The Arrow: A Highland Guard Novel (The Highland Guard) (33 page)

She did. She was going to force these two to spend time with one another, even if they didn’t like it. And what better way than having Gregor teach the lad something he loved?

The famed archer made a harsh scoffing sound low in his throat. “Then why is he putting so much weight on his back foot to start? He should be more balanced when he is first learning. The string should be between these two fingers,” he made the adjustment for Pip, “not these two. He’s drawing too fast and jerky. His hand should stop at the lower lobe of his ear, his elbow should come out, he should be looking at the mark, not the arrowhead—he’s closing one eye, for Christ’s sake—and he’s holding too long before loosing.” He looked furious, as if he’d been personally slighted or she’d just committed some sacrilege. “Bloody hell, at each stage of standing, nocking, drawing, holding, and loosing, he’s doing something wrong.”

Cate crossed her arms and glared back at him, feigning anger. “I thought I was doing all that. But by all means, if you think you can do a better job, go right ahead.”

Gregor’s gaze sharpened. Blast it, he was too shrewd. He guessed what she was doing. Perhaps she’d gone a little too
far with all her errors, but she’d wanted to make sure he noticed.

Conscious of the young boy between them who was doing his best to look as if it didn’t matter to him either way, Cate held her breath.
Please don’t reject him again
.

Gregor held her gaze for a long pause, and then gave her a sharp nod. It wasn’t acquiescence as much as an acknowledgment that she’d won this battle—but he wasn’t conceding the war.

The next hour passed quickly as Gregor instructed Pip in the proper form and technique of the longbow. It was obvious Gregor was comfortable in the role of teacher, and she realized as she watched him that she was probably seeing what it was like when he worked with the men under his command.

The English had become feared for their bowmen—especially the Welsh—but the Highlands and forests of Galloway had also bred bowmen of great repute. When the time came to face the English, Bruce would not be without skilled archers. Highly skilled archers, if Gregor had any influence on their training.

It was clear that not only was he gifted with skill, he was gifted in the ability to convey that skill to others—the two didn’t always go together. He knew exactly how much information to give, when to make corrections, and when to give praise.

He demonstrated but did not shoot his own bow, although she was glad to see that he had brought it. When she mentioned that she hadn’t seen him practicing with it of late and asked him if something was wrong, he brushed her off by turning the focus to her shooting.

She was surprised when he made a few slight adjustments to her technique that immediately improved her accuracy. Like Pip, she used a smaller, lighter bow made for her lesser strength. Trying to draw Gregor’s bow was like trying to draw an iron bar. She could barely move it a few
inches. The size of the muscles in his back and arms suddenly took on new meaning and importance. He needed to be that strong to wield the bow.

Pip wasn’t the only one disappointed when Gregor put a stop to the practice. “We’d better start back, if we are going to be in time for the midday meal.”

With most of the guests already arrived for the feast tomorrow, skipping it was out of the question. She gave a disappointed sigh anyway. “Must we?”

His mouth curved. “Aye, we must.” He turned to Pip. “The way to get better is to treat each arrow you shoot at practice the same way you would at battle. This is not a skill that will be bettered by the sheer number of shots. It’s making each one count. You need to build up shoulder and back strength—remember it’s not in the arm; you are bending into the bow. Shooting when you are tired will do nothing to improve your skill.”

The past hour had done what Cate had hoped. Pip was no longer looking at Gregor with veiled animosity and suspicion; he was looking at him like a beaten pup that had just had someone pet him for the first time. He was at once desperate for the kindness, but also leery of accepting it for fear that it wouldn’t last.

When Pip nodded, Cate had to look away, fearing one of them would see the tears in her eyes.

It would have been a perfect morning, if it hadn’t been marred by what happened on the ride back to Dunlyon.

They were deep in the forest when she sensed a shift in Gregor’s watchfulness. As with most warriors, he always demonstrated a high level of alertness and awareness of his surroundings, no matter what the circumstances; but this was different. This was the sharpness and edginess of battle. Everything about him seemed harder.

Pip was riding ahead, and Gregor slightly behind her, when she turned to him and said, “What’s wrong?”

His jaw had tensed, and his mouth was drawn in a tight
line. “I’m not sure. I felt something. In the hills to the north.” He didn’t need to tell her not to look in that direction. “I think someone is watching us.”

Her skin prickled, and she instinctively stiffened. Her heart started to pound, climbing quickly toward her throat. “What should we do?”

“When we get to the fork ahead, I want you to ride for the tower house with the lad. I’m going to circle around and see if I can sneak up on our watcher from behind.”

“But what if there is more than one?”

For some reason that made him smile. “I will be fine, Cate. You have nothing to worry about.” His face grew grave. “But I am trusting you to get Pip back to Dunlyon safely. Tell John what has happened. I will return as quickly as I can. Make some excuse to the guests.”

She nodded. Before she had time to argue or panic, he was gone—maybe he’d counted on that.

She did as he’d bid, returning to the castle with Pip and informing John of what had occurred. She did her best to do her duty as the lady of the castle, presiding over the midday meal and seeing that the guests were well attended, but her head—along with her heart—was somewhere else.

She couldn’t seem to breathe until Gregor walked through the door of the Hall two hours later, the long meal still going on. He caught her gaze before he was surrounded. Expression grim, he shook his head.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Gregor had not faced danger, but that meant whatever was out there was still there.

Eighteen
 

Cate’s nose was pressed so closely to the wall she was probably getting splinters. He had her hands pinned and was immobilizing the rest of her by crushing her with the weight of his body.

