The grateful parents of the girl who had come so close to defilement had begged for him and his men to camp outside their sod-roofed house for the night, and he had reluctantly agreed.
He had tried to assure them that no other English soldiers were near. The two men that he’d slain and the third one that sat huddled against a tree, trussed up and stinking of urine, had found themselves driven off course by rough currents, lost.
Their rowboat abandoned along a nearby inlet, they had stumbled upon the small farm and helped themselves to bread and ale, a pony, a calf, and the parents’ only child, their thirteen-year-old daughter. All taken upon threat of death if they resisted, Cameron still amazed that the soldiers hadn’t slaughtered the father and mother who had been beside themselves with grief.
At least until Cameron and his men and Aislinn had ridden up with the girl, who had broken into fresh weeping at first sight of her parents.
Their tearful reunion had made Cameron send up a swift prayer of thanks for an outcome that would have been far more brutal if the girl hadn’t screamed so desperately—Aislinn veering her horse into the woods just as he’d pulled on the reins to do the same.
God help him, and her with no weapon to wield!
Cameron could not get out of his mind the sight of the soldiers raising their swords to strike at her just as he had thundered into the clearing. The fools had no doubt believed her a man, aye, and why wouldn’t they?
Aislinn dressed in her male garb and with cropped hair, and astride a horse more snorting beast than a reliable mount—and yet with no weapon!
Sighing heavily, Cameron unsheathed the knife at his belt and handed it to her, not surprised that her gaze widened.
“Take it. I’ll not have you without a means tae protect yourself if you defy me again, which I’m certain will happen. By God, woman,why are you the way you are?”
He stood with her away from his men—most of them already bedding down around the fire while others stood guard—and wasn’t surprised, either, that she didn’t readily respond to his fierce whisper.
Instead she grabbed the knife as if thinking he might change his mind, and slid the weapon into her own belt, and then lifted her chin at him.
“Why areyouthe way you are? If you can answer me that, Cameron Campbell, then mayhap I’ll answeryourquery. One moment afflicted and then the next, you’re not? Aye, it’s clear that you’re speaking to me right now because you’re furious—but what else could I do? You didn’t seem in a hurry to help—”
“You beat me tae it by no more than a blink, Aislinn! Do you think so ill of me that I wouldna heed such cries?”
Cameron didn’t wait for her to answer, but took her by the arm and led her further away, not wanting his men to overhear anything else from them.
Now hewassurprised that she didn’t resist him, but instead looked up into his face as if what he’d said had startled her.
“I… I don’t think ill of you,” she began, but then she pulled her arm away. “Go on, then, will you answer me?”
She was daring him, Cameron knew it, even as he felt a heaviness in his tongue that he had been fighting against since yesterday. Conversing with her when he was fuming was one thing, but now with her standing so close, his anger was cooling in spite of himself.
She looked so beautiful in the light cast by the fire.
She smelled like fresh air and smoke and a hint of something so captivating that he’d come to recognize as simply—Aislinn.
He had kept his every spoken interaction with her brief for fear that he might jumble his words and make himself look a fool—but she was staring at him and demanding a response! Mayhap if he fanned his anger again by thinking of her riding so rashly into danger—
“Just as I thought. It’s moreyouthinking ill of me that you have so little to say.”
She turned from him as if to walk away, but Cameron caught her by the elbow.
“Aislinn… it’s hard for me tae speak tae women. I dinna know why. It’s the way God made me… ever since I was a wee boy.”
There, it was done and admitted to for the first time in his life. Cameron felt his throat growing tight as she turned back to face him, her expression unreadable.
He shrugged, not knowing what else to say. He didn’t feel unmanned, just suddenly very weary as he wondered if she might now think him less than whole.
Aye, he had felt less than whole as long as he could remember, but what was to be done about it? He had never cared what women thought of him… until Aislinn. Aye, he cared about what might be going through her mind, more than he could say—
“So you’re crippled by shyness, Cameron. It’s an unfortunate malady and I’m sure you’ve suffered, but at least you weren’t born a woman. Always fighting to be heard. To be seen…”
He heard a break in her voice and saw tears glistening in her eyes, but she appeared to blink them back and raised her chin.
“My mother told me that my father wept when I was born, not being a son. He had little to do with me… almost as if I wasn’t there. One of my first memories is him patting me on the head, a rare acknowledgement, and then walking away. Always walking away. Yet when my brother, Daran, was born three years later, the house rang with my father’s joy. He had his son. He hardly spoke to me from that moment on…”
