The Arrow: A Highland Guard Novel (The Highland Guard) (5 page)

“A sound plan,” the king said with a nod.

Gregor held back a grimace. “It should have been.”

“But?”

Christ, this was like pulling his own teeth. “But our presence became known and the English surrounded the cottage where we were hiding. Fortunately, the previous occupants had dug a hole under the floor to preserve their winter stores, and we hid in there while the soldiers searched.”

“That couldn’t have been too comfortable.”

That was putting it mildly. Three well over six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered warriors jammed in a space no more than five feet by five feet for nearly an hour had been hell.

“Good thing my cousin smells so sweet from all that bathing,” MacSorley said, referring to MacRuairi’s well-known penchant for cleanliness. “The whole place smelled like roses.”

MacRuairi gave his cousin the cold, I’m-going-to-stick-a-knife-in-your-back-when-you-least-expect-it look that had earned him the war name “Viper.”

“You were damned lucky not to be taken,” Bruce said.

No one argued with him.

The king sat back in his chair, crossing his arms contemplatively. “So is anyone going to tell me how your presence in the village became known?”

Gregor didn’t need to look to know that MacSorley was fighting laughter and dying to make some kind of jest—especially as it was one of his favorite topics to jest about. You’d think that after seven years he’d grow tired of it.

Gregor should be so damned lucky.

Usually, it didn’t bother him, but this time it could have gotten them all killed. His mouth fell in a hard line. “It seems the farmer’s young daughter couldn’t keep a secret and decided to tell a few of her friends we were there.”

“A few?” MacSorley said. “The enterprising lass sold nearly a dozen tickets to see the ‘most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life.’ ” He added the last in the dreamy, singsongy voice of a sixteen-year-old lass that made Gregor itch to put his fist through that gleaming grin.

“Tickets?” Bruce asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”

MacRuairi nodded, smirking. “Aye, at a half-penny apiece. And all these years, we’ve been getting to look at him for free.”

Gregor shot him a glare. Now MacRuairi was making jests? Christ, hell had truly frozen over.

“I told you not to remove your helm,” MacSorley said, still smirking.

“For three days?” Gregor replied exasperatedly, raking his hair back with his fingers. It was so bloody ridiculous. It wasn’t the fact that he was an elite warrior in the Highland Guard taking on the most dangerous missions that was going to get him killed, it was his cursed face.

Although he had to admit there were times when it wasn’t a curse—in the alehouse last night, for example, with that pretty, buxom serving lass who’d crept into his bed—but it sure as hell didn’t have a place in war.

Just once he’d like to meet a woman who didn’t take one look at his face and pledge her undying love. Or at least one who wasn’t married to one of his brethren.

Gregor stood silently as MacSorley and MacRuairi exchanged a few more barbs pointed in his direction. By the time they were done, even the king was chuckling.

Aye, it was bloody hilarious. He supposed there were a lot worse things than having women throw themselves at him, but sometimes it began to wear.

After a minute Bruce sobered. “So how long do you think it’s going to be before someone connects ‘the most handsome man she’s ever seen’ who was part of the failed
attack on Berwick with Gregor MacGregor, the famed archer and ‘most handsome man in Scotland’?”

Gregor cringed again. Christ, he hated that moniker. “I don’t know, sire.”

That his anonymity in the Highland Guard had possibly been jeopardized was one of the worst parts of the whole fiasco in the village. They were all still reeling from the traitor Alex Seton’s defection to the enemy. He’d betrayed them all. God help their former brother-in-arms if they ever came face to face with him in battle. Although Seton’s former partner Robbie Boyd had been certain Seton would inform the English of their identities, thus far he hadn’t. But with what had happened in the village, Gregor knew it was only a matter of time before he was unmasked.

Having his identity hidden was one of the reasons he’d been so eager to join the Highland Guard. The anonymity—the mask—gave him freedom. He would earn a name for himself by his sword—or rather, his bow—and nothing else. There were no distractions like there were at the Highland Games. No well-meaning relatives like his uncle Malcolm, chief of the MacGregor clan, telling him how to help his clan by marrying one of the women who were only too eager to take him for a husband. Gregor would defeat the English, help see the man who had been more a father to him than his own secured on the throne, and do his duty to his clan on his own merit. By deed and skill alone.

“Aye, well, neither do I,” the king said, “but I think it’s best if you stay out of sight for a while.” Gregor started to protest, but Bruce cut him off. “Only a few weeks. It will be Christmas soon anyway. I will send for you when we are ready to take Perth.” The king intended to begin laying siege to Perth Castle in early January. He smiled appeasingly. “God knows we can all use a little break. A few weeks to relax and clear our heads. I need you all at one hundred percent.”

The words were directed at all of them, but Gregor wasn’t fooled. The king knew Gregor had been struggling of late. That was the real reason for this “break.” Gregor had let him down. Shame twisted in his gut, but all he could do was nod.

“Besides,” Bruce said, handing him a folded piece of parchment, “this arrived from your brother a few days ago.”

Gregor let out a groan of deep dread, eyeing the note as if it carried the plague. Bloody hell, what had she done this time?

He took the note with reluctance, not wanting to know. Gregor hadn’t had much schooling, but his younger brother John had been meant for the church before their two older brothers had died, and he could write as well as read. Gregor had only a bit of the latter skill, but it was enough to make out the short missive. “Come as soon as you can. Emergency.”

Rather than raise alarm, the note only made him curse.

“Problems?” Bruce asked innocently.

He might be king, but that didn’t mean Gregor couldn’t glare at him from time to time. “It seems I’m needed at home.”

“Something wrong, Arrow? Don’t tell me those golden wings of yours have finally tarnished in your adoring wee ward’s eyes?” MacSorley said, guessing, as the king had, what had provoked the curse.

