Pride Of Lions

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The sudden movement overset their mount, who shied and sidestepped on the narrow trail.

“Easy.” Hunter’s arm tightened around Allisun’s waist. His muscular thighs bunched beneath her rump as he brought the horse under control.

Allisun was abruptly, vividly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Through the layers of wool that separated them, she could feel the muscles of his chest supporting her back. It unsettled her to find the measured cadence of his heartbeat echoing hers. For some reason the heat radiating from his body made her skin feel too warm and a size too small. Restless, she tried to sit forward.

“Sit still, or you’ll rile our horse,” Hunter murmured. His breath stirred the hair at her temple, sending gooseflesh tingling down her cheek and neck.

Allisun shivered. Was she sickening?

“Are you cold?” He held her closer. The pressure of his arm on her waist scrambled her insides and made the quivering in her belly worse.

“Nay, I tremble with hatred for you.” She wished it were true. Wished she did not like him. “You are my enemy,” she added, as much to remind herself of that.

“I have never done you ill.” He managed to sound hurt.

Allisun bypassed the obvious—that had he not raised the alarm, Jock would never have known whom to blame for Brenna’s disappearance. “You snatched me from my horse, tumbled us down a ravine and tied me to you with this handfasting.”

Hunter’s temper flared, goaded as much by pain and lack of sleep as her accusations. “Ingrate! In all this, I have but tried to protect you. Would you rather I told Derk who you are?” he whispered. “I am not the one with a price on my head.”

She sagged in his arms and shook her head.

Oddly, that small sign of defeat deflated Hunter’s fury. Who could blame her for being prickly and defiant, given what she’d told him about her life. Orphaned. Driven from her home. Forced to dress in rags and live under a leaky roof. Once he might have thought such hardships no more than the Murrays’ due, but that was before he’d met this rare, brave lass. Strangely, he wanted to make it up to her, but he knew she’d reject his sympathy even more vehemently than she did his offers of help. “I wanted to tell you,” he said in a stern voice, parent to child, “that when we reach Derk’s home, I will offer to buy this horse from him so we can leave immediately.”

“You have coin?”

“Aye.” His father had taught him to carry a bit of gold in his boot, just in case. “Not a fortune, but enough to buy—”

“Two horses. I do not like being hemmed in like this.”

Hunter grinned ruefully, glad his thick tunic kept her from knowing how he felt about the forced intimacy. What was it about this grubby, rebellious lass that made him want to forget the feud? His desire for her was inappropriate and inconvenient. Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore it. “Two horses then.”

“And once we’ve got them, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“After I take you home.”

She swiveled her head, pinning him with wide blue eyes. “Nay, you cannot know where I live.”

“Nor can I let you wander about the countryside alone. What if you chanced upon the Bells?”

“Better that than to lead Jock McKie to our hideaway.”

I would not betray you. But Hunter knew she wouldn’t believe him. “Let us take each step in turn.”

Allisun snorted and faced front again. “You can take whatever steps you like, but I’ll not be showing you our camp.” Despite her brave words, she was shaking inside, her mind racing to find a way out of this damnable situation.

“I do not think Derk Neville will harm us,” Hunter said after a few moments. “He seems a decent man.”

“Looks can be deceiving, especially hereabouts.”

“Aye,” Hunter mused. “I’ve heard Borderers are a rough lot. Constant feuds. Raiding, arson, kidnapping. ’Tis said robbery and blackmail are so common they’re considered callings.”

“That is not true.”

“Nay? What of the Elliots and the Armstrongs?”

“They are riding families.”

“Meaning?”

“They make their way by raiding and reiving.”

“My point exactly.”

“But not everyone is like them. Most folk tend to their herds and their hearths.”

“Unless someone steals their stock,” said Hunter. “In which case, they ride hard after the raiders.”

“Aye. The hot trod, we call it.”

“Legalized cattle rustling, more like.”

“The hot trod is only to reclaim what was stolen. Would you deny folk the right to get back what was theirs?”

