Free The Hawk: A Highland Guard Novel by Monica Mccarty Page A

boat crackle with excitement as the men realized what he was going to do. It was bold and daring—even for him.
    Nothing like the straightforward surprise attack , he thought with a smile of anticipation. The quickest way out of this was to head right into the middle of the trap they thought they’d laid for him. He just had to get there before the two outside ships could adjust and cut him off.
    It would be close, but close was what made life worth living. He felt the sharp gust of wind at his back and smiled, knowing the gods were with him.
    What a night! And it wasn’t over yet. Blood pumped hard through his veins in anticipation of the moments to come. All his senses were focused on the task before him. He adjusted his hands, getting a good grip on the prickly hemp ropes, and let the sail out a little. The ropes jerked hard as the sail filled with wind, and he braced his feet as the birlinn shot off like an arrow toward the middle boat. Targeting the middle boat took the other two boats out of their archers’ range. But they would still have the middle boat’s arrows with which to contend.
    Randolph lifted his head from his chest long enough to look around and see what was happening. He was shaking with the cold, and his voice was weak and scratchy from the near-drowning. “What’s he doing?”
    Erik was relieved to hear the lass had recovered enough to reply. “Unless I’m mistaken,” she said, “I think he means to take on three English galleys.”
    Randolph shook his head. “Oh, I’m sure you’re not mistaken. That sounds like just the kind of thing he’d do.”
    The waterlogged knight put his head back down on his knees as if he were beyond caring. Perhaps some good might have come out of this after all, if it meant Erik didn’t have to listen to the lad’s incessant complaining all night.
    Erik felt the lass’s gaze on him.
    “Do you mean to kill us all?”
    He took his eye off the English target for one minute and gave her a jaunty grin. “Not if they blink first.”
        What did he mean, “blink first”?
    Ellie’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. No … he couldn’t seriously mean to—
    Oh, but he did. One look at that devilish grin and she knew it was exactly what he intended. Instead of surrendering—as any reasonable person would do when cornered—the pirate captain intended to wage a direct attack, heading right for the English galley and forcing them to turn to avoid him . It was a deadly joust of pure masculine bravado, to see whose nerve would crack first.
    “You c-can’t be serious,” she sputtered.
    He just grinned, telling her he was perfectly serious.
    “But what if he doesn’t turn in time?” she demanded. “We’ll all end up in the sea.”
    He shrugged. “It’s no worse than what they have planned for us. Besides,” he gave her a wink, “my men know how to swim.”
    Which probably wasn’t true for the English. It was one of the ironies of seafaring that most sailors didn’t know how to swim.
    He was going to do this.
    It was rash. It was reckless. It was aggressive and bold. Something she suspected he was quite often. Ellie stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and unwilling admiration. Who was this man? He was either mad or foolhardy—or perhaps both. Just look at him, smiling as if he were having the time of his life rather than on the brink of death or capture. With his feet braced wide, his arms flexed, and every muscle in his body strained to harness the power of the wind, he looked utterly at ease and in control—as if this were no more than a pleasant afternoon tour around the Isles.
    Watching him, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would never yield. Confidence and command oozed from every muscular, giant six-and-a-half-foot inch of him. He would go down fighting in a blaze of glory rather than surrender. She could only pray the English captain showed less fortitude.
    It was all happening so fast, yet every second passed with