Page 32 of Kidnapped By a Highland Shadow

“You don’t remember? That must have been a terrible injury. It would have bled, and you must have worried about infection, and—”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Arran said, laughing self-consciously. “Really, I just wound a bandage around it and forgot about it.” Until now, he added mentally. Now that Pippia was so very interested in the scar, Arran found that it was all he could think about.

“What about the others?”

Arran winced, a horde of memories flooding back. Many of his scars were hard-won in battles, but just as many were…

“Training,” Arran answered bluntly. “I was injured during training.”

“Really?” Pippia scrunched up her nose, and Arran just knew that she was counting his scars—the visible ones, at least. “You must have been very clumsy.”

“Not quite. Training was…well, it was intense,” Arran admitted. “Lots of boys got injured. Me less than most, really.”

Pippia was frowning. “When boys are trained in our lands, they fight with wooden swords. Archery is very well supervised, and they aren’t allowed to try throwing knives until the teachers are sure that they are ready to try. My father always says that there will be plenty of time for the boys to get hurt and die later when they fight for real.”

Arran laughed shortly. “Aye, well, Laird Stewart’s father trained me. There was none of that. I remember…” Arran trailed off, biting his lip. The memory that had jumped to mind was none too pleasant, certainly not for a lass to hear.

It was too late, however. Pippia’s interest was piqued. She twisted around again in the saddle, looking up at him. Arran steadfastly refused to allow himself to look down into those earnest, curious eyes.

Why did she have to be so interested in him, so curious about his life? Pippia made Arran feel that he was a bold warrior with a heart of gold and a tragic history. That wasn’t the truth. He was just a murderer, a strong arm and a blade to deal with his laird’s enemies.

“What? What were you going to say, Arran?”

Arran’s treacherous heart sped up again. His name sounded so sweet in her mouth.

Then he remembered the story he was about to tell, and the pleasant tingling feeling rapidly evaporated.

“When we were training, there was a boy who trained along with us,” Arran began. “His name was Edmund.”

He hadn’t thought about Edmund for years, and for good reason.

“What happened to him?”

“I’m getting to that, lass. A little patience, if you please.”

Pippia let out a gurgle of laughter. “Sorry. Go on.”

“Well, Edmund’s father was old Laird Stewart’s right-hand man. His name was Lachlan, and he was the most fearsome warrior you’ve ever seen. He was in charge of training up the boys that would one day become Stewart warriors. That year, his son was part of the group.”

“He must have been proud.”

“Well, he would have been, except…well, you know that some men aren’t natural warriors, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Edmund was not. He was slim and delicate and would have been better fitted to pore over old manuscripts. He wasn’t fit to be a warrior. Now, we boys all thought that Lachlan would go soft on his son, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Lachlan was three times worse to Edmund than he was to any of us, and that’s saying something. You’ve seen my scars, haven’t you?”

He felt Pippia shiver in his arms. “Aye, I saw.”

“Edmund got paler and thinner and more miserable. He just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t fast, or strong, or fit, or anything. He couldn’t keep up with the other boys. He was sickly and got out of breath far too fast. One day, Lachlan lost his temper. Edmund hadn’t hit the target with his arrows once, and Lachlan started to beat him.”

“What a vile man.”

Arran shrugged. “None of us thought much of it. But it was worse this time. I thought he wouldn’t stop, that he would kill the boy. Edmund and I weren’t friends, but I tried to do something. Foolish of me, eh? I stepped up and told Lachlan to stop.”

“I bet he didn’t like that.”

“He did not. To punish us both, he made us climb a tree—a tall, bare tree, in the dead of winter, and hang by our arms from one of the branches.”