In quiet steps she crept closer.Have a look first then decide.Taking refuge behind a wide yew trunk, she held quiet. The pair not headed for the barn skidded into a halt. Both dismounted as if their saddles had turned into the flames which offered a tiny glow from various boards still burning on the destroyed nave. The knight called Sir Brayden spoke again when he pulled something from the fragmented terrain.
“Your earlier consideration Northmen were not the culprits still ring true? This is a Dane’s axe.”
The last rider. She must know if it was Sir Sean. She leaned closer. He wore a dark long mantle, and he wastall; he appeared a giant versus the broad short one who held the axe. Could it be Sir Sean under the hood’s shadows?
“Gallowglass,” the royal guardsman replied in a cough by the smoke. Ugh, the voice was too rough for any sound signature.
The broad guardsman teetered his head side to side. “Perhaps, so you still believe there is more present than meets our eyes.”
Aye! It is Scotsmen, not Northmen. The one wearing the hood which shadowed his face was right.Who was he?Turn! Turn your face toward this way!
The shadow guard paused in his step after a sold wind blew against her back headed right toward his direction. Why were his shoulders moving slightly?Click.No! That was the sound of an arrow being nocked on a crossbow! Brazen brimstone! Run!
She gasped then turned.Whizz, crack.The arrow struck the tree trunk behind her. She bit her lip when a scream rose in her throat before she bolted away. Whomever he was he meant to hurt her first and foremost! As she raced over the branches, they snarled at her skirt and chemise like hell’s greedy fingers from beneath the ground as she blindly tore through the forest, hearing a shout behind her from the crossbow bearer.
“If I had wished you dead, lad, the arrow would have seen to you directly, not the tree! Halt, traitor!”
The voice, it sounded familiar; not Sir Sean, but… No, no way, no how; it couldn’t possibly be… Ugh! Her toe caught a root while a manacle hand grabbed her wrist. In one swift action she fell with the crossbow warrior who spun mid-air, taking thebrunt of the fall on his back. He then rolled them so she was her under him. After hitting the ground he had dropped the crossbow, and using that hand he pinned her wrists above her head.
Callum. The Cur. MacCade.
***
Callum could barely see his own hands. With feel his only guidance, he pinned the scrawny lad’s wrists over the traitor’s head onto a leaf pile.Grip him by the throat, make him talk.What sort of evil would dare turn the clergy into ash? Callum’s palm rose over the scrawny prisoner’s ribs reaching for the slender throat which would match the wrists in girth, then he froze same as winter. Why was there a mountain under his palm where a valley in sunken chest should be? A lass?
Sir Brayden huffed up behind him, bearing a handful of lit rushes. The light flittered over the features below Callum, a delicate brow, lips which shamed any red petal, and eyes wide with those gold flecks same as a primrose, shining more in the light… “You are nae lad.”
A tawny eyebrow rose at him, and she stated dryly, “Lovely to discover you have turned even more clever since I have seen you last, Callum MacCade.”
“Nella.” He breathed the name. How… how was she here?
“I am rather awestruck you remember, Callum,” she retorted then threatened, “Would you care to remove your palm from my breast, or shall I take your eyes with my nails as a cost for your rude behavior once free? You arrogant Scottish cur.”
If shock wove over him like a dazed warm blanket, the words she hit him with were same as a lash back into reality. He ripped his hand away from her flesh, the other still trapping her wrists. She glanced up at his hold, and the loose wimple fell away, revealing the tawny waves with auburn glints woventhrough them. At one time all he wanted was to bury his face in that glory; what a complete fool he’d been.
“While I appreciate my breast is my own once more” – she glared at him – “I would care for my wrists to be the same.”
“Then you are in for a grave disappointment, Lady Fawnella,” he countered. “Till answers are seen upon what part you have played in the abbot’s death you will remain as such.” She began wiggling.
“Sir Callum.” The wiggling stopped at Sir Brayden’s voice fluttering down at them. “Perhaps the best course would be another.”
“Listen to your fellow guardsman, Sir Callum Cur.”
“Sir Brayden is a trusting sort,” he explained then snarled, “So was I upon a time, my lady, till you saw otherwise.” Her eyes turned wide with a puzzlement within them. “He does not hold the knowledge I carry about your charms. Nae, you remain as you are and answer my query.”
“I would rather sit at a table and drink tea in a bee’s hive than answer your ‘query.’” She began struggling anew. “Unhand me at once!”
“You would do well to listen to the lady,” a voice from the darkened tree line sounded while another added, “For certain, you witless windbag!”
Callum looked up. A squatty lord with copper hair had issued the insult but the first words had come from… “Abbot, you… you are alive.”
Abbot scowled. “Aye, and only through the efforts from the lady you have trapped, Sir Callum.” Charging onto his feet, Callum offered Nella his hand, and she gave a snort.Figures.“The Templars would not take kindly to see such behavior, Sir Callum, and nor do I.”
“Templars?” Nella’s words were marked by confusion. “You are the knight in the king’s court they proclaim as Stirling’sdefender of Templars? An honorary title they bestowed after the lands the king bequeathed you for knighthood near Stirling you declared were for the Templars in building a chapel within the Highlands?”
“Aye to all.”
She looked again at his hand, and carefully, she placed her fingers in his. A flawless lift saw her onto her feet beside the abbot. Callum dropped his palm from hers. One! How dare his flesh betray him by tingling after touching her one time! It was the first test by her charms, and he failed.No.No. No. No!No, he would not walk this path again where he was broken then branded a fool.Stay a distance from her and above all else – don’t touch her again!
