Return of the Border Warrior

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.’