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He touched the scratch she’d left on his neck, grateful she had not drawn blood.
Her eyes, which he had thought to turn soft with pleasure, narrowed, hard with fury.
‘It’s a Brunson you’re facing,’ he said, trying a smile. ‘Not a Storwick.’
She raised both sword and dirk, the larger wobbling in her grip. ‘It’s a man I’m facing who thinks what I want is of no consequence if it interferes with his privileges and pleasures.’
Had he imagined the echo of the bedchamber in her voice? No more.
He raised his eyebrows, opened his arms and made a slight bow. ‘A thousand pardons.’ Words as insincere as the feelings behind them.
She frowned. ‘You are a stranger here, so you know no better. And because you are a Brunson, I’ll let you keep your head, but I’ll warn you just once. You will not do that again. Ever.’
She lowered her sword, slowly.
You are a stranger. She was the Brunson, besting him with a sword, displacing him at the family table. His temper rose. ‘And what if I do?’
The blade rose, this time, not pointed at his throat, but between his legs. ‘If you do, you won’t have to worry about bedding a woman ever again.’
He swallowed, gingerly, his body on fire. Only because she had challenged him. Nothing more. No man could desire such a woman.
‘Then have no worries on that score, Catie Gilnock,’ he said, flush with anger. ‘When next I bed a woman, it most certainly will not be you.’
Cate watched him go, struggling to keep her sword upright. Only when he was safely inside the tower did she lower her blade and raise her fingers to her lips.
He had dared to kiss her. And for just a moment, she had felt what other women must.
What she had thought never to feel.
After the raid, after her father died, after … the rest, she had been mercifully numb. Months were a blur. Some days, the only sensation she felt was Belde’s nose, nudging aside tears she didn’t remember shedding.
Then the numbness faded, and the fear came.
Bit by bit, day by day, she fought it. Piece by piece, she built a wall to hold it back.
Now, no one questioned why she was not like other women. But Johnnie Brunson did. His careless smile was a cruel reminder of doubts she had smothered and regrets she had suppressed. When he looked at her, they haunted her anew. Who she had been. Who she could never be. All the things she wanted to forget, the questions she did not want to ask, wanted no one to ask.
The questions she would never answer.
She carried her sword back to the armoury and polished the blade, reluctant to rejoin the wake and see him again.
Surely she would not have to fight Johnnie Brunson for long. He’d soon learn that no outlander could dictate to a Borderer who or how he could fight. This land, these people, were beyond the whims of a king.
But fight she would, and keep fighting until Scarred Willie Storwick lay cold beneath the ground. Not, as most thought, because of what he had done to her father.
Because of what he had done to her.
Chapter Two
John watched Cate return to the hall and join her men near the hearth without so much as a glance his way.
The wake was in full swing and John was surrounded by strangers. Rob had gone upstairs to sit with the body, which was never allowed to be left alone before burial. Soon enough, John would have to face his father’s corpse, knowing the sightless eyes would never see the king’s badge of thistle that John had so proudly pinned to his chest.
It seemed to impress no one here on the Borders. Not even the Gilnock wench.
In truth, he had not planned to kiss her, but when she refused to surrender, when her eyes clashed with his as strongly as her blade, he found himself … roused. Even then, he had expected little more than the taste of cold steel. But her lips, thin and sharp as her tongue, warmed, drew him in …
And then rejected him.
She might not have meant it as a challenge, but that was his body’s translation.
Women did not refuse Johnnie Brunson.
He watched her, surrounded by her men, wondering what kind of a woman she was. Flaxen hair framed a face hard, sharp and spare as the rest of her. At least, that’s what he had thought until he was close enough to feel her breasts against his chest and see the sweep of her thick lashes.
He forced his thoughts away from rumpled sheets and throaty laughs. She did not seem to offer stories of her own, but she laughed at the others and encouraged them to tell their own tales.
In that, at least, she seemed a woman. She was likely as changeable as any he had known. All he must do was figure out how to change her.
Beside John at the table, the men who had ridden with Red Geordie were swapping stories of Storwick cattle stolen and recovered and stolen again and making promises of the cattle they would steal in Geordie’s memory.
John did not waste breath to argue. Black Rob would decide when, where and if they raided again, but John must not force that choice too soon.
When next John turned to look for Cate, she had gone.
‘Would you sit a watch with him?’ His sister’s voice, soft, came over his shoulder.
He turned to see her, and Rob, faces scored with grief, behind him.
‘It should be kin beside him,’ Rob began, as if John were kin no more.
‘Rob, please.’ Bessie’s voice was weak and weary.
He met his brother’s eyes, clashing as they had, even as boys. ‘I am as much his son as you are,’ he said. At least, that was what he had told himself whenever he had doubts. ‘I will take my turn.’
He rose. No other choice. He must face his farewell.
Alone, he climbed the stairs and paused at the open door to the room where his father lay. The candle that would burn throughout the night flickered on the chest by the hearth.
And at the foot of the bed, Cate Gilnock sat, head bowed, as if she were kin with the right to sit with him.
Anger pushed him into the room to claim his place. His brother, his sister, even the men who rode beside Geordie the Red were closer to him than John was. That, he had accepted.
But not this woman, this interloper.
‘I sit with him alone,’ he said, voice cold.
She jumped up and reached for her dagger, stopping only when she recognised him. ‘If you cannot respect his word, you should not sit with him at all.’
