The Hunter (9 page)

He felt a prickle of guilt. They’d been riding for hours
now. In addition to wet and cold, she was probably tired as well. “As soon as we cross the river.”

“And when will that be?”

“Soon.”

She glanced back at him from over her shoulder. She’d wrapped the plaid around her head, but water still streamed down her pale face. Her lashes were damp and clumped as if she’d been crying. Guilt pricked him again. She was only a lass. Women were delicate creatures—a fact he had to remind himself of in her case. What would make her want to put herself in such danger?

“I thought you knew—”

He cut her off. “I know exactly where we are.” Mostly. They should be reaching the ford in the river soon. He hadn’t gone too far. It was just the rain that was making it look so unfamiliar. He wasn’t lost.

“I just thought that with the mist, it might be difficult—”

“We aren’t lost, damn it.”

She gasped, drawing back a little in the face of his temper. “I did not mean to slight your navigation skills. Of course, we are not lost.” He felt a moment of satisfaction until she ruined it with, “If you say it is so.”

Guilt forgotten, he fumed as he looked around for any sign that the path he’d taken was the right one. Women of the cloth weren’t supposed to be so damned irritating. What happened to meek and serene?

He fought through the trees and brush for another twenty minutes or so. The rain was coming down harder and the wind … the wind seemed to be blowing straight off the North Sea. Bone-chilling was putting it mildly.

Finally he saw it—the gap he’d been looking for. “There it is,” he said, as if there had never been any doubt.

He steered the horse toward the bank, but the sight that met him there was not what he expected.

*  *  *

Whatever blood Janet had left that wasn’t frozen from the cold drained from her face. “You can’t mean for us to cross here!”

She didn’t need to feign horror; it was real enough. She looked at the twenty-foot-wide spans of the River Tweed and felt her stomach heave and ho like a ship upon storm-tossed seas. The normally slow-moving waters of the river were rushing by in a torrential fury, swollen from the winter runoff and the recent spate of storms.

The waves—waves!—were almost cresting the three big trees that had been set across the banks to form a makeshift bridge. How long would those trees stay in place against the powerful force of the river?

She shook her head, fear slamming around in her chest. “I can’t.”

He spoke to her gently—more gently than he ever had before. “It will hold.”

He dismounted and held up his hand to help her down. She slipped her hand in his, and when she leaned forward, he caught her around the waist and lowered her gently to the ground. It was nothing that should have made her breath catch. She’d been helped down from a horse countless time before. But never had she been aware of a man’s hands around her waist, of the soft press of his thumbs against her rib cage, or of the strength of the arms that she gripped to keep her steady.

And never had she wanted to inhale so deeply. He smelled of leather, rain, and the forest, but also of something warm and undeniably masculine.

Their eyes held for a long heartbeat, and she knew he felt it too. He shifted his gaze and released her so quickly her legs wobbled.

Confused by her reaction and more than a little embarrassed, Janet avoided his gaze as he tied the horse to a nearby tree while he inspected the “bridge.” She watched as he pushed a few of the trees to make sure they were
solid and tested the muddy bank with his boot. As usual, it was impossible to read anything from his expression. There was a grim set to his mouth, but she couldn’t say it was any more grim than usual.

He returned to where she waited under the shelter of a large tree to collect the horse. “It looks fine. I’ll take the horse over first and come back for you.”

The air seemed to be expanding in her chest and her heart pounded frantically. She looked up at him and shook her head. “I can’t. I d-don’t like bridges. Please, can’t we go a different way?”

He gave her an encouraging smile that broke through her moment of panic. “It looks much worse than it is. You don’t need to worry—I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She believed him enough to follow him to the bank of the river. But with what she saw next, nothing would have possessed her to go across. A big surge in the current caused the water to break over the trees. The force was so powerful, the entire structure seemed to rattle.

He started to lead the horse (who seemed just about as eager as she was) forward, but she stopped him. “Please, you must reconsider. The current is too strong. The trees are thick with moss and slippery. It is too easy to fall in, and I don’t know how to swim. Isn’t there someplace we could stay nearby until morning? Perhaps by then the rain will stop and the water will have subsided?”

As if to punctuate her words another surge crashed over the bridge, sending a spray of water bursting into the air.

She turned to him with a cry. “Please,” she begged, looking up into his eyes.

His gaze fell into hers. “You really are scared?”

There was a strange note in his voice. A slight huskiness that penetrated through the haze of panic and sent a twinge of heated awareness racing through her.

She nodded, her face tilted toward his only inches away.

Inches away
. Her breath caught. Only then did she
realize what she had done. Her hands were clutching his arms and her body was pressed against his. Intimately. Chest to chest and hip to hip. She could feel every hard inch of his chest and legs. She could feel something else as well. Something that made her mouth go dry, her heart drop, and her stomach flip all at the same time.

Oh, my
.

The shock of it startled her. It was as if every nerve-ending in her body had been struck by a lightning bolt of awareness. She opened her mouth to gasp, but the sound strangled in her throat when their eyes met.

Heaven help her! Despite the rain and the cold, her body filled with heat.

If she hadn’t felt the proof of his desire, she could see it now in his eyes. He wanted her, and the force of it seemed to be radiating under her fingertips, making her tremble with unfamiliar sensations. Her heart seemed to be racing too fast, her breath to be short and uneven, and her limbs too heavy.

She couldn’t seem to move. She was caught up in something she didn’t understand but couldn’t resist. Didn’t
want
to resist.

When his gaze dropped to her mouth, she knew what he was going to do. And she would have let him had he not found enough sense for both of them.

