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Before he could stop himself, he laughed and blurted, “Is that beast wearing a sash?”
The woman flushed scarlet beneath the dusting of freckles on her cheeks, and the wolf’s growl deepened.
“Get out,” she said, flicking her blade toward the doorway behind Conall. “Get out, and do not come back or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Conall challenged, a chuckle still in his voice. “Tie me hair up in ribbons?”
The woman’s chest heaved and Conall could not help but notice its fullness beneath the gray kirtle that practically hung on her otherwise slender frame.
“Get out,” she sputtered again. “And stop staring at my breasts.”
Conall felt his face heat at being caught in his appraisal of her body. Any matter, the time for sport had come to an end. Conall’s patience was run out.
“The only one of us who’ll be leaving this cottage is you,” he said, stepping forward. The wolf’s hackles raised. “Now, gather your beast and—”
A chorus of howls echoed from beyond the hut, cutting short Conall’s directive. He heard his sheep—forgotten until now—bleat pitifully from the dooryard.
The woman’s demeanor—and that of the wolf as well—instantly changed.
“Is that your animal calling, sir?” she demanded. The wolf whined and circled behind the woman once more, obviously distressed by its brethren’s howls.
“Aye—my sheep,” Conall said. “Why? Is that the rest of your well-dressed pack calling to sup?”
“’Tis the grays, you fool,” she said. “And if you value the animal’s life, you’ll bring her inside before they descend upon her and rip her to pieces, as they nearly did Alinor.”
The black wolf whined again.
Outside, Conall’s sheep bleated insistantly, and the pack from beyond howled in evil, discordant harmony.
“They’re wolves,” Conall said calmly. “Besides this one, obviously”—his eyes flicked to the shivering black—“they’ll keep to the wood.”
The woman looked him up and down, blatantly taking his full measure. “Are you hungry, sir?” she asked after a moment.
Conall frowned. Of course he was hungry. Everyone was hungry this winter. But what business was it of this uppity English woman’s that there was not enough food to be had?
She gave him no opportunity to answer. “Because they are.” She turned to lay a hand along the black’s muzzle. “Stay here, lovely. I’ll return in a thrice.” Her eyes flicked to Conall briefly. “You may take his fat head off should he attempt to harm you.”
Then she stormed past Conall, shoving into him rudely as she fled the cottage, her dagger still in hand. He let her pass, too stunned and bewildered by her strange actions to put up any real resistance.
“Is she daft?” Conall asked the black.
The wolf called Alinor turned from him and skittered into one of the hut’s animal pens meant to house the breed of small Scottish cattle throughout long, harsh winters such as this. But, of course, the MacKerrick clan had no cattle this year. The wolf lay down and whined and shook, the vicious beast of earlier nowhere to be seen.
The wolfsong from the forest sounded closer.
Conall turned with a grimace and a shake of his head and followed the woman from the hut.
Evelyn’s heart pounded as she ran into the dooryard, eyes scanning the close clearing for the sheep.
Was he daft? Or deaf? Could he not hear the gray’s mad, bloodthirsty taunts?
Hungry, hungry…
There! The brown and white shaggy animal ran in frantic circles, its short tether tangling around its forelegs in the dirtied, trampled snow. Evelyn tucked her dagger into the ragged rope belt around her waist and walked toward the sheep calmly, making soft shushing noises. “Easy, lovely. ’Tis all right.” She reached down and unwound the tether from the panting animal’s legs, then tugged it toward the hut. “Come, now. Come along.”
The large interloper emerged from the dwelling, a frown creasing his strong features. In another time—another life—Evelyn would have been terrified of the giant highlander. He was slender, yea, but his big-boned frame suggested that mayhap he had carried more meat on him at one time. His legs were long under his odd, shin-length tunic and tall leather boots, and his belt and sheath hung low across slender hips. His plaid drape strained across the breadth of his shoulders and chest, and his brown hair looked streaked by the very sun, hanging silky and chopped down his back, a thin, leather-twisted braid adorning one side.
He was beautiful, in a hungry, desperate way, and Evelyn sensed he carried a heavy sorrow about him. And a resentment larger than the Caledonian forest surrounding them both.
Yea, this was a thoroughly dangerous man.
He blocked the doorway with his width and Evelyn was forced to stop some lengths away from him, glancing over her shoulder. The grays would emerge at any moment.
“I would think,” he said with a nasty smirk, “that a lass as brazen and foolish as yourself, who squats in another’s home and keeps such close company with wild beasts, wouldna be so fearful of a few stray wolves. Surely you could charm them as you have the black.”
“Verily?” Evelyn challenged. She could allow herself no fear of this man. Not now, when she had fought so hard for her life, for Alinor’s life, in this treacherous land. She had come too far, survived too much, and she would let no one—no one—take it from her. “If all it requires is brazenness and foolishness…”
She walked up to the man, grabbed his thick, bony wrist and slapped the sheep’s tether into his palm. Then she looked up into his eyes—golden, sparked with green and brown—and smiled fiercely.
“You should fare quite well.”
Evelyn darted around him into the cottage and slammed the door, dropping the board in place before his first fist-falls pounded the old wood.
“Woman!” he roared from beyond the door.
After a short scrabbling of claw on stone, Evelyn felt Alinor nuzzle her hand and she pulled the wolf’s neck against her hip. “Well, we made short work of him, did we not, lovely?”
The pounding continued. “Open this door!”
“I think not,” Evelyn called. “This home is mine and Alinor’s now. And you are a very rude man.”
She heard the man growl, then let loose a string of vicious Gaelic. The few words Evelyn could understand made the tips of her ears burn.
“If I must, I’ll chop this hut to bits and drag you and your animal out,” he warned. “You’ll nae stay here and that’s the whole of it!”
“We shall see,” Evelyn called.
She knew the instant the grays emerged from the wood by the highlander’s hoarse shout of surprise. She crouched down near the floor to peer through a small knothole in the door. Alinor pressed her wide head to Evelyn’s ear, as if also trying to see.
Evelyn spied the backs of the man’s boots. He was facing the forest now, and had dropped the sheep’s tether. The poor animal bleated in fright.
“Hah!” the highlander shouted, taking a step away from the cottage. “Get from here, you hell-beasts!”
Evelyn kept her eye steady on the view through the knothole and slowly, carefully, silently, reached both arms above her head to remove the bar from the door.
The man took another step toward the edge