“I’m no’ worried about that. She might harm ye. She’ll be back.”
John stared into the dark wood where she’d disappeared as Callum watched him with a half smile. John went back to his rocky bed.
It seemed hours, but at last John heard the soft crunch of footsteps, and Gillian appeared. She nodded to Callum silently, set a brace of rabbits down by the banked fire, and went back into her tent.
John looked from the dead coneys to Callum, who grinned. “Gilly hunts when she’s angry or worried or when her sisters have been bossy with her, which they often are,” he told John.
“Her sisters aren’t here. Shouldn’t you ask what’s vexing her?”
Callum shrugged. “Nay. We’ll have a fine breakfast in the morning. If she’s truly fretting about something, we’ll eat like lairds for the rest of the trip. If we ask, she’ll just say there’s naught to worry about.”
John stared at the rabbits and tried to imagine gentle Gillian nocking an arrow and firing it with deadly intent.
Delicate,Fia had said.Shy. But she wasn’t. Not in the ways it mattered. He lay down again and slept at last, but he dreamed of Gillian aiming her arrow at him and letting it fly.
He woke to the smell of roasting rabbit, and while the lads were very appreciative of the meat, not one of them asked where it came from.
* * *
Gillian busied herself folding plaids and preparing to ride out. She’d caught the coneys and cooked them, too, with wild thyme she’d collected when she went down to the stream to bathe as the sun rose. She’d seen the surprise on John’s face, and it made her smile. He probably had no idea she’d caught the game.
But when they mounted to ride out, he rode next to her. “Will your husband appreciate a wife who can kill enough rabbits in the dark to feed six men?”
She felt her smile slip a little. Of course he wouldn’t. Sir Douglas would expect his wife to be a lady, the kind of woman who’d instruct the cook what to prepare for dinner, not go out and kill it herself. There’d be no hunting in the city, no wild woods to prowl, no place to be alone with her thoughts. She looked around at the mountains, the tall trees, the shining burn that wound through the wood beside the track, and knew she’d miss the Highlands.
She didn’t reply to John’s question, but rode by his side in silence, knowing he was looking at her with speculation. Did he think her unwomanly? In ten days—nay, nine—it wouldn’t matter.
“Where did you learn to hunt?” he asked. “Did your father teach you?”
“No, of course not. He has ghillies andsealgairs—huntsmen—to provide game for his table.”
“Then you do it for sport?”
She sent him a sideways glare. “What would be the point of killing something for sport?”
John shrugged. “Gentlemen do it in England all the time. They have shooting parties and fox hunts.”
She glanced at him. “Did you—do you—hunt for sport?”
“I was raised to it,” he said. And he’d once hunted for commerce, trapping beaver, lynx, and fox for their pelts to make his living in the wilds of the New World, near Hudson Bay.
“I understand that the English keep hungry folk from hunting for their food, that they hang those who take the game they’d hunt for sport,” she said tartly.
“Aye, that’s true. In England, poaching is a crime. It’s theft.”
“Even to feed one’s children?” she asked.
He frowned, colored slightly. “In Scotland, men reive cattle, burn, pillage, and steal. Does that not lead to hungry children?”
She raised her chin another notch. “Not my father. He’d punish such men, hang the reivers.”
He glanced at her. “And how do the families of those men eat?”
She looked away. It was precisely why she’d learned to hunt. Her father had hanged five men he’d caught reiving his cows. The cattle had been returned, and still he killed them as an example, a warning. Their families were left with no one to provide for them.
So Gillian learned to snare rabbits and fowl. She gave the food to the widows and wee ones. She’d already made Callum promise to do it for her now she would no longer be there, when she was in Edinburgh, and Sir Douglas’s wife.
Suddenly the idea of her marriage vexed her, and she frowned. She glanced at John, saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer to his question. She didn’t have one. Her father wouldn’t understand. Nor would her sisters, and certainly Sir Douglas would not approve. She was as proud a Scot as anyone, but not when foolish actions like reiving were called traditions, and helpless folk suffered for the sake of pride. Of course, if those women and children had known it was the MacLeod’s daughter who provided their meat, they’d not be grateful. They’d spit in her face.
