Page 6 of Forbidden Kilted Highlander

He finally met her eyes then, and the electric intensity there made her breath catch.

“I protected ye.”

The silence between them stretched until it frayed.

Agnes sat back, her heart pounding for reasons she couldn’t untangle. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. That she had survived worse than a stranger’s kindness. That he didn’t know her.

But the words died in her throat when she caught the way the pale light gilded his profile. The sharp angle of his jaw shadowed with stubble, the stubborn set of his mouth that softened just slightly when he thought no one was looking, took her breath away.

Instead, she folded her hands in her lap and turned her face back toward the mist-covered path, pretending she did not care that the silence between them had teeth and was sinking them into her skin.

She didn’t see the arrow until it struck.

It embedded itself with a vicious thwack into the side of the carriage, just inches from where her head had been moments before. Splinters exploded into the air like shrapnel, and the horses whinnied loud—unearthly sounds that cut straight through the marrow of her bones.

A second arrow flew. Then a third. Screams erupted, soldiers barking orders, steel being drawn. The carriage rocked violently as the horses reared, panicked and bucking.

“AMBUSH!” Tav’s voice thundered above the chaos, sharp and commanding.

Agnes froze.

A cold clarity spread through her paralyzing her brain but sharpening her senses.

She ducked instinctively, her fingers gripping the edge of the bench as the carriage tilted with the motion of the frenzied horses. Through the narrow slats of the window, she caught sight of shadows moving in the fog, blades glinting, bodies lunging.

Tav was off his horse in an instant, sword drawn, barking commands to the guards with terrifying efficiency.

“Protect Lady Kerr!” he shouted. “She is our priority!”

Two guards flanked the carriage, forming a line with their bodies and shields.

Agnes’s hands trembled, but she didn’t cry out. Her heart was hammering, her breaths ragged—but she did not scream. She would not scream.

The door flew open. Tav’s face was wild, his dark hair damp with sweat and mist, his tunic streaked with mud.

“Hide!” he commanded. “Under the bench—now.”

“I—” she began.

“Nay arguments. Now!”

There was something in his voice that she had never heard before, powerful and in control, despite the chaos erupting around him.

She dropped to the floor of the carriage, skirts bunching beneath her knees, and crawled beneath the wooden bench as more arrows thudded into the carriage walls.

“I’ll come back fer ye. Stay down. Stay silent.”

Then he was gone.

Darkness folded over her like a shroud. The underside of the bench pressed against her back, and the floor vibrated with the force of bodies clashing outside.

Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms.

This is nae happening. This is nae happening.

But it was. And she knew it.

She’d been raised on stories of battle. She knew what an ambush was, and what it meant to be targeted.