Page 7

She is still the daughter of a traitor.

Brodie reminded himself harshly, his eyes scanning the ridgeline with renewed intensity. Kindness costs nothing when a woman is trying to buy favor and save her own neck. She knows where her bread is buttered. Yet, try as he might, he couldn’t deny the change echoing behind him. The boy had never opened his heart so freely to anyone since Isabel died.

By late afternoon, the steady clatter of hooves and the bite of the mountain wind began to take their toll. Angus’s energetic chatter dwindled into long, quiet lulls. His small shoulders rounded beneath his plaid, his head nodding heavily forward every time his pony took a step over a loose stone.

Brodie didn’t say a word. He reined in his stallion, turning the heavy beast around on the narrow dirt track. Without speaking, he dismounted, his boots hitting the mud with a solid thud. He walked over to Angus’s pony, caught the boy under his arms, and lifted his son out of the saddle.

Angus let out a small, sleepy sigh, making no effort to stand. Brodie tucked the boy securely against his broad chest, swung back into his own saddle with practiced ease, and settled the child across his lap, wrapping his thick woolen plaid over the boy’s shivering shoulders.

Within seconds, Angus’s head slumped against Brodie’s breastplate, his small hand curling instinctively into the folds of his father’s tartan, his breathing slowing into a deep, peaceful rhythm.

Brodie turned his head slightly. Sheona was watching them from atop her bay mare, her blue eyes soft, resting on the way his large, calloused hand cupped the back of the small boy’s head to protect him from the jostling saddle. For a fraction of a second, the defensive armor she wore melted away, leaving her looking fragile, thoughtful, and terribly vulnerable.

Brodie’s dark eyes met hers.

Neither of them spoke. The silence hung heavy between them, broken only by the wind rushing through the pines and the soft, rhythmic thud of the horses’ hooves. After a brief, unblinking moment, Brodie looked away, turning his stallion back toward the northern trail.

He stared straight ahead into the gathering dusk, his knuckles white around the reins, cursing himself under his breath. The damage was already done. He knew, with absolute, bitter certainty, that he would keep thinking of the look in those blue eyes for the rest of the long ride home.

The wind dropped as the trail descended into a dark, narrow gorge, the towering pines swallowing the last pale embers of daylight. Heavy gray shadows stretched across the path, carrying the scents of damp fern, crushed stone, and wet earth.

Sheona pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her chest, keeping her bay mare at a slow, rhythmic walk behind Brodie’s stallion. Angus was still asleep across his father’s lap, his dark curls pressed against the iron plates of Brodie’s gorget.

Up ahead, Brodie’s stallion suddenly tossed its head, the heavy bit clinking against its teeth. The horse’s ears pinned back flat against its skull.

Before Sheona could even register the sudden stillness in the air, a sharp twig snapped in the thick brush to their left.

Two men exploded from the tree line. They wore faded leather jackets, their faces obscured by mud-smeared linen strips, heavy iron falchions drawn and dull gray in the dusk. They did not shout a battle cry. They moved with lethal, silent efficiency, charging straight for her mare’s reins.

At the same instant, a cold prickle of dread rushed down Sheona’s spine. She couldn’t see the shadow slipping through the high bracken on the ridge behind them, but the sudden rustle of dry leaves made the hairs on her arms stand up. Someone was circling her rear.

“Brodie!” she screamed.

Brodie moved with terrifying speed. He didn’t waste breath shouting. In a single fluid motion, he shifted Angus into the crook of his left arm, wheeled his heavy stallion around, and leaned over the side of his saddle.

Before Sheona could react, a huge, iron-clad hand clamped around her waist like a vice. Brodie yanked her off her mare, hoisting her through the air as if she weighed no more than a sack of oats, and hurled her over the trunk of a massive, fallen oak that blocked the side of the trail.

“Down!” Brodie roared, his voice like thunder.

Sheona hit the damp earth hard, rolling into the hollow beneath the rotting oak. She scrambled to her knees, her heart slamming against her ribs, and immediately shoved Angus beneath her. She covered the child with her torso, pressing his face into her shoulder, her arms locked around his trembling back. Angus gasped, his small hands clutching the woolen folds of her gown.

Above them, steel met steel in a deafening metallic shriek.

Brodie leaped from his stallion, his broadsword swinging free of its sheath with a harsh rasp. The first attacker lunged with a heavy broadblade, aimed straight at Brodie’s throat. Brodie sidestepped the thrust, caught the man’s wrist, and brought the iron pommel of his hilt down on the assailant’s collarbone with a sickening crunch. The man collapsed into the mud, howling in agony.

The second attacker rushed in from the right, sweeping his sword low. Brodie blocked the blow with a heavy clatter of steel, kicked the man viciously in the chest, and drove his blade home through the leather jack. The attacker gasped, going limp instantly as Brodie yanked the steel free.

Sheona watched through a gap in the rotting oak bark, her throat raw, her breathing shallow and ragged.

“There’s a third!” she shouted over the dying groan of the warrior. “Behind!”

Brodie spun around, his sword dripping red, his dark eyes sweeping the high ridge. A dark figure burst from the bracken thirty paces back, scrambling frantically up the rocky slope. The third man did not stand and fight; seeing his companions down, he scrambled over the crag and vanished into the dense shadow of the upper forest before anyone could reach him.

The silence returned to the gorge, sudden, heavy, and terrifying. The only sounds were the heavy, ragged gasps of Brodie’s breath and the soft thud of horse hooves as the frightened mare trotted back toward the trail.

Brodie wiped his blade on the dead man’s plaid, his face set in stone. He walked over to the wounded attacker, squirming in the mud, grabbed him by the wool collar, and flipped him onto his back.

He searched the man’s tunic with rough, practiced movements, tearing open the leather jacket and flipping through his belt pouches. Nothing. No tartan pin, no clan crest, no silver badge. They wore plain, unpatterned homespun.