Her words twisted inside him, sharp as a blade. ‘Alone,’ he said, not trusting himself to say more.
Wordless, she lowered her blade and stepped outside.
His father lay in the curtained bed where he had died, arms at his side, wrapped in white linen. John could hardly imagine his gentle, doe-eyed sister having prepared the body for burial, but here he lay, even in death, his face as fierce as in John’s memories.
He took a step forwards. He should pay his respects. He should pray for his father’s soul as Cate no doubt had done. Or perhaps he should be fearful that the man’s spirit, vengeful, might still haunt the room. He should feel … something.
Instead, he felt as if he stood in an empty room.
Hard to even picture this body as his father, straight, strong and spare of speech with no time for his youngest boy except brief minutes to drill him in the wielding of the staff and sword. He had not been the son favoured with the old man’s care and training. John had been the one pushed from the nest and sent to the king, his loss mourned no more than that of a cow or a sheep.
And in ten years, never a word sent except notice of his mother’s death, as if John had ceased to exist once he had left Brunson land.
Well, he was back and his father, in truth, was dead as he had been to John for the last ten years.
Taking a step closer to the bed, he was swept with a wave of grief that weakened his knees. Staggering, he gripped the corner post of the bed to stay upright. He thought Rob was the one who needed to grieve, Rob the one who needed time to adjust to his father’s loss before he shouldered the demands of the head of the family.
Now, John faced the truth. He was the one for whom it was too soon. Too soon to accept that his father was gone. Too soon to release the glimmer of hope he’d felt as he rode across the hills, proudly wearing his armour. Hope that he might make peace with the man at last.
Too late for that now.
Peace, if peace were possible, would have to be made with his brother.
The air stirred behind him. The room was empty no more.
‘When did you last see him?’ Cate’s voice.
He did not turn, but spoke the memory. ‘I was twelve. He sent me to Edinburgh, with just enough men to assure I’d arrive safely. We rode as far as the burn, crossed the water, I turned back to wave…’
But his father had already left the parapet and, in that moment, left his life.
John shook his head, stood straight and turned his back on the body in the bed. There would be no reconciliation now. ‘I last saw him ten years ago.’
Shadows and candlelight softened her face, until he believed, for a moment, that she understood.
Or did he see only pity for a man who did not belong to his family?
He bristled against it. She was the one who did not belong beside the deathbed. ‘Why are you praying over my father as if he were kin? Where is your own?’
‘Dead as yours.’ Whispered, words more vulnerable than any she had yet spoken. ‘At the hand of Scarred Willie Storwick.’
Now. Only now did he understand. ‘So you picked up his sword and his men and vowed vengeance.’
She didn’t bother to nod, and when her eyes met his, the woman’s softness was gone and he faced the warrior again. ‘And your king will have no men of ours until I’ve had it.’
Her words, a vow, chilled him, but hot anger rose to wipe out the feeling. This stubborn woman was his enemy, as much or more so than the Storwicks across the border. ‘The king will have his men, or you’ll wish he had.’
She sniffed. ‘I’m not afraid of your king.’
‘I was not speaking of the king.’
Her eyes widened and he regretted his threat, but her obstinacy had swamped all his plans of persuasive charm.
He leaned closer, this time resisting her lips. ‘But the king, too, knows something of revenge. That’s why he’s going to destroy the man who’s held him captive these last few years.’
‘If he’s a man who knows revenge, he will know why I need mine.’
‘He won’t. Not if it stands in his way.’
He wanted to best her now, as he’d been unable to do in the yard. ‘So if you’re of the Brunsons, you’ll do as we do. The king will have his men. I am here to make sure of it.’
‘Johnnie!’ Bessie stood at the door, the faintest hint of judgement in her voice.
How long had she stood there, silent as a wraith, watching?
And what had she seen?
She did not wait for him to ask. ‘You’ve travelled long today. Get your rest. I’ll sit with him.’
He walked out, silent, without a backward glance at the bed.
Or at Cate Gilnock.
‘Did you see to the dog?’ Bessie moved so silently, it always surprised Cate when she spoke.
‘I tied him,’ Cate answered, returning to sit on her stool. ‘With the horses.’
‘I’m sorry you must be separated.’
Silent with surprise, Cate blinked. She thought she had fooled them all, that they judged Belde only a dog, valuable for tracking and nothing more.
Bessie pulled a stool beside Cate’s and sat, then let her head fall into her hands with sorrow, or fatigue.
Cate reached out to touch her shoulder, uncertain how to help. ‘Let me get you something.’
Bessie shook her head without opening her eyes. ‘They’ll be here, coming and going all night.’ Her voice soft, still. Then, she sat up, straightened her shoulders and met Cate’s eyes, coming to herself in a way so similar to her brother’s that Cate blinked. ‘I’ll sleep later.’
Bessie was the woman every man expected: chaste, quiet, placid and peaceful. One who looked out on the world with an open gaze, as if she knew and was perfectly content with her lot in life.
And though the two women had shared a room and a bed for near two years, Cate still knew no more of her than that.
‘Your brother is not like the others.’ He threatened the defences that had served her so well.
Bessie nodded, not asking which brother Cate meant. ‘We were close when he was a boy.’
Cate could see that they would be, both lean with rust-coloured hair, unlike Black Rob, who favoured his mother’s people.
Then, Bessie smiled, sadness banished. ‘We called him Johnnie Blunkit.’
