Chapter Three
Torin studied BrayaHetherington while she watched Avalon grazing close by. He didn’t want to think about how she appeared as delicate as a veil in her flowing mantle and skirts, or which shimmered more in the sunlight—her hair or her eyes. Or that she was English.
What was she doing here with him?
He’d had a feeling the reivers wouldn’t simply forget about their kin dying at his hands. Had they sent her to kill him? Why hadn’t she already tried? What would he do if she did? He hoped they hadn’t sent her. He’d hate to have to hurt a woman. He’d always avoided it in the past.
He was surprised she had agreed to stay. She was odd, showing little fear of being alone in the forest with a strange man.
“What brings you to Carlisle?” she asked.
He couldn’t tell her the truth. That he was going to take the castle for King Robert the Bruce. “I had planned on just traveling through. I do not like staying in one place overlong.”
Her expression hardened a bit, but she nodded, as if she felt the same way. “And now that you are part of the defender’s border guards, will you be staying in Carlisle?”
He couldn’t wait to leave it five breaths after he had stepped foot in England.
He offered her a well-practiced smile. “Perhaps.”
He wasn’t sure if he liked the way she looked at him. It was more of an examination—a thorough one, carried out by striking, strategic eyes, as blue as the vast summer sky. It made him want to fall in—toss aside his good sense and stay a little while longer.
He blinked his gaze away from her and looked around at the trees. He felt at home in them. Safe until…
“Tell me what happened last night at the tavern.” Braya’s silky voice pulled him back.
He told her the same story he had told in Bennett’s great hall. She asked a few questions, which he answered without hesitation. “I hadn’t known they were reivers, or friends to the warden,” he added, telling her what he sensed she wanted to hear. “’Twas dark and I saw that they were about to kill their opponents.”
“And you would rush to the aid of soldiers,” she said a bit stiffly.
“I rushed to the aid of three attacked by five,” he corrected. “I did not like the odds.”
“Ah, then you are a man of fairness?”
He crooked one corner of his mouth and then popped a grape into it. She was about to try to trap him into something. He could see it in her bright, eager gaze. He wanted to give her her way—just to find out how good she was at being dangerous. “Aye, I try to be fair.”
“And you believe ’twas fair to attack four men knowing you have the skill of six? Why did you kill them all? What were you trying to prove? Something to the soldiers, mayhap?”
Hell. For a moment, he simply stared at her, realizing she was deadly, indeed. He’d let himself be fooled by what he saw. She was clever—too clever. The passion painting her voice tempted him to remain silent, lest he say the wrong thing and give himself away. “They all came at me at once.” It wasn’t untrue. “They would have killed me.”
“You killed four men—at once?” She gave him a doubtful look.
He nodded and pushed more food in front of her. “I have been fighting for a very long time.”
“Oh? And what is your age?”
“A score and seven,” he told her. “And you?”
“A score and two.”
“Unwed?” he asked.
She nodded, and Torin watched with delight as a crimson blush stole across her cheekbones. “No man will have me.”
He almost choked on his bread. Did she jest? What the hell kind of fool wouldn’t have her? “Why? What is wrong with you?” he asked with suspicion clouding his thoughts.
“They do not like the fact that I can fight better than they can.”
It was difficult not to smile at her the way every other man had this morn in the great hall.