It was hard to breathe. For one moment, she felt a flicker of panic but pushed it back. She tried to move her foot behind his ankle, but he anticipated the move and used his leg and thigh to inhibit her movement.

He pressed her even harder. “That won’t work this time, Cate. What else can you do?
Think
.”

There was an urgency to Gregor’s voice that she didn’t understand. But his words only increased her frustration. What could she do? She couldn’t do anything, blast it! He was as strong as a bloody ox! She could feel her pulse racing and her blood heating as the sense of helplessness mixed with anger. Every instinct in her body rebelled at this feeling of powerlessness.

But she wasn’t powerless. With a sudden clarity of purpose, she stopped struggling. The moment he eased the pressure, she reacted. She bent her knees and slumped just enough to bring her head forward and snap it back hard against his face. Because he was so tall, she connected with his jaw and not his nose, but it was hard enough to make a cracking sound.

He let out a grunt of pain and instinctively bent forward. Taking advantage of the opening, she twisted around,
slamming her elbow into his ribs at the same time that her ankle laced around his foot.

He didn’t fall to the ground, but the imbalance was enough for her to slip away.

He was rubbing his jaw when she turned back to him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “That was good instinct. When you’re ready we’ll try again, but this time we’ll practice what to do if someone has you backed against a wall with a knife to your throat.”

She nodded, taking in the focused expression on his face. She knew she should be glad that he was taking her training seriously
—very
seriously—but she sensed a larger purpose at work. He was working her much harder than he ever had before. Almost as if he was trying to cram every possible horrible situation she could come up against into a single training session.

Gregor retrieved a skin he’d filled with well water from a pile of weapons he’d brought for practice, drank deeply from it, and then handed it to her. Although it was a cold, overcast day, with an occasional light flurry of snow swirling in the air, her cheeks were flushed and warm from her exertions.

She handed the skin back to him when she was done. “Is something bothering you, Gregor?”

“Nay.”

She frowned. “Are you sure? You seem rather
intense
today. I wondered if it might have something to do with earlier? I thought you said you didn’t find anyone.”

“I didn’t. But someone had been there. More than someone—I counted at least five sets of footprints.”

“It was probably just travelers passing through.”

His mouth fell in a tight line.

“What?” she asked.

His eyes were a very sharp and intense green when they
met hers. “It wasn’t anyone passing through. They’d been there for at least a few days.”

“How could you tell?”

“What they left behind. They left quickly and didn’t have time to cover their rubbish.”

She wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant thought. “So even if they were there for a few days, why does it bother you, and what does it have to do with me?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he said. “At least not directly. And it might not be anything. Hell, it probably isn’t anything.”

He looked so unsettled—so unlike himself—that she reached for him. “What is it, Gregor? What are you not telling me?”

He held her gaze for a long moment. Finally, he sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “I suppose you have a right to know, and since the secret is already out, I won’t be breaking my oath.”

“What oath?”

He looked around as if he wanted to make sure no one was close enough to hear. Seeing a few of his clansmen moving around near the barracks, he motioned her a short distance away to the far side of the practice yard near the wooden palisade wall. “I haven’t been completely honest with you about my place in the king’s army.”

Her heart stopped, then started to pound furiously. “You haven’t?”

He shook his head. “You were right; there is a little bit more to what I do than serve as a bowman.”

She waited for him to continue, feeling mildly vindicated, but far more concerned about what he was going to reveal. The way was acting, so mysterious and secretive, made her wary.

“Have you ever heard of Bruce’s Phantoms?”

She smiled. “Of course. Everyone has heard of them, but …”

She stopped, her eyes widening and her mouth rounding in surprise. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It was as if her mind clicked, and things that hadn’t made sense now were clear. “You are a Phantom?”

His mouth quirked with amusement. “So to speak, although as you can see I am not a ghost. Nor was it our idea to be mistaken as such, but the rumor has proved useful over the years to prevent out enemies from finding us.”

“ ‘Us’? How many of there are you?”

He hesitated. “I do not want to tell you more than you need to know. I would not be telling you any of this, but it seems my place in the Guard has been compromised.” He gave her a short explanation of what had happened at Berwick, leaving out the tickets. Hawk was bad enough; he didn’t need to hear it from her, too. “We decided to keep our identities secret not only to protect us from our enemies, but also to protect our families. If they could not get to us directly, they might be able to get to us through our loved ones. But this was before most of the men took wives.” He smiled. “Let’s just say keeping the secret from the wives has worked better in theory than in practice. But we have largely been able to keep our identities from being known by others with a couple of exceptions—and now, it seems, with me.”

“So all of this fervor today is because you think I may be in danger?”

He swore. “I probably overreacted, but I don’t want to take any chances. If I thought it would have kept you completely safe, I would have sent you off with Farquhar, no matter how badly I wanted you. But wife or ‘ward,’ it wouldn’t have made a difference. You, John, and Padraig are all at risk.”

She was still too stunned by what he’d revealed to argue about Farquhar. “Do John and Padraig know?”

He shook his head. “I think John suspects. But they will both have to be told.”

Cate just stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time. She’d imagined a lot of things, but not this. “A Phantom? I can’t believe it. They say you are supermen who can move through walls and disappear into the mist. They say you can’t be killed. That you are all giants and—” She stopped a memory from returning. “The men with you that day when you found me. You were all wearing those ghastly helms and the black
cotuns
and plaids. I thought you were demons at first. They are Phantoms, too, aren’t they?”