The king appeared to be fighting doing the same. Gregor’s reputation was well known. But that wasn’t the way of it. If women wanted to throw themselves at him for something as silly as how he looked, he sure as hell wasn’t going to stop them. What was he supposed to do, fall in love with all of them?
“And there were no other problems? Campbell and Douglas reported how they managed to hold off the English long enough to open the sally port gate and escape. But they feared you might have been trapped trying to go after them.”
That was exactly what had happened, but with the Highland gift for understatement, MacRuairi just said, “It was nothing we couldn’t handle, sire.”
Robert Bruce hadn’t won his crown by being a fool. He narrowed his gaze on the man who’d been one of the most feared pirates in the Western Isles before he’d agreed to join the Highland Guard and fight for Bruce. “Yet it took the three of you a week to return, my best seafarer is hobbling, my best marksman can’t lift his arm, and you are wrapped up around your ribs as tight as a mummy?”
“I didn’t say there weren’t any problems,” MacRuairi clarified. “I said it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle.”
“I think you’ve been around my little sister-by-marriage for too long, Viper; you’re beginning to sound like a damned lawman!”
Janet of Mar, the sister of Bruce’s first wife, was married to their fellow Guardsman Ewen Lamont, and the lass could talk her way out of a shite-storm.
Gregor had had enough. The embarrassment of telling the king what had happened couldn’t be more painful than listening to these two try to cover it up.
He stepped forward and gave a brief summary of how they’d gone in to rescue Campbell and Douglas, fearing they’d been trapped, and instead become surrounded themselves. They’d managed to fight their way out through about thirty soldiers, but he had taken a blow to the arm with a sword, MacRuairi had broken a few ribs when a war hammer connected with his side, and an arrow had landed in the back of MacSorley’s leg while they were running from the castle. As the other men had been forced to flee, leaving them without a quick means of getting away, with the English swarming and MacSorley’s leg gushing blood, they’d thought it best to lay low at a safe house in the village until the English gave up their search.
“A sound plan,” the king said with a nod.
Gregor held back a grimace. “It should have been.”
“But?”
Christ, this was like pulling his own teeth. “But our presence became known and the English surrounded the cottage where we were hiding. Fortunately, the previous occupants had dug a hole under the floor to preserve their winter stores, and we hid in there while the soldiers searched.”
“That couldn’t have been too comfortable.”
That was putting it mildly. Three well over six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered warriors jammed in a space no more than five feet by five feet for nearly an hour had been hell.
“Good thing my cousin smells so sweet from all that bathing,” MacSorley said, referring to MacRuairi’s well-known penchant for cleanliness. “The whole place smelled like roses.”
MacRuairi gave his cousin the cold, I’m-going-to-stick-a-knife-in-your-back-when-you-least-expect-it look that had earned him the war name “Viper.”
“You were damned lucky not to be taken,” Bruce said.
No one argued with him.
The king sat back in his chair, crossing his arms contemplatively. “So is anyone going to tell me how your presence in the village became known?”
Gregor didn’t need to look to know that MacSorley was fighting laughter and dying to make some kind of jest—especially as it was one of his favorite topics to jest about. You’d think that after seven years he’d grow tired of it.
Gregor should be so damned lucky.
Usually, it didn’t bother him, but this time it could have gotten them all killed. His mouth fell in a hard line. “It seems the farmer’s young daughter couldn’t keep a secret and decided to tell a few of her friends we were there.”
“A few?” MacSorley said. “The enterprising lass sold nearly a dozen tickets to see the ‘most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life.’” He added the last in the dreamy, singsongy voice of a sixteen-year-old lass that made Gregor itch to put his fist through that gleaming grin.
“Tickets?” Bruce asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”
MacRuairi nodded, smirking. “Aye, at a half-penny apiece. And all these years, we’ve been getting to look at him for free.”
Gregor shot him a glare. Now MacRuairi was making jests? Christ, hell had truly frozen over.
“I told you not to remove your helm,” MacSorley said, still smirking.
“For three days?” Gregor replied exasperatedly, raking his hair back with his fingers. It was so bloody ridiculous. It wasn’t the fact that he was an elite warrior in the Highland Guard taking on the most dangerous missions that was going to get him killed, it was his cursed face.
Although he had to admit there were times when it wasn’t a curse—in the alehouse last night, for example, with that pretty, buxom serving lass who’d crept into his bed—but it sure as hell didn’t have a place in war.
