Highlander Redeemed (Guardians of the Targe Book 3) (3 page)

His breath caught in his chest. She was magnificent. Beautiful. Strong.

She fought as if demons threatened her life.

And Duncan could not take his eyes off her. She was everything he would expect her to be if he did not know her so well. That thought stopped him.

Each time Scotia did the exercise she moved a little quicker, until suddenly her feet tangled in her skirts and she landed hard on the ground.

“Blast and damnation!”

Her curse resounded through the wood. Duncan noted that even as she fell she was wise enough to hold her weapons away from her. Clearly she had been carefully watching Malcolm work with the lads, and even without the hands-on guidance of a trained warrior she was remarkably adept at mastering the moves.

She got to her feet quickly and untangled her skirts, revealing well-worn brogues and shapely, strong calves as she did. She took her starting position and began again, repeating the exercise as she had before, faster and faster, until her sides heaved and she stopped, pushing damp hair away from her flushed face with the back of her sword hand.

“Take that, you damned Sassenachs,” she said as she stared at the tree roots, her stick once more held at the ready. “I have killed each and every one of you this day and you shall not harry my home and my family again.”

Duncan’s breath hitched and his mind raced. If this was what she wanted, to be trained as a warrior—and he did not doubt for even a moment that was her intention—he had the weapon he needed to keep her close. If she wanted to be treated like the adult she must become, if she truly wanted to learn to fight for her home and family, he would give her a reason to behave like a woman worthy of her lineage. He would give her a reason to be reasonable. And he did not care if Nicholas or Kenneth or any of the others agreed with his plan. They had given her over to his keeping.

Duncan would teach Scotia to be a warrior.

The lass was immune to any negative reactions such training might instigate in the clan, as evidenced by her behavior past and present. She could train herself with anger and selfish goals—for he knew she still sought her own vengeance against the English
no matter what Nicholas and his council planned. That way would likely end up being even more dangerous to her own kin.

Or he could convince her to let him train her properly, not just physically, but to fight without anger, to fight with the keen intellect he knew her to have, and to fight with the natural talent she appeared to hold. He could train her to be an asset to her clan, something no one thought she could ever be after the last few weeks.

He was certain everyone would be safer if Scotia knew how to fight, how to defend herself and those who fell within her realm of troublemaking. If she’d known how to fight, Myles might yet be among the living.

He held his ground as she once more paced herself through the exercise slowly, just as Malcolm had the lads do, muttering each move as she did so. But this time, when she flew through it, he watched her with new eyes, with the eyes of a teacher, assessing her weaknesses and her strengths—making a plan for her training.

S
COTIA TRIED TO
ignore the pain in her side where she’d landed on a large stone. She must remember to bring the trews she’d “borrowed” from one of the lads and hide them with her training gear. Skirts clearly did not mix with battle.

She shoved loose tendrils of hair out of her face, reset her stance, and prepared to do the exercise yet again. She refused to stop until she had it perfect. She gripped the stick hard, pulled the targe up to guard her torso, took a deep breath—

“If you turn a bit more to the side, you shall present a smaller target to your foe.”

The calm focus she’d been cultivating shattered with the first startling word. She’d spun around to face the intruder, her poor
excuse for a weapon gripped hard and held high to defend herself, before she even realized ’twas Duncan.

He leaned his long, lanky frame against a young oak tree, his thumbs casually hooked in the belt that held his faded green, brown, and the palest yellow plaid about narrow hips, as if he’d been standing there watching her for some time. A fitful breeze ruffled the unruly curls of his shoulder-length, dark-brown hair, and the errant thought that he should braid it at his temples as her da did destroyed what remained of her battle focus. His posture spoke of relaxed indifference but she knew him too well to be fooled. His intense curiosity, a curiosity that easily matched her own, lit his dark eyes, giving the lie to his guise. Damn the interfering man!

“I thought you were at the council meeting,” she said, turning back to the exercise as if she cared nothing that he had discovered her secret. She hoped he would leave now that he had found her, now that he knew she was not haring off across the bens to kill any English soldier she could find, though she knew the tenacious man would not.

But her mind was no longer sharply focused on the exercise. Instead, though she took the starting stance, she prepared herself for another of Duncan’s lectures on her disrespect for the safety of others, or on her disrespect for the rules laid down for her behavior by Nicholas, Kenneth, Uilliam, Jeanette, Rowan, auld Peigi, and even himself.

“Surely they are not done rehashing their plan so soon this morn.” She did not bother to hide the disdain she felt for the blethering that went on and on in that circle day after day.

“Nay, they are not.”

She took the first step in the exercise, determined to irritate him further by ignoring him, hoping he would, as he sometimes did, stomp off muttering about how childish she was. But then the words that had startled her came back to her as if Duncan
said them only now. She turned her torso a little more sideways, shifting her forward foot a little closer to her center for balance, surprised at how those small changes increased her reach, protected her torso more easily, and strengthened her balance. She began once more.

“Put more of your weight on your back foot when defending and loosen your grip on the stick just a little,” he said as she moved into the exercise. “You do not want to strangle it, for that hinders your arm’s flexibility and strength.”

She did as he said, though it felt awkward. She stumbled as she concentrated on keeping her body turned and her grip relaxed.

“Damn skirts.”

“Why do you not kilt them up?” Duncan asked.

