Apparently wondering what had caught his attention, MacLean leaned forward to take a look.
His low curse snapped Ewen from his momentary stupor.
This was a nun, for Christ’s sake!
Something the English soldiers seemed to have forgotten. It wasn’t just her shredded gown and chemise—a rather fine one for a nun, Ewen noticed from the intricate embroidery—but the soldiers’ lecherous expressions that made it clear what they intended, and Ewen felt the surge of anger race through him. Raping a nun took a special kind of evil.
He nudged MacLean, who seemed as stunned as he, and the two men readied to attack. Typically, Ewen favored a pike—the weapon of the infantryman—but as they’d been riding, it was a sword he drew from the scabbard at his back.
He was just about to give the signal whenshewent on the attack. He paused. It was magnificent. One of the bravest things he’d ever seen. He wanted to put down his sword and cheer. She might be a nun, but she had the heart of a Valkyrie. Every impassioned word rang with the voice of authority and conviction as she defended her chastity. Herholychastity.
He winced, the reminder striking a little too close. But any remaining lust he might be feeling was tamped harshly down by her words extolling the litany of horrors that would befall them for touching her.Shrivel? Raisins?He shuddered and adjusted himself. For a woman of the cloth, she sure as hell didn’t lack for imagination.
But surely it was some kind of sin to give breasts like that to a nun?
He gave the signal.
With the fierce battle cry of the Highland Guard,“Airson an Leòmhann,”he and MacLean shot into the clearing.
Two
Janet—or rather, Genna—knew she’d won when the English captain’s gaze shifted. He was no longer staring at her breasts with anything resembling lust. Actually, he seemed to be doing anything to avoid looking at her at all.
But barely had she tasted her victory when two men emerged from the trees and assured it.
At first, the sound of their battle cry sent a chill racing down her spine. Though it had been a long time since she’d used her native tongue, she translated the Gaelic words easily enough:For the Lion. The cry was unfamiliar to her, and she could not immediately reconcile it with a clan. But they were Highlanders—that much she understood—and thus, friends.
She bit her lip. At least she hoped they were friends.
The cold efficiency with which they dispensed with the soldiers gave her pause. She didn’t relish having to talk her way out of yet another dangerous situation. And everything about these men bespoke danger.
She’d had little contact over the past few years with the men of her birthplace, and she’d forgotten how big and intimidating they were. Tall, broad-shouldered, and heavily muscled, Highlanders were every bit as tough, rugged, and untamed as the wild and forbidding countryside that spawned them. They were also exceptional warriors, their no-holds-barred fighting style a legacy of the Norse raiders who’d invaded their shores generations ago.
She shivered. These two were no different—except perhaps even more skilled at killing than most. She cringed and turned away as one of the men stuck his blade in the throat of the young English soldier. She hated the sight of bloodshed, even when warranted.
She barely had time to pick up her cloak, throw it around her shoulders to cover her nakedness, and help Marguerite to her feet before the fighting ended. The four mail-clad Englishmen lay in bloody heaps on the grassy moor.
The threat was over. Although when she noticed the man walking toward them, as she did her best to calm a sobbing Marguerite, she reconsidered. A strange prickle spread over her skin when the warrior’s gaze met hers. She gasped and her heart took an odd little stumble, as if it started and stopped in quick succession.
She could see little of his face beneath the steel nasal helm. Goodness gracious, did Highlanders still wear those? His jaw was covered in a good quarter inch of scruff, but it looked strong and imposing just like the rest of him.
Indeed everything about his outward appearance was threatening, from the menacing helm, to the dust- and blood-spattered black leathercotunstudded with bits of steel, to the plethora of weapons strapped across his muscular physique (it seemed to be the second time she’d noticed that). Yet looking into the steel blue of his eyes, she knew he was not a threat. To her at least. The dead soldiers behind him might disagree.
She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
He was just a regular Highland warrior. Perhaps a bit more physically dominant than most, but nothing she couldn’t handle. She’d crossed paths with hundreds of fighting men over the years, and they’d never given her problems.
Still, something about him made her uneasy. Perhaps it was the way he held her gaze the entire time he walked toward her with an inscrutable expression on his face. She was good at reading people, sizing them up, but he gave nothing away.
How much had he seen? From the way he glanced at her cloak when he came to stop in front of her, she suspected enough. An ill-timed blush stained her cheeks. Feeling as if he suddenly had the advantage over her, she decided that the quicker this was over with the better.
She released Marguerite and sank to her knees, grabbing his leather-gauntleted hand and rattling off a quick succession of thank-yous in French interspersed with prayers in Italian. With any luck, like most common Highlanders (and nothing about his appearance suggested otherwise), he would not speak Italian or French, and this would be a quick conversation indeed.
If she could have managed it, she would have shed a tear or two, but some things were beyond her acting abilities. The look of reverent gratitude she’d adopted might have worked, but when he looked at her hair and frowned, she remembered that she wasn’t wearing her veil. Without it, she felt…exposed. It had been a long time since she’d felt like a woman in a man’s eyes, and it made her feel strangely vulnerable. She’d been pretending to be a nun for so long, she’d almost forgotten that she wasn’t one. Not yet at least.
Without stopping to let him get a word in, she stood and thanked him again before letting his hand go. She snatched her fallen veil off the ground to drape it over her head, linked Sister Marguerite’s arm in hers, and started to move away. She would return her to the abbey, make sure the young nun was all right, and then leave as soon as possible—this time, alone.
But it seemed her penchant for finding trouble wasn’t over.
