Charming the Shrew (6 page)

T
HE ANIMAL’S WARMTH
under Catriona and the man’s warmth around her were a welcome relief from the battering wind’s frigid fingers, though her awkward, infuriating position across his lap had her fuming. The familiar feelings of anger and frustration were an odd sort of comfort against the panic that had blossomed within her when he had said he would return her to Assynt. For now, he could not. As soon as she found an opportunity, she would disappear.

She tried to hold on to her breath as the horse jostled her. Slowly she realized they were heading uphill, but she did not remember any hills along the loch shore.

“Where are you taking me?” she shouted over the wind and the jingling of the horse’s tack.

He said nothing, but she felt him nudge the horse faster. Catriona tried to hold her head so that it neither banged against the man’s leg nor bounced about in the air. She finally found a way to rest her forehead against his calf that was not too uncomfortable. She still was short of breath, but if she did not fight the horse’s gait she found she could breathe.

Eventually she became more aware of the man in whose lap she lay. His legs were hard and thick with muscle. His stomach was flat, but also hard, as her shoulder could attest to. She was sure she would find a lean waist, and she remembered his broad shoulders. The man fairly radiated the strength of a warrior. She relaxed a bit more, comforted in spite of herself. She should have feared him…nay, she should be angry with him, and she was, but there was something about him that almost soothed her.

He was right. She was daft.

Just as she was finally getting properly warm the horse stopped and the man slid her down to her feet, nearly oversetting her as he dismounted. Catriona sucked in deep lungfuls of the frigid Highland air and felt the awful tingling of blood rushing back to her feet.

“Wait here!” he shouted, though she could barely hear him over the raging wind and blowing snow. He pointed at a dark cleft faintly visible in the rock wall ahead. “I will make sure ’tis empty!” He handed her the reins and left her beside the animal. She fumed at his command, but she was light-headed from her upside-down ride and her feet felt like lead, so she stood, angry still, but she knew she had nowhere else to go at this moment. She watched as he disappeared into the cave, then moments later reappeared and beckoned her forward. Catriona pulled on the reins and forced her feet to move.

The man said something, but she was too busy trying to maintain her balance to listen. He grabbed the reins from her as she passed into the cave. Stopping just inside, she shook the heavy wet snow from her cloak, then moved deeper into their sanctuary.

It was a cozy space, though not large. Perhaps the man could build a fire near the entrance. She could dry her clothes—if only she had something else to wear while she did—but Gowan’s horse had run away with all she had brought with her. The man pushed her aside as he led the horse out of the weather and into their shelter.

“There is barely room for us in here. Is there not another cave for the horse?” she asked.

“There may well be, but horses create a blessedly large amount of heat. We’ll need his help to stay passably warm this night.” He led the large brown animal to the back of the cave and secured his reins to the ground with a large rock.

Catriona couldn’t help but notice that the horse’s coat and the man’s hair were the same color, like prized chestnuts, glossy brown, almost black.

“I’ll find something to burn for a fire.”

His rich voice drew her gaze to his mouth, and a funny twisting, warm feeling swept over her.

“You find my fire kit. ’Tis in my saddlebags,” he said, his impatient tone, so much like Broc’s, effectively ending the interesting feeling. She glowered at him as he stomped out of the cave and back into the arms of the now raging storm.

The numbness of her toes and fingers finally convinced her to do as he said despite the tone he took. She pulled the bags from the horse’s back, dropped them to the floor, and poked through his things, finding extra clothing, a sack with a small drum, travel food, and a small leather bag containing two pieces of flint, a quantity of shaved bark, and dried heather blossoms. The knife she carried at her waist would provide the iron needed to raise a spark with the flint.

She grabbed the fire kit and the food, then shoved the other things back in the saddlebags. She set the items beside her, pulled her cloak close, and sat, her back against the wall, waiting for him to return.

She waited a long time. Her feet no longer tingled from the blood rushing into them but rather from the cold. She tucked them up under her in an attempt to keep warm. It was a long enough time that her thoughts began to flit around her situation.

She needed a new plan. This man wanted to return her to Assynt, and that would not do. If he was correct and she had traveled in the wrong direction, she would have to go past Assynt to get to her aunt’s village, and that also would not do. If she continued the way she had been traveling, she would eventually end up at Dun Donell, and that was another thing she would not do.

All she could do for now was to sit here, in a cave, somewhere in the wild Highlands with a storm raging outside, waiting for a strange man to return. She didn’t know whether to pray the stranger returned soon or didn’t return at all. A simple trip had been complicated by her own lousy sense of direction and the icy blast of a sudden winter storm. What had she gotten herself into?

Just as the last of the light was about to fail, her rescuer stumbled back through the opening, his arms full of snow-feathered branches and heather twigs.

Catriona rose, relief flooding her. Yet she dared not let him see how scared she had been while he was gone, nor how grateful she was for his return. To show her weakness would be to invite torment.

“I thought you had gotten lost,” she said.

“I have an excellent sense of direction.” He glanced at her as he dropped the wood near the entrance.

“I found this,” she said, ignoring his jibe. She grabbed the fire kit, dropped it in his hand, then quickly pulled her arm back into the relative warmth of her cloak.