She glanced at him, sure she would see disappointment and scorn in his dark eyes, but was surprised to see a calm gaze, thoughtful, not judging. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, and she knew from long experience that his sharp mind was working on a problem.

“Never mind,” he said. “’Tis good to train in skirts since that is likely what you will be wearing if ever you are ambushed.”

She waited for him to say
again
, but he did not, and she found herself distracted by his change in behavior. He was not attacking her, or treating her like a child, and that alone was remarkable, for nothing about her had changed, so in theory his opinion of her should not have changed either, but it seemed it had, at least for the moment.

Even though she agreed with him about fighting in skirts, she could not let him know that. Scotia set her weapons and targe down and kilted her skirts, tucking the ends, still damp from the mud puddles at the caves, up into the wide leather belt she wore, just as she had when she’d waded into the burn to throw off the lads who usually trailed after her. But Duncan had not been thrown off her trail. Duncan was the best tracker in the clan and had taught her all she knew of tracking both beasts and people.
On her own, she had turned the lessons around and, over the years, become quite adept at hiding her own tracks when she did not wish to be found. Clearly she must work harder if she wished to hide her trail from Duncan in the future.

She waited for him to say something, but he was silent as she settled her weapons. She started, as she always did, by closing her eyes and moving through each step of the exercise slowly in her mind, fixing it there. Next she opened her eyes, turned her torso, set her feet, checking both balance and that the weight was more to the back foot, relaxed her grip on the stick, and then moved through the exercise slowly, making sure each step was precisely as she’d seen Malcolm doing it when he taught the lads.

“Good,” Duncan said, circling around to her other side. “Now faster.”

“I do not need your commands,” she said, still wishing the man would leave her, though his suggestions did seem to help. She brought the face of the gap-toothed English soldier who had held her captive into her mind, then put the memory of his blade to her throat there as well. That was all it took to bring into her heart all the rage and helplessness he had made her live with. She imagined he stood in front of her, that smirk on his face as he’d told her what he would do to her after he and his fellow soldiers had slaughtered her family, what they would each do to her, and when the rage lived within her like a beast she flew through the exercise, repeating it without pause. Exhilaration spilled through her, as it had the last few days as she’d practiced, as if she’d finally, finally found the thing she was meant to do. After nine or ten repetitions her breath burned in her lungs and throat, and sweat dripped from her face. She stopped, resting her hands on her knees as she gulped in the cool air of the wood, damping down the burning.

“You really are quite good at this,” Duncan said, as if he truly was surprised by what he saw. “But—”

“But nothing,” she snapped, standing up to face him before he could ruin the subtle warmth that flirted over her skin at his
compliment by telling her everything wrong with her, by telling her this was a foolish thing to do, a foolish thing to want. She did not want to hear any of it.

“But,” he said again, his voice remarkably patient, “you need a proper teacher if you mean to continue.” He held up a hand to stop her next retort.

But it did not come.

Scotia knew her mouth was agape, but she was powerless to close it.

“And I do think you should continue to train,” he added.

He looked a little too pleased with himself so she pressed her lips together hard enough to close her mouth, and tried to understand what he had just said.

“You cannot mean to let me train with the lads. What are you about, Duncan? Surely you mean only to trick me into letting my guard down before you dive in to tear me apart with sharp, mean words.”

He nodded. “I do not blame you for thinking that, and indeed, that was my intention when I was searching for your trail.”

“Searching?”

“Aye. It took far more work than I expected to discover where you had gone. It would seem you are a good student when the subject serves your purposes.”

She couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or a complaint, but she did not care. She clearly had more work to do to slip the sharp-eyed Duncan, but she had at least made it difficult for him to find her and that was an accomplishment she could be proud of.

“I do not think you should train with the lads. ’Twill demoralize them to see a lass who is far more skilled than they are.”

Pride and surprised satisfaction warmed her.

“Nay,” he continued, “but
I
can train you in the ways of a warrior, if you agree to my terms.”

Scotia realized she still held her weapons at the ready, as if she protected herself from Duncan, which was daft, for though his words had always had the power to sting, he’d never physically hurt her.

But now Duncan was asking her to allow him to help her.

Could she do that? Could she trust him?

“If I agree,” she said slowly, “I get to train with a bossy instructor? What do you gain by helping me in this?” Ingrained wariness held her back from jumping at his proposal.

“I get to make sure you are properly trained so that you may be an asset to this clan, so that I can be assured that you are able to protect yourself and those you fight with.” The words were almost soft, as if he sought to lull her into accepting his oversight, but they hit her like a slap, a rebuke.

Irritation sizzled in her gut, but there was too much at stake to give it voice. She raised her chin and squared her shoulders, meeting his gaze with her own. “If I accept, will you promise that I will join the warriors in battle when the English return? Will you promise not to force me to stay at the caves, no matter what any of the others say?”

“If you accept, and if”—he held up his hand to stop her from interrupting him—“
if
you prove yourself an able warrior, then I promise to do everything I can to make sure you get the chance to fight our enemies.”

She realized she was breathing fast and shallow. He offered everything she wanted, and she knew him well enough to know he would not lie to her.

“You will not go easy on me because I am female.” She did not ask, but demanded. She needed to be every bit as skilled as any warrior if she was to avenge the horrors that had befallen her clan. If that meant submitting to Duncan’s training then she would do it. “And I have one more requirement,” she said, now thinking how all the others would react when they found out she was being
trained to fight. “This must remain a secret between the two of us until I say otherwise.”