His jaw locked, and the tiny muscle below his chest began to tic. He looked away.

She let her hands drop and took a sudden step back, as if she were a bairn who’d just been caught by the cook with her hand on a tart and was trying to distance herself from the scene of her crime.

She didn’t know what had come over her. She’d never touched a man so freely before, let alone tried to persuade one in such a manner.

His voice sounded more curt than normal. “There is an
inn not too far away in Trows that should be safe to stop at for the night.”

Janet couldn’t hide her relief. “Thank you.”

Trows! She realized suddenly what that meant. Not only had she avoided the bridge, she’d also managed to find a way—unconsciously, as it happened—to get to Roxburgh. Trows was only a short distance away.

He gave her a hard look, and not for the first time, she wondered if he knew what she was thinking. “We cannot go as we are. A nun and a warrior traveling alone will draw too much comment.”

Since he was being agreeable for once, she refrained from pointing out that she’d told him that same thing when he insisted on accompanying her. “What do you suggest?”

“I’ll remove some of my armor, and you’ll have to take off your veil and the white scapular.”

Her eyes widened as she realized what he intended. “You mean to pretend we are married?”

Why did the idea frighten her more than pretending to be a nun? If she were going to parse her sins, the latter was infinitely more damning.

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

“Aren’t there any other places we could take shelter? A cave? An abandoned shieling? A hut?”

“Yes, on the other side of that river.” He pointed to the bridge just as another rush of water poured over it. “It’s up to you.”

The choice was obvious. There wasn’t any reason she should have hesitated, but she did. Why did the idea of pretending to be his wife terrify her almost as much as the bridge did? “The inn.”

He gave her a curt nod. “I will leave you a minute to tend to your needs and remove your habit.” He pointed to the wooden cross on her neck that she’d worn since the night she tried to free her sister. “Hide that as well.”

She was grateful for the moment of privacy. She tended
to her most pressing need, and then quickly removed the veil and scapular, which wasn’t easy in the rain with everything sopping wet. She tried not to think that right now had he not insisted on accompanying her, she would be warm and dry in the abbey. When she was done, she wrapped the plaid around her again and packed the clothing in her bag. Without the protection of her habit she felt … vulnerable.

But to what?

She’d just finished tucking the cross under the plain black gown she still wore, when he returned and she knew exactly
what
.

Oh God
.

Her stomach dropped. He’d removed the ghastly helm, and for the first time she could see his face in full.

She was wrong. He wasn’t just handsome, he was
brutally
handsome. Handsome in the dark-haired, blue-eyed, rough-hewn kind of way that made every primitive female instinct in her stand up and take notice. His mouth … that jaw … those eyes.

She sighed in a way that she never had as a young girl. What a time to start acting like one!

His hair hung in sopping-wet clumps across his forehead, the stubble of his beard was a day or two too long, and rain was pouring down his face, yet it only seemed to add a rugged edge to his attractiveness. She felt something grip her chest and squeeze.

The horror of realization hit her. She knew why she was acting like this and why he’d made her feel so uneasy from the start.

Jerusalem’s Temples, I’m attracted to him!

Instinctively, like the hare who sees the hunter for the first time, Janet felt the urge to run. She may have persuaded him to do her bidding, but part of her wondered whether crossing the bridge was any less dangerous than spending the night with him.

Five

It wasn’t until the innkeeper opened the door to the room that Ewen realized exactly how big of a mistake he’d made in letting her persuade him not to cross that river.

His eyes scanned the second-floor chamber, which didn’t take long, as it wasn’t much bigger than the solitary bed that had been pushed up against the far wall. Aside from a small table and wooden stool, nothing else was in the room. There wasn’t room for anything.

Alarm hit him like a poleaxe in the chest. There was no way in hell they could stay here. Jesus, they would be right on top of one another!

He was just about to ask for another room—a much larger one—when the plump, matronly-looking innkeeper turned to him with a proud smile. “It’s our largest room, and I think our best. You can see right down to the courtyard from that window,” she said cheerfully, pointing to the shutter above the bed. “The roof is tight and will keep you nice and dry. Of course, we can’t have a fire in here with the thatched roof, but it is warm and cozy from the fire in the hall below, and if you give me your wet things, I’ll hang them by the fire downstairs, and they should be nice and dry by morning.”

Neither he nor Sister Genna seemed to know what to say. For him that wasn’t uncommon, but he suspected it was a rare occurrence for the silver-tongued nun.

The innkeeper set down the stack of bed linens she was
carrying and placed them on the bed. Then she turned to Sister Genna and said with a wink and meaningful glance toward the bed, “If you need another blanket, let me know. But your husband is a braw laddie, he should keep you plenty warm.”

Sister Genna seemed to turn even paler and her eyes widened to such enormous proportions, Ewen would have laughed if he wasn’t feeling exactly the same way. Apprehension was an understatement. This room was beginning to look like his very own personal torture chamber.

He was tempted to thank the innkeeper for her trouble and go right back down the stairs, but that might provoke exactly the type of attention he was trying to avoid. So far everything had gone well, and they had not seemed to attract any undue notice. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.

Besides, part of him knew Sister Genna was right: it would have been dangerous to attempt to cross the bridge in the storm. They were both cold and soaked to the bone. He might have been able to build a makeshift shelter, but it would be a long, torturous night outside in the cold and rain. In here it would be a different kind of long, torturous night for him, but at least she would be warm and dry. He couldn’t stand watching her shiver anymore; it made him feel … odd. Like he would do just about anything to make her stop.