Free Torn Between Two Highlanders by Laurel Adams

blanketed with snow.
    Malcolm rose gingerly from his pillow, testing his leg. Though he hissed to put pressure upon it, the pain no longer put him flat on his back when he tried. He cursed, then cursed again, more colorfully. But he was no longer a pale and desiccated husk of himself. He was strong. He would recover. And because he hadn’t yet seen the snowfall at the door, he said, “Let’s be up and on the trail. If you can get me into a saddle, I can ride. Tie me onto the creature if need be, but we can’t stay here another minute.”
    Davy snorted. “Have you taken a peek outside?”
    The storm had continued all night, melting a bit then freezing again to treacherous ice, a hardened drift blocking the door to the cottage almost to the height of Davy’s belly. “Even if we dug our way out, the horses will never be able to manage it. Especially not carrying a giant like you and that dagger of yours.”
    He meant the claymore, which Malcolm touched with almost as much affection as he might touch a woman. “But I’m better now,” Malcolm insisted. “Fit as a fiddle.”
    That might be overstating it; he wasn’t fully healed. Which made Arabella glad that she had not let him exert himself the night before.
    Still, he complained, “Are we to sit about and do nothing while the castle might be under siege?”
    “They wouldn’t lay siege in a snow storm,” Davy said, then shook his head. “Likely, the enemy is as trapped as we are.” Then he shot Arabella a wicked, toothy smile. “So in the meanwhile, how are we to entertain ourselves?”
    “By making breakfast,” she said, suppressing a grin.
    “I’ll do it,” Davy said, swiftly. “After all, I make a passable porridge, whereas you…”
    He was teasing her, she knew. But her stomach was growling, and she wanted breakfast more than she wanted to argue about who might best tend the cook fire. He told battle stories as he cooked the porridge for breakfast. It was porridge again in the afternoon, when he told tales about the laird and his kinsman, Ian Macrae, who was as much the laird’s foe as his friend.
    It was porridge again in the evening, and by then, it seemed to her as if Davy might never run out of tales to tell.
    At least, until he asked, “Have you no tales of your own, Arabella?”
    “I’m just a crofter’s daughter,” she replied, wrapped tightly in the plaid they’d stolen off a dead man, days before. “And not a very good one.”
    “There’s a fire in you,” Davy said, stuffing porridge into his mouth. “No doubt that tart tongue of yours brought about a thrashing at your Papa’s knee.”
    “More than once,” she confessed. “Papa once said I was more like a boy than a girl in that I could never seem to follow the rules. Liked my own company too much. Loved nature and my own experiments. Went out into the wilds to collect herbs and draw them. Lost track of time. But I always went alone, so I’m afraid I have no tales to tell.”
    “You draw?” Malcolm asked, suitably impressed. “That’s a rare talent.”
    Arabella bit her lip. “But a dull one.”
    Davy snorted. “Come now, surely something exciting has happened to you.”
    Arabella thought hard on it, and a memory came to her. “I suppose there was the time that the laird tried to hang my Papa from a tree for failing to pay what he owed.”
    Davy stopped chewing. Malcolm’s eyes dropped.
    And then she knew, they’d both been with the laird that day.
    Perhaps if they hadn’t both looked so guilty, she wouldn’t have realized it. They hadn’t known her, and she hadn’t known them when it happened. The episode had been fraught with such fear that she couldn’t remember large chunks of what happened, which meant she wasn’t sure which one of them put the noose on her father’s neck.
    But she felt certain it was one of the two of them.
    “The laird spared your father, though,” Davy offered weakly.
    Arabella’s heart hardened. “Only when my sister begged for