t bat an eye if he went headfirst into the muck and stayed there. Gabriel sent her a brief, assessing look that upped the quotient of his lust even if it didn’t give him any additional insight into her character, then went back to tightening the knot. “That should do it. Sergeant, get back around the tree there and use it for leverage. And you”—and he jabbed a finger at her—“toss some stones and branches in here between the cow and the bank, so she’ll have some purchase for her feet.”
“I would have done that before, if I’d had some decent help,” she grumbled, but went to do as he suggested, wading back in up to her knees to place the debris. Slender and delicate as she appeared, clearly she wasn’t a timid female, and that was for damned certain. Most of the women who followed the military camps had an edge of roughness to them, a toughness that he imagined came with knowing that the lad with whom they spent an hour might the next day end up dead in a ditch. In her he didn’t sense that hardness, but rather something that teased at him even when he wasn’t looking in her direction. Something… light.
“That man you were with. The one who ran away when I arrived. Was that your husband?”
She snorted. “If he was, I’d be a widow by sunset.”