“She’s not my ward, you arse!” He ignored the reference to the lass’s mistaking him for an angel. Thank God for Helen MacKay. Until she’d arrived and assumed the nickname, MacSorley had called him Angel.

“Then what is she?” MacRuairi asked.

Hell if he knew. A termagant? A penance? God’s test of his sanity? The lass was always landing in some kind of trouble. From the moment he brought her home, she’d been causing “emergencies” of one sort or another.

Like the time she’d entered a local archery contest dressed as a boy in a hooded cloak and bested every one of the local lads, nearly causing a riot. Damn it, that was probably his fault. But he’d never imagined when he told her that she could learn to protect herself that the lass would take to warfare quite so enthusiastically. John, who’d been teaching her, said she was better than some men he knew. His brother was exaggerating, of course; she was only a lass—and not a very big one at that.

But his first impression of her all those years ago had been right. The lass was a fierce little thing. A real fighter. She was also stubborn, proud, opinionated, bossy, and overconfident. All fine characteristics in a man, but not in a young girl.

It was hard to stay angry with her, though. She wasn’t a beauty by any means, but she was cute in an unassuming fashion. Until she smiled. When she smiled, she was as cute as the devil.

She also adored him. Which made him bloody uncomfortable. Especially lately, as she grew older. She’d become a … distraction. Which was exactly what he needed to be rid of.

“So when are we going to meet this wee lass?” Bruce said. Not such a wee lass anymore, Gregor recalled uneasily. The last time he’d been home—a year ago, when his mother had died—that fact had been brought home to him in an embarrassing fashion, when Cate had broken down crying and somehow ended up in his arms. And on his lap. “What was her name? Caitrina?”

Gregor nodded, surprised that the king remembered. Six years ago, when they’d returned to camp after leaving the lass with his mother, Bruce had been horrorstruck by what had happened to the villagers. He, like the rest of them, had been deeply moved by the lass’s tragedy and had taken a personal interest in her.

“Aye, Caitrina Kirkpatrick.” Though his mother had called her Cate.

“How old is she now?” Bruce asked.

Gregor shrugged. “Seventeen or eighteen.”

“Hell, Arrow,” MacRuairi said. “If you want to be rid of the chit so badly, why don’t you just find her a husband?”

If he weren’t such a mean bastard, Gregor would have hugged him. Of course! Marriage! Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

There was only one problem. He had to find someone fool enough to take her on.

Two
 

Dunlyon, Roro, Perthshire, Scottish Highlands

This time when Gregor came home, Cate was going to be ready. She could no longer be patient.

As she’d done every day for the past week since John had sent the letter, she dressed with particular care. As she normally didn’t take
any
care, this was quite an extraordinary undertaking. The “boyishly” short, just-past-her-shoulder, dark hair that she usually kept tied back with string, a piece of leather, or whatever else she happened to have on hand had been brushed and brushed until it was as glossy and shiny as polished mahogany to hang loose around her shoulders.

A simple circlet of gold, given to her by Lady Marion before she’d succumbed to the fever, rested upon her head, securing the gossamer-thin pink veil that covered—but did not hide—the dark tresses. Her hair was one of her best features, and she had to take advantage of whatever she could.

Cate didn’t need to pinch her cheeks as some girls did; hers were rosy enough from all the time she spent outdoors. Her lips, too, didn’t need any color, as they were naturally a dark, vibrant red.

She wrinkled her nose. Unfortunately, the freckles she couldn’t do anything about. Cate told herself they added
character, but she’d never convinced her mother or Lady Marion to agree.

She stepped back from the looking glass procured from the bottom of one of Lady Marion’s trunks, held out the deep rose velvet skirts of her
cotehardie
, and chewed anxiously on her lip, not knowing quite what to make of her attempts.

She hadn’t been sure about the color—she’d never liked pink—but Lady Marion had insisted it would be “beautiful” on her. That was an exaggeration, but it did seem to flatter her coloring. The gown was one of three that Lady Marion had insisted on buying her two years ago on Cate’s eighteenth saint’s day.
“You are a lady now, sweeting,”
the older woman had said with a fond smile.
“You need at least a few fine gowns.”

It had been so important to her, Cate hadn’t had the heart to argue, but she’d never seemed to find the occasion to wear them. Frankly, dressing in such fine things made her feel a little silly. Like she was pretending to be someone she was not.

Her father had given her a beautiful dress once. It had made her feel like a princess. When he left, she’d shoved it under the bed and never looked at it again.

Her chest squeezed with a longing she refused to acknowledge. She wasn’t a lady, no matter who her father happened to be.

Her attention returned to the strange woman in the looking glass.

“Men want a woman to act like a woman, my love.”
Her mother’s voice mingled with Lady Marion’s in her memory—in so many ways they’d been one in the same. Both gentle, sweet ladies. Nothing like Cate.

Her chin set with determination. She would be soft and feminine if it killed her. But goodness gracious, did being a lady have to be so blasted uncomfortable?

She tugged at the fabric around her bodice, trying to pull
it up. Two years had added a certain dimension to parts of her body that she was not quite used to, making the gown a bit tight in the bodice. But as that was the fashion, she supposed no one would notice.

Cate had given up the breeches under the skirts when Lady Marion nearly fainted the first time she’d seen them, but she’d made few other concessions. She would wear shoes in the winter but not in the summer. And no matter how plain, the simple “peasant lad’s” clothes were what she felt comfortable in while training.

She’d just finished her critical appraisal when the door burst open behind her. Assuming it was Ete, who was supposed to have helped her with her hair and veil but was called away when Maddy started crying (screeching, actually), Cate didn’t turn right away. It was only when the silence became noticeable that she looked and realized that it wasn’t the maidservant but John.