Free In the Highlander's Bed by Cathy Maxwell Page A

, in spite of her actions to the contrary. She lashed out, “Oh, I’m wary, Lachlan. But you see, I’ve already faced danger and experienced terror the likes of which you’ll never know. My mother and baby brother died at the hands of the Shawnee during a raid. They scalped my mother and smashed my brother’s head into the trunk of a tree. Do you think you could be more bloodthirsty than that? Because that’s the length you’ll have to go to make me tremble.”
    He’d pulled back at her tirade as if physically struck by the flow of words.
    Her hands had started shaking. She gathered the tartan around her, trying to hide them…knowing he’d noticed.
    He was quiet, watchful.
    She gritted her teeth. Pressed her lips together. She never spoke of that day. Ever. She and Charlotte had been in the woods collecting kindling when Miranda ran to tell them to hide, that the Shawnee were attacking the house, that their mother was dead.
    And yet, now that she’d started, she discovered she couldn’t stop. It all came back with frightening reality. “The three of us hid in the woods,” she said, her voice distant even to her own ears. “We spent a long, cold night hiding by the trunk of a rotting tree. I knew better than to complain, because they were out there looking for us. We held each others’ hands. I was so frightened, I squeezed Charlotte and Miranda’s fingers to death and I wouldn’t let go all night long.”
    Her eyes burned. She stared at a boulder beside the road, noticing everything about it from the crack through its center to the lichen growing in its grooves. Anything to keep from remembering, because after their mother’s death had come the angry years.
    Her sister Charlotte remembered when their father had been happy, but she didn’t. He’d always been a bitter, mean-spirited man to her. From him, she’d learned not to show weakness. Not to anyone. Not ever. When one was weak, one was vulnerable. That was the lesson of the wilderness.
    Lachlan sat quiet, not a muscle moving in his arms, on either side of her. She felt the horse shift its weight and paw the ground, anxious to move forward. Lachlan held him back, but he didn’t speak. She could feel him waiting. It was as if he knew her better than she did herself.
    And he was right. She broke.
    “I’m not what you expected, am I?” She did not look at him, too aware of how weak she must appear to him, to the others. She held out her hand. “See? It trembles. I suppose I’m not a good captive.”
    There was a beat of silence, and then he said, “None of us are.” He turned, bringing a protective arm around her as if shielding her from the others. “We’ll stop for food at the first cottage we see,” he instructed his men. “Brian, ride ahead and see what you find.”
    “Yes, Gordon.”
    “I’ll go with him,” Thomas offered, and didn’t wait, kicking his horse into a trot.
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    “All right if I go, Gordon?” Robbie asked.
    “Go on,” Gordon replied.
    “They must all be hungry,” Constance said quietly after they’d left.
    “Either that or they are uncomfortable around a woman’s tears,” Gordon answered.
    “I didn’t cry,” she shot back.
    He lifted his eyebrows, and she was honest enough to concede, “Do I look that bad?”
    “The color is coming back to your cheeks, but you had me worried,” he admitted.
    There was a gentleness in his voice that threatened to unnerve her more than his earlier temper. “Well, now I know how to scare the lot of you. I’ll threaten to go off in a fit of tears.”
    He laughed, the sound full-bodied and masculine. It changed him, eased years off his face, made him appear almost boyish. “I wonder if we can cry the English out of Scotland?” he said.
    “I could lead the brigade,” she answered.
    Gordon shook his head, moving his horse forward. “Come now, you didn’t shed a tear back there. You