Alana let her gaze settle across the Highlanders who had shaken their heads at her. “’Tis no wonder the English have been known to rout—”
“Let the lass throw a knife before some undisciplined bastard cuts out her tongue.” The large Sinclair’s voice came like a deep rumble of thunder through the mountains. Restrained power and authority in each word.
He stood with his legs braced apart as if in battle, his muscled arms crossed over his chest. His beard was trimmed close to a strong jaw under a straight nose. Here and there a scar stood out against his tanned skin, and sharp black lines of a tattoo cut across his upper arm to form the head and neck of a primitive-looking horse with an expression as fierce as the man.
She raised her gaze to meet his. “The undisciplined bastard would end up in an early grave,” she said. Pride filled her as she saw the other Highland Roses students form a circle, their backs to each other as they looked outward at the gathered crowd, Robert’s growl the only sound in the stiff hush. Each Rose held a dagger in her hand and a vicious scowl on her face, even cheerful Cici.
Sinclair kept his frown, but his eyes widened the slightest amount, making him look…intrigued. With his bearded jaw, straight nose, and eyes just a shade lighter than a stormy sky, Alana was struck by his beauty as he radiated raw power and intimidation. Even the white scar at his hairline enhanced his rugged good looks. Damn. He’s a Sinclair.
She tore her gaze away to meet the squint of the old warrior in charge. She balanced her own sgian dubh in her grasp, feeling its weight like she did before throwing. “Shall we draw blood and shame from these men, or will you let these feeble lasses give it a try?”
The old man cursed low, glancing toward the Sinclair warrior. The old man’s bushy brows lifted, and Alana knew she’d won. “Wouldn’t want to taint Samhain with blood,” he said. “Liable to bring all types of demons and spirits here.” He scratched his head, making his hair stand on end. “But only two entries from each clan. ’Tis the rule for the men as well.” His gnarled hand swept along the blades. “Ye can choose one of mine or use your own, lass.”
The crowd backed up, and the ladies, Kerrick, and Robert seemed to relax. Although, Alana knew they remained alert as their self-defense instructors at the school had taught them. She looked to Robert. “Stay,” she commanded and made the signal for him to sit. With her heart still thumping, Alana stepped forward to the throwing line burnt into the dry grass. Everyone was watching her, including the bloody handsome Sinclair and his small army of rough Highlanders. Blast. She was nervous.
She took a deep inhale, focusing her gaze on the target beyond. She would throw from the side, bringing the blade point to fly forward toward the center circle on the hay bale. Just like in training where she’d practiced hundreds of times. It had become her most lethal skill.
One of the other Sinclairs next to the chief snorted. A younger man in their group leapt about like an idiot in her periphery. Was the man already drunk on whisky or trying to distract her?
“I bet a shilling she doesn’t even make it to the target,” said a Sinclair with a tattoo of a hollow-eyed skull on his forehead near his temple. Several men laughed, either at his words or his kinsman’s antics. Others yelled out that they’d take the bet.
Alana looked back down the field. Her eyes narrowed as she focused, ignoring them, but their taunts brought a flush to her cheeks. They were waiting for her to fail. The responsibility to represent not only the Highland Roses School but all of womankind was a heavy burden to carry. Anger that women had to endure such unfairness hardened her stance.
She heard Robert growl and hoped Kerrick would hold the braided rope she’d tied around the dog’s neck earlier. Kerrick was the only one in their group strong enough to keep Robert back when the huge dog became riled.
Alana took a deep breath. The Sinclair chief stepped up next to her but still gave her plenty of room to throw. She raised her arm, her focus returning to the red painted circle in the distance. In her periphery, she saw the other Sinclair jig around, his knees rising high. Men laughed and several of the Roses shushed them.
“The enemy don’t stay quiet, lasses,” the skull-tattooed man said.
“Aye, they are right bloody loud when throwing knives,” another called and more laughed.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Alana focused. All she heard was the exchange of her breath. She raised her front foot, gathering momentum to lunge forward.
