Pride Of Lions

“She died when I was six.”

Hunter’s anger leached away. “I am sorry.” Recalling the gentle guidance and unswerving love of his own mother, Hunter felt a stab of pity for this prickly lass. With his free hand, he gently grazed her cheek.

She knocked his hand aside, her eyes flashing blue fire, her chin mutinously high. “I’m not going with you.”

Beneath her defiance, Hunter saw a flicker of fear. It stabbed at his conscience, reminding him that he was responsible for her safety. Whether she liked it or not. “Aye, you are. I’ll not leave you here alone and on foot with the Bells—”

“You are not responsible for me,” she snapped.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Derk asked, grinning as he waded across the stream.

Allisun glared at Derk and tried vainly to wrench her hand from Hunter’s grip. “We are not—”

“Of a sort,” Hunter interjected, seeing an answer to the questions he knew Derk would pose about who they were. “We were running away.” Beside him, he heard Allisun draw breath to protest. He stilled it by wrapping a loverlike arm around her waist and squeezing... hard.

“Humph,” Allisun wheezed, exhaling noisily.

“Her family does not approve of me.” Hunter grinned in response to her outraged expression. Under cover of dropping a kiss on her brow, he whispered, “If you do not go along with me, he may learn you’re a Murray and decide to collect the reward Uncle Jock has offered for you.”

Her eyes widened, and her mouth snapped shut.

“Truly?” Derk climbed the bank, water streaming from his knee-high boots. His sharp gaze moved from Hunter’s equally fine boots and Spanish-made sword to Allisun’s worn tunic.

Hunter’s nimble mind seized a likely response. “I’m a Highlander,” he confided. “Her kin feared I’d take her north, and they’d never see her again.”

“Highlander, ye say. What clan?”

“Sutherland. I am Hunt Sutherland of Kinduin,” he added, borrowing his Uncle Lucais’s surname and estate.

Derk nodded his head in acknowledgment and turned to Allisun. “And ye, lass?”

“Allie...Allie Hall.”

“Hall?” Derk rubbed his thick gray beard. “From where?”

“Over Moffat way,” she said grudgingly, glaring at Hunter.

“Allie Sutherland, she is now.” Hunter met her scowls with a wide grin. “We are handfasted,” he added, to prevent her from being branded a loose woman.

Allie made a choking sound, her eyes wide with horror. Do you realize what you have done? they silently asked.

Hunter was a little shocked himself. The words had just slipped out before he’d had a chance to think...really think... about the consequences. In some places, merely declaring themselves wed before witnesses was enough to unite a couple for a year and a day. Then if the marriage did not suit them, the couple could separate. They’d be parting much sooner than that, Hunter thought. “’Tis just till we can find a priest and be properly wed,” he added, and hoped Derk would think lack of a permanent ceremony the reason for Allie’s outburst.

“Women set store by that,” Derk said. “’Tis pleased I am to meet ye both. Ah, here come the lads with the horses.”

While Derk went to meet his men, Hunter levered himself to his feet. “I am sorry for that,” he whispered to Allisun. “But I could not have him think you were a...a—”

“Better a whore than your wife,” she snapped.

“You are not the mate I’d choose, either,” Hunter said through set teeth. “But ’tis only for a few days, till my ankle heals and we can go our separate ways.”

“If they will let us.” Fear shadowed her eyes, and her lips trembled slightly as she watched the Nevilles close in on them.

Hunter felt another unwelcome stab of sympathy. Poor thing, she’d been hunted and hounded most of her life. “Do not be afraid.” He put an arm around her. “I will not abandon you.”

Allisun. threw off his arm and glared up at him. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“Aye.” Twelve years ago he’d been unable to save his aunt. He would not fail another woman.

“We are enemies,” she hissed as the Nevilles led forth a horse. “Why should you care what happens to me?”

“I do not know.” Hunter studied her delicate profile, the high cheekbones, haughty nose and willful chin. She was a complex lass, her bravery unquenched by hardship, her beauty undimmed by poverty. But the years had marked her, he thought, recalling the lush mouth that was made to smile but seldom did, the eyes so often shuttered and unreadable.

What was it about her that moved him?

The storm that had threatened the night before began in earnest as they set out.

The cool drizzle suited Allisun’s mood exactly. She wanted to feel as miserable on the outside as she did on the inside, torn by concern for her kinsmen and apprehension for herself.

“Here, this will keep off the rain.” Hunter draped over them both an oiled cloth he’d had in his saddle roll.

“I am used to being wet.” Allisun flung back the cloth.

“Allie, ’tis possible they are back home, safe and dry.”

“Our roof leaks,” she snapped.

“I am sorry for that.”

“Jock is not. He burned us out of our tower.” The memory of that chaotic night, filled with fire and screams of pain, bolstered her anger against Hunter.

“Getting sick yourself will not change that.” He tucked the oiled cloth securely around her, then clamped an arm about her waist to keep it there.

Allisun fumed, trapped against the hard wall of his chest. It was like being enveloped by a furnace. She tried to maintain her stiff posture, but the heat from his body seeped in to banish the cold from hers. Lulled by the warmth and the horse’s rolling gait, her tired muscles sagged and her weary mind drifted back over the night’s events.

Damn Hunter for being so confounding. His words, his actions confused her. She did not like him, but her reasons for hating him were no longer as clear as they had been. When he’d first guessed her identity, she’d expected to be abused or even killed. After all, he’d spent the past twelve years believing her father had murdered his aunt. But instead of taking his anger out on her, he had treated her with gentleness and respect. Oh, his high-handedness grated on her independent spirit, but his dry wit tickled her latent sense of humor. And that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. How could a man be infuriating and amusing at the same time?

Well, there was nothing humorous about the situation in which she now found herself. Handfasted to Hunter Carmichael.

Her parents and brothers were doubtless turning over in their graves. The only consolation she could offer to them, and to herself, was that it was temporary. As soon as they reached Derk Neville’s tower, she’d find a way to escape.

“Allie?”

“Hmm?” Realizing she’d slumped into him, she stiffened.

“Nay. Lean back, rest. I but wanted to tell you—”

“I am not tired.” She sat bolt upright.