Catriona watched him as he stood near the opening, shaking the snow off. He shoved his fingers through his snow-dampened hair, drawing her attention once more to its subtle waves and rich color. She admired his simple grace as he prepared a fire pit near the entrance, then set about building a fire, always moving with confidence and a hint of a swagger, as if he expected her to be watching him. It took some time, but eventually he managed to ignite the tinder, then the damp kindling, and finally a small fire flickered to life. Immediately Catriona moved to it.

“That is not nearly enough wood to keep us warm through the night,” she said as he carefully added another piece to the small blaze.

“’Tis, but if you wish, you are welcome to collect more.”

“I have no desire to go out in that blow.” She rubbed her hands together and held them to the fire until she realized they were trembling. She pulled them back and clasped them together where the telltale sign of her weakness wouldn’t give her away. “Besides, ’tis your fault we are in this mess. You should gather the wood.”

He stopped feeding the fire and looked up at her, his face cast in shadows. “How is this my fault?” he asked. There was a dangerous edge to his voice that she had not heard before.

“If you had not argued with me, we could have found a real shelter, maybe a cottage or a shieling. Shielings are always left with either peat or wood for travelers’ fires.”

He shook his head and returned to his task. “You are right, there.”

“I am?” The words popped out before Catriona realized she had voiced them. “Of course I am.”

He chuckled. “Aye, of course you are, though ’twouldn’t be a shieling nor a cottage. We would be warm within Assynt Castle, food in our bellies and a blazing fire at our feet. You would be home.”

Catriona hunkered down, not wishing to sit on the cold stone floor but needing to be close enough to the fire to see his face. What did he know of her?

“Why do you want to go to Assynt?” she asked.

“I have a message to deliver there, and I am quite fond of food and shelter.” He bent low and blew at the bottom of the fire, causing it to leap a bit higher and burn a bit brighter for a moment.

“Why are you traveling at this season?” She settled on a cushion of her skirt and cloak. Her legs were tired from her own travels this day.

“I told you, a message.”

“Hmph. Anyone may carry messages. You have a drum. Are you a bard?” The look that passed over his face was fleeting, but she thought it was embarrassment.

“Aye, a bard, and a messenger, and, apparently, the rescuer of young women too confused to know east from west.”

Catriona flushed but would not let him distract her from her questions. “Who is your message for?”

He shook his head and continued working on the fire. “’Tis for Duff MacDonell’s betrothed. Catriona is her name. You probably know her. From the tales I’ve heard she is an ugly shrew of a…” Catriona flinched as if he had struck her. He looked at her face. “Nay, you could not be…”

“I am not ugly,” she said around the tightness in her throat. She had heard the description often enough to wonder at its truth, but she never let on how much she loathed it. Catriona held out her hand. “Your message is delivered. You’ve no need to continue on to Assynt now.”

The man shot to his feet and started to pace the confines of the cave. “You cannot be she. You are not ugly.”

“Nay, I am not ugly.” She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and leveled her most terrorizing glare at him. “I am Catriona, daughter of Neill, chief of Clan Leod of Assynt. Tell me the message and your duty will be done.”

“You have forgotten an important piece of your identity,” he said, his voice as icy as the wind blowing outside the cave.

“And that is?”

“You are betrothed to Duff MacDonell.”

“I will
never
wed that dog-faced son-of-a—” Catriona clenched her teeth, unable to think of a suitably contemptuous name for the man. “I deserve much better.”

“Do you, now? How much better?”

“Better than you,” she said, though she did not see how any man could be better to gaze upon than this arrogant example.

“If you had been listening to silly romantic tales like every other lass in the Highlands, you would know there are no better than me.”

She laughed, a silvery shimmering sound. “I listen to the tales of Sir William Wallace, of King Robert the Bruce, and of the brave warriors who fight for Scotland’s freedom.”

“Like Tayg of Culrain?”

“Aye, like brave Tayg of Culrain.”

Catriona watched first pride, then anger flood his eyes. He stood and without another word left the cave.

W
HAT HAD POSSESSED
him to ask such a thing? Tayg stomped through the growing dark, not daring to go far from the frail light of the fire in the cave mouth. He was cold, but not from the weather. That lass, that beautiful lass with the well-honed mouth, was the shrew of Assynt, soon-to-be betrothed of Duff MacDonell. If she was found here, with him, alone, ’twould be exceedingly easy for her family to insist he marry her. After all, he was a much better catch for their shrew than that upstart MacDonell with daft dreams of greatness. What a cruel joke that would be, to let him escape his mother’s machinations only to fall into the lap of someone even Mum would not think to saddle him with.

He would not wed that woman, that shrew. He did not care how beautifully her midnight blue eyes flashed in the firelight or how her silky black hair begged a man to thread his fingers through it. He was supposed to be on a mission in the king’s service, not lusting after a difficult, daft lass who could ruin his life if she discovered his true identity.

So what was he to do? What could he do? He would have to return to the shelter of the cave soon, for the snow was flying thick and wet and sideways. He was hungry. He was tired. He was cold. And he feared that the lass within would destroy his life simply by her presence.

Tayg took a deep, cold breath and tried to calm his jumbled thoughts into some kind of order. There was nothing to do for the moment, except make sure they survived the night. When daylight came, no matter the weather, he would take her near to Assynt and leave her there to return or not as she deemed fit. He would have returned her to relative safety and would not have her fate further impinging on his conscience. If he never set foot in Assynt, they would never know who her rescuer was.
She
did not even know who he was, though he had nearly given himself away. He would have to be more careful, play his part as bard as if his life depended upon it. He was afraid it did.