“And mayhap take a bit more into the bargain?”

“Some might, especially if they had kinfolk hurt or killed in the original raid, but my da never held with such things.”

Hunter listened to the passion with which she spoke of her father. Again he wondered what sort of man Alexander Murray had been. His own memory of the one time they’d met was bitter. “You cannot convince me your father never took what was not his.”

“Well, he never took your aunt. She came willingly.”

“I do not believe you.” Yet he vaguely recalled Jock saying something about Alex sniffing around Brenna at a Truce Day meet.

“I wish it were not true. I wish it had never happened.”

“But why? She and Jock had not been married long.” Through his mind drifted the sounds of their voices raised in argument. A quarrel, one they had made up. He remembered, too, the sounds of their lovemaking.

“They were in love,” Allie said nastily.

Lust, more likely. It had been leading couples astray since Adam and Eve. It struck Hunter that he could be falling into the same trap. “Can you prove he did not kidnap her?”

“No more than you can prove he did.”

Hunter scowled.

“Foul weather, ain’t it,” said Derk, coming to ride alongside them.

“Aye,” Hunter muttered.

“The raiding season’ll soon be upon us.” Derk wiped a drop of water from his bulbous nose. “Hard times then.”

“Is the threat so constant?” Hunter asked idly.

“Oh, aye.” Derk shrugged. “There’s little chance a band of broken men would attack a tower as stout and well guarded as mine, but if the great riding families take it in their mind to come this way...well, then it’d be fight or pay blackmail.”

“Because you’re English?”

“Don’t matter much. Does it, lass?” He winked at Allisun. “There’s English reivers just as like to cross the Tweed and burn me out as attack my Scots neighbors.”

What a revolting way to live. “The Border Wardens?”

“Do what they can. Last year Rob Croser and his band ravaged the land around Jedburgh. Killed ten, left another dozen bad hurt. Andy Kerr caught him driving a herd of stolen stock. Hanged thirty Crosers on the spot, the Warden did.”

“Without a trial?”

“Well, Andy feared if they waited about for that, Rob’s son would gather up his men and their Nixon kin and get Rob free.”

Border justice, Hunter thought, gut tightening with revulsion. His father had said that in this wild land, men were both victim and conqueror. “Such constant strife breeds hard men and women,” Ross Carmichael had added.

Thinking of the woman seated before him, Hunter could only agree. And yet he wondered what would become of Allisun when they parted company. Would she die? Would his uncle be the one to kill her or order her killed?

Much as he wanted to avenge his aunt’s kidnapping, Hunter did not know if he could live with that. It had been much easier to hate the Murrays when they were a faceless foe.

“Dinna fret about yer safety,” said Derk. “Ye’re welcome to stay with us till yer ankle’s healed, then I’ll give ye a pair of horses and a guide to get ye where ye’re going.”

“My thanks. That is most generous, is it not, Allie?”

Suspiciously so. Allisun grunted and watched Derk closely.

“Not at all,” Derk said expansively. “We’ve plenty of room now the repairs have finally been completed. The tower was in such deplorable shape my wife spoke against buying it. But it came cheap and is so well located I figured it would be worth the trouble and expense of fixing it. ’Tis situated on a bluff that commands a sweeping view of the valley. No chance of anyone sneaking up on my tower. The fields have not been grazed in several years, and provide rich feed for my stock. The river nearby is filled with salmon. What more could a man ask?”

“It sounds a veritable paradise,” said Hunter.

Allisun was less charmed. As the two men chatted about defenses, she watched the Neville out of the corner of her eye, searching for some sign of evil in his manner. By the time Derk called a halt, she was jumpy and grumpy.

Hunter reined in their horse beside the meandering stream. Dismounting, he reached up for her. “You’ll feel better once you’ve, er, stretched your legs.”

“I am fine.” Allisun ducked under his hands and slid to the ground. Her legs wobbled, but she caught hold of the horse’s stirrup to steady herself. “Just fine.”

“I can see that.” Humor danced in his eyes.