“Stad!” Kerrick yelled as she whipped the knife around.
The large shaggy bulk of Robert barreled into Alana’s leg as the dog ran in a tight circle around her, his leash cutting under her skirt to wrap around her boots. The sgian dubh teetered in the air, landing with a soft whump in the grass at the base of the target. Chuckles erupted, and the fool turned a few sideways somersaults between her and the target, his arms and legs out like a scarecrow.
Alana closed her eyes for a moment before finding the courage to turn around to meet the crowd. “I lost hold of the dog,” Kerrick called over the talking and laughing men, some demanding their money for the bets they’d won. “A re-throw is in order.”
“No re-throws,” the old warrior said and pointed at Martha who had her dagger out to throw, Kirstin nodding to her to take her turn.
Robert ducked his head under Alana’s hand, lifting it as his sweet brown eyes peered up at her. Alana sighed, curling her fingers into his coarse curls, petting him as they walked away from the throw line together. “Will you retrieve my sgian dubh when you pull yours from the target?” she asked Martha.
“Ye can have my turn,” Martha said.
Alana shook her head, giving her a small smile. “Do your best.” Alana stepped through the clustered men, none of them willing to risk Robert’s bite to get too close. She forced a pleasant expression onto her tight face for several ladies standing nearby. “The Highland Roses School teaches ladies everything from reading and sewing to throwing knives and defending themselves.” Her words came out rather weak after her bumbled throw. One smiled, and one whispered to another. They moved around to the side to watch Martha throw.
Alana filled her cheeks with her inhale and exhaled long, blinking to rid her eyes of the ache of disappointment. A Highland Rose would never shed a tear for failing, but that didn’t mean she felt no sting from it.
“Ye should not have pet the beast after he knocked ye.”
Alana turned, her heart skipping into a faster pace. Shaw Sinclair stood parallel to her, his arms crossed before a broad chest as he watched the contest over the heads of the crowd. He was all muscle and strength, as if he were chiseled from tanned granite. A “Warrior in Repose” it would say under his picture in the school’s art book. Damn. He made her insides flutter and flip.
He glanced her way, those intense eyes staring directly at her. “And your friend just hit the target.”
Chapter Two
It took a full exchange of breath before the warrior’s words sank in. Alana was caught between relief over Martha’s success and annoyance over the man’s unwanted advice and her ridiculous reaction to his ruggedness. He was an enemy to the Campbells, not some handsome warrior in her brother’s ranks. Although, most of her brother’s warriors either still thought of her as a little freckled girl or didn’t dare come near her for fear her brother, the chief, would geld them.
She pinched the pads of her fingers together and tipped her hand in the air. Robert sat next to her at the silent signal. “He was trying to protect me with all the tension and yelling about. He encircles me to keep me safe.”
“Aye,” Sinclair said. “But the dog must learn that ye are the pack leader and not make decisions on his own. He must obey what ye say or signal. If ye reward him after he has disobeyed, he learns that he should disobey when he thinks it is warranted.” Sinclair held her gaze with those deep gray eyes of his. “He will begin to worry that he is pack leader and disobey more, trying to assert his supremacy.”
Look away, she chided herself. Alan
a crossed her own arms and tilted her head to regard the man, focusing on another little scar that sat just over his eyebrow. “Is that how you treat your men?” She drew in a fuller breath when he looked back outward toward the target.
“They each know their positions within the unit,” he said.
She wondered what position the hopping man played. Idiot? Jester? Second-in-command? “Should I have beaten the dog?” she asked, her hand rising to rest on Robert’s head. “Or tied him to a caber so that he choked himself trying to reach me?”
Without a word, the man turned away from her, presenting his back but without moving away. The reprimand in the silent withdrawal was loud and clear. It was like the snub that Evelyn said ladies threw at one another at the English court. Even without a single utterance, the rejection left Alana feeling cold. Robert let out a little whine as he watched. The dog stood, and Alana had to make the hand movement twice before he would sit again.
