Pride Of Lions

The sudden movement overset their mount, who shied and sidestepped on the narrow trail.

“Easy.” Hunter’s arm tightened around Allisun’s waist. His muscular thighs bunched beneath her rump as he brought the horse under control.

Allisun was abruptly, vividly aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before. Through the layers of wool that separated them, she could feel the muscles of his chest supporting her back. It unsettled her to find the measured cadence of his heartbeat echoing hers. For some reason the heat radiating from his body made her skin feel too warm and a size too small. Restless, she tried to sit forward.

“Sit still, or you’ll rile our horse,” Hunter murmured. His breath stirred the hair at her temple, sending gooseflesh tingling down her cheek and neck.

Allisun shivered. Was she sickening?

“Are you cold?” He held her closer. The pressure of his arm on her waist scrambled her insides and made the quivering in her belly worse.

“Nay, I tremble with hatred for you.” She wished it were true. Wished she did not like him. “You are my enemy,” she added, as much to remind herself of that.

“I have never done you ill.” He managed to sound hurt.

Allisun bypassed the obvious—that had he not raised the alarm, Jock would never have known whom to blame for Brenna’s disappearance. “You snatched me from my horse, tumbled us down a ravine and tied me to you with this handfasting.”

Hunter’s temper flared, goaded as much by pain and lack of sleep as her accusations. “Ingrate! In all this, I have but tried to protect you. Would you rather I told Derk who you are?” he whispered. “I am not the one with a price on my head.”

She sagged in his arms and shook her head.

Oddly, that small sign of defeat deflated Hunter’s fury. Who could blame her for being prickly and defiant, given what she’d told him about her life. Orphaned. Driven from her home. Forced to dress in rags and live under a leaky roof. Once he might have thought such hardships no more than the Murrays’ due, but that was before he’d met this rare, brave lass. Strangely, he wanted to make it up to her, but he knew she’d reject his sympathy even more vehemently than she did his offers of help. “I wanted to tell you,” he said in a stern voice, parent to child, “that when we reach Derk’s home, I will offer to buy this horse from him so we can leave immediately.”

“You have coin?”

“Aye.” His father had taught him to carry a bit of gold in his boot, just in case. “Not a fortune, but enough to buy—”

“Two horses. I do not like being hemmed in like this.”

Hunter grinned ruefully, glad his thick tunic kept her from knowing how he felt about the forced intimacy. What was it about this grubby, rebellious lass that made him want to forget the feud? His desire for her was inappropriate and inconvenient. Clearing his throat, he tried to ignore it. “Two horses then.”

“And once we’ve got them, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“After I take you home.”

She swiveled her head, pinning him with wide blue eyes. “Nay, you cannot know where I live.”

“Nor can I let you wander about the countryside alone. What if you chanced upon the Bells?”

“Better that than to lead Jock McKie to our hideaway.”

I would not betray you. But Hunter knew she wouldn’t believe him. “Let us take each step in turn.”

Allisun snorted and faced front again. “You can take whatever steps you like, but I’ll not be showing you our camp.” Despite her brave words, she was shaking inside, her mind racing to find a way out of this damnable situation.

“I do not think Derk Neville will harm us,” Hunter said after a few moments. “He seems a decent man.”

“Looks can be deceiving, especially hereabouts.”

“Aye,” Hunter mused. “I’ve heard Borderers are a rough lot. Constant feuds. Raiding, arson, kidnapping. ’Tis said robbery and blackmail are so common they’re considered callings.”

“That is not true.”

“Nay? What of the Elliots and the Armstrongs?”

“They are riding families.”

“Meaning?”

“They make their way by raiding and reiving.”

“My point exactly.”

“But not everyone is like them. Most folk tend to their herds and their hearths.”

“Unless someone steals their stock,” said Hunter. “In which case, they ride hard after the raiders.”

“Aye. The hot trod, we call it.”

“Legalized cattle rustling, more like.”

“The hot trod is only to reclaim what was stolen. Would you deny folk the right to get back what was theirs?”

“And mayhap take a bit more into the bargain?”

“Some might, especially if they had kinfolk hurt or killed in the original raid, but my da never held with such things.”

Hunter listened to the passion with which she spoke of her father. Again he wondered what sort of man Alexander Murray had been. His own memory of the one time they’d met was bitter. “You cannot convince me your father never took what was not his.”

“Well, he never took your aunt. She came willingly.”

“I do not believe you.” Yet he vaguely recalled Jock saying something about Alex sniffing around Brenna at a Truce Day meet.

“I wish it were not true. I wish it had never happened.”

“But why? She and Jock had not been married long.” Through his mind drifted the sounds of their voices raised in argument. A quarrel, one they had made up. He remembered, too, the sounds of their lovemaking.

“They were in love,” Allie said nastily.

Lust, more likely. It had been leading couples astray since Adam and Eve. It struck Hunter that he could be falling into the same trap. “Can you prove he did not kidnap her?”

“No more than you can prove he did.”

Hunter scowled.

“Foul weather, ain’t it,” said Derk, coming to ride alongside them.

“Aye,” Hunter muttered.