Good thing she had plenty of experience pretending not to understand. But still his comment managed to get a small rise out of her. Little holy warrior, indeed! He made her sound like a bairn playing some game.
“Sister,” MacLean said, holding out his hand to Marguerite.
The girl looked back and forth between Genna and MacLean. Genna held tightly to her arm, not wanting to relinquish her. But she knew Marguerite needed to get back to attend to her lungs with the butcher’s broom sweetened with honey that she used, and as it was clear that it was going to take a little more time to reason with this infuriating man, she had to let her go. “It’s all right,” she said. “Go with him. I will be along soon enough.”
“Saygoodbye, Sister,” Lamont instructed from behind her.
Genna shot him a glare, and then turned to Marguerite to give her an encouraging squeeze. “Take care,ma petite.”
Sister Marguerite glanced at Lamont uncertainly, and then back to her. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you…”
“Perfectly sure. This man will do me no harm.” She hoped that wasn’t her third lie of the hour. “Don’t worry about me; just promise me you will rest before you continue your journey.”
The girl nodded.
Genna bit her lip. “It is probably best if you don’t say anything about what happened here. I do not wish to put these men who helped us in any danger.”
Marguerite nodded again, and then after one last hug, Genna let her go. She watched as MacLean led her away through the tunnel of trees. They were almost out of sight when Lamont shouted something at his friend in Gaelic. It sounded like, “Striker,Bàs roimh Gèill!”
She translated the last as Death before Surrender, but what did “striker” mean?
MacLean nodded and repeated the phrase, adding something she did understand: “hunter.” Strange…“What did you say to him?”
“It isn’t important.”
“And yet you chose to speak it in a language that I could not understand?”
He shook his head. She thought it quite remarkable that he had the same exasperated look on his face that her brother and father used to have, which had taken them years to perfect. He’d managed it with her in minutes.
“Yes.”
The man had also perfected the non-answer. “Your friend,” she said. “Won’t it be dangerous for him?”
He dismissed her concern with a shrug. “He’ll be careful. He knows how to blend in.”
Genna couldn’t imagine how either of them would blend in anywhere. They stood out. They were so big, for one thing. Standing next to him she couldn’t help notice just how big. He stood nearly a foot taller than she—he must be at least a hand over six feet—and his shoulders were nearly twice as wide. With all the weapons and armor, he was a bulky man. Not fat, but with far too many muscles for her taste. He was a man built to remind women of their vulnerability, something she tried not to think about. But she couldn’t ignore it with him, which made her all the more eager to be rid of him.
Genna had noticed that he liked the direct approach—or in his case, the stunted approach—so she decided to take it herself. “Why are you insisting on escorting me back to Berwick? Did my superior instruct you to do so?”
“Nay.”
“Then why?”
“That should be obvious: it isn’t safe.”
“And you think I’ll be safer with you? You are wrong. The English are far more likely to stop a warrior on the road than they are a group of pilgrims. I will be far safer with them.”
“Then it’s a good thing we won’t be traveling on the road.”
“Do you proposed to fly to Berwick?” The sarcastic words were out of her mouth before she could snatch them back.
He smiled, and some of that irritation she was feeling squeezed strangely in her chest. He was handsome, she realized. Sinfully handsome. She didn’t need to see the rest of his face to know it. It was right there in that crooked smile. A strange shudder passed through her, prickly and warm, as if someone had just spread a thick plaid over her naked skin.
“Not quite,” he said. “We’ll keep to the trees and stay off the main roads.”
He took a step closer to her, and she caught a faint whiff of leather and pine that she wished she could say was unpleasant. Instead she felt the nearly irresistible urge to inhale. She shook it off, wondering why she was acting like this. She had never been the type to be made silly by a man—not even when she was young. In fact, it had been the other way around.
She had to tilt her head back just to look at him. “What if we get lost?”