Shaw turned back around. “Like that,” he said. “A pack animal understands exile. When he misbehaves, he should be ignored and exiled from the pack by ye to learn he must adhere to your orders as the leader.”
Without another word, the man’s gaze slid down from her face to her breasts. Like a swath of wild fire across a brittle-dry moor, Alana felt the path, and a flush heated her cheeks. Was he inspecting her womanly form? Bad-mannered, leering rogue!
His assessing gaze traveled back up to her eyes. He nodded without a word and stalked away from the crowd toward the Sinclair tents, leaving Alana openmouthed with shock and a bit breathless. The wind tugged at the close-cropped waves of his dark hair, and his kilt fit snuggly around narrow hips. The strength in his calves was obvious through his bleached woolen socks that rose above the edges of his boots. His straight back tapered down from broad, muscular shoulders, and his bared arms in the sleeveless tunic were tanned and chiseled. Damn. She was inspecting his form.
“Did ye see?” Martha asked, running up to her. She handed Alana’s sgian dubh back to her.
Alana smiled, glad to have something to pull her attention. “Not over top of everyone, but I heard you hit it square.”
“Not exactly in the middle like ye can do,” Martha said and frowned at Robert as he stood, wagging his thick tail and panting at the Roses and Kerrick who followed Martha.
“Sorry, Alana,” Kerrick said. “That horse of a dog ripped his way free. They should have let ye throw again.”
She waved his suggestion off. “Martha proved that women can throw daggers as well as men.” The woman beamed with the praise.
“So, the huge Highlander who said you should throw and not lose your tongue…was he not the Sinclair chief?” Lucy Kellington asked, her English accent making several men nearby frown.
“Shaw Sinclair, the chief of the Sinclairs in the north of Scotland,” Kerrick said, confirming Kirstin’s gossip. “And someone ye should all stay far away from.” He frowned, his hard gaze moving from woman to woman as if he were twenty years older and had sired each of them. “The Campbells and Sinclairs are enemies. Our cousins to the north bought their castle, and when the Sinclairs battled for it back, they lost.”
“Against him?” Martha asked, looking around as if trying to find the Sinclair chief.
“I guess not all the Sinclairs are built like him,” Kirstin said. “And the northern Campbells likely have muskets as they are considered wealthy.”
“Losing one’s castle seems to be a reoccurring incident in Scotland,” Lucy said, referring to Finlarig Castle where the Highland Roses School was started.
Cici laughed but covered her mouth when Alana frowned.
“But Scots do not set the castle on fire and throw people inside to die,” Kirstin said, making the smiles on Lucy and Cici’s faces fade. Alana swallowed past the tightening in her throat at Kirstin’s reminder and purposely didn’t look to her friend. She could feel Kirstin’s watchful gaze on her. The nightmares were bad enough. Alana didn’t need anyone trying to talk with her about it if they saw her upset from the memories. The incident was in the past, the ugly burns on her feet healed, and fires no longer worried her. Alana’s lips pinched as she realized the largeness of the lie.
…
“Bloody foking hell,” Alistair called, the skull tattoo at his temple likely making him look frightening if the infant knew what it represented. He lifted the tiny thing high in the air over his dark head. She howled with disapproval.
“Puke on him, little one,” Rabbie said to the bairn.
Alistair frowned at him. “There ain’t nothing in her to foking puke up.”
“Give her to me,” Logan said. “She is wet through her clothes.”
“And stop swearing around her,” Rabbie added, jingling a little bell over her face. He was the youngest of the circle of devoted Sinclair warriors and clean shaven. “Ye will scare the wee lass.” But the bairn was still too young to notice much except that her belly was empty.
“Try the cow’s milk again, with the soaked rag,” Shaw said, worry stiffening his shoulders more than the day after a fierce battle. “I will keep looking for a wet nurse here at the festival.”
Logan grabbed his arm. The most sensitive of his men, he often acted like the conscience of the group. He stared hard at Shaw. “Ye do not plan to take a mother to feed the bairn, do ye? Her own bairn will perish.”
Shaw stared back with intensity. “Ye have seen me battle. Ye have seen me spare life after life when warranted. Ye doubt my honor toward the weak? That I would steal away a mother?” This small group of men had grown up with him, making them unafraid to question his plans. They were friends, and he trusted their judgement, otherwise he wouldn’t let them touch the infant that meant the difference between life and death for so many.
Logan ran a hand up through his thick hair, glancing away. “Nay, but the wee lass…” He glanced to where Mungo jumped around in his usual dance, trying to catch the bairn’s attention for a moment. Logan looked back at his chief. “She is important, and she must have milk.”
Shaw met his look. “If I must abduct a mother, I will bring her bairn, too.” It didn’t sound like a mercy, even though it was.
Logan nodded, and Shaw pushed out of their tent, ready to continue his search for a woman with heavy, milk-filled breasts. He weaved between the two propped tarps that Logan and Rabbie had set up as tents for them. He’d left most of his men back in the north squatting on the lands around Girnigoe Castle, the rightful home of the northern Sinclairs. Only his four most loyal men had he brought with him on this crucial mission to save their clan before winter set in.
The sun was already lowering behind the mountain range, the time when Samhain officially began, ending at sundown the next day. He should set out food and drink in his tent for Reagan in case her spirit walked the earth tonight. He shook his head. The dead returned home on Samhain, and he and his family had no home. Reagan would have nowhere to go.
Shaw slid between several tents set up by the different attending clans, some of them small and propped up as if children had put them together, others sturdy and large enough to house a battalion. A woman stepped out of a yellow canvas tent, pulling closed a deep blue cloak under her chin and wearing a mask. She giggled and ran away, obviously on her way to the celebration fires. A small group of children wearing masks skipped around, begging for soul cakes at each tent although most were already vacant.
Mo chreach. How was he going to find food for the bairn? The wet nurse, who had traveled with the child from England, had succumbed to fever along the way. The desperate couriers delivered the wee thing this morning, hungry and filthy. It was a wonder that the child still breathed. But he’d be damned, figuratively and literally, if he let it die under his watch.
His gaze scanned the women, sliding over those who were too old or too young. He’d come to the festival in order to meet the couriers and had spent the day out among the competitors and their women in hopes of finding a substitute wet nurse, but he hadn’t spotted a sin
gle suckling baby. The new mothers had either stayed home from the festival or were hidden away nursing their bairns in privacy.
Rounding the corner of two wide tents, Shaw stopped. The large hound belonging to the Campbell lass stood there. He had a leash around his thick neck, but it wasn’t tied to anything. The end looked ragged and damp as if he’d bitten through it. He was watching the giggling children and trotted off in their direction.
“Robert? Where are you?” a melodic voice came from inside the tent, and a woman swept the flap aside to step out into the twilight. “Oh,” she said, standing straight. It was the Campbell woman from earlier, the one with the long, wavy brown hair with golden streaks. She held a mask, but what caught his immediate attention was the form-fitting trousers she wore with a man’s tunic sewn to fit her. Was this her dress for Samhain? And who was Robert?
Shaw glanced down at her hands and spotted a thin circle of silver on one of her fingers. Was Robert her husband? Shaw frowned, his gut tightening in annoyance.
“Hello,” she said. “Are you looking for something or do you just like to slink around the tents at night, frightening women and children?”
Her perturbed tone loosened his frown. “I…am looking for someone.”
“I am the only one here at present. Just me and my untrained beast who has a very large set of teeth.” She glanced behind him briefly, probably looking for the dog.
“Ye have no bairn then?” he asked, frustration welling up further inside him. “One ye have recently given birth to?”
The woman’s eyes widened, her jaw falling slightly open. Clamping her mouth shut, she planted hands on her sloped hips and glared at him. “Do I look like I just birthed a bairn?” she asked, her words coming through clenched teeth.
The Highland Outlaw Page 2
