Taming The Lion

The night sky filled with arrows. Metal tips glistening against the lightning-raked sky, they arched high then fell just behind the retreating Sutherlands.

Catlyn grinned as she watched the Fergussons halt, their mouths wide with rage. Their mounts danced in agitated confusion, hooves perilously close to the edge of the ravine. “Again! Another volley,” she shouted.

The second flight of arrows kept the Fergussons at bay while the Sutherlands clattered through the gate, with the Boyds streaking in just after them.

Catlyn hurried down the steps and into the courtyard looking for Adair so she might congratulate him. All was chaos: servants darting to and fro like fish in a barrel, horses pawing and shivering with latent excitement, men shouting triumphantly and clapping one another on the back.

One voice rose above the others.

Catlyn whirled around just as a man swung down from an enormous black stallion. She instantly recognized Ross Sutherland by his size and commanding air.

“God damn!” He tore off his helmet and flung it on the ground. “Ambushed. Of all the heathen deeds.” Rain slicked inky hair back from a tanned face too rugged to be called handsome. Arresting, more like. Even dripping wet, he exuded strength and power, like some dark, raging beast. A wolf. Nay, a dragon.

Catlyn gaped in astonishment. She had never seen anyone remotely like this large, fierce-looking warrior. Around her, all activity ceased.

“Don’t stand about like you’ve been struck dumb,” the knight growled, voice sharp as thunder. “Gordie, go up on the wall and make certain the ambushing bastards are gone. Lang Gil, see to the horses. Nigel, take stock of our wounded.”

His men scrambled to obey. The Boyds hung back. Huddled together in anxious knots, they eyed the knight as they might some strange and fearsome beast.

We never should have let him in, Catlyn thought. Out of habit, she looked for Adair. He stood a few paces away, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his worried gaze on Sir Ross.

“Who is in charge here? Who ordered the gate opened to us?” Ross Sutherland raked the crowd with narrowed eyes.

Catlyn, who had always met trouble head-on, fought an unaccustomed urge to flee.

“I am captain here.” Adair stepped forward.

“Ah.” Ross crossed to them in two long, determined strides. “I am indebted to you.” His eyes flicked to Catlyn, then widened. “You were in the gatehouse.” She’d been wrong about his eyes. They were not dark at all, but a clear, pale blue. In the flickering torchlight, he appeared even more formidable than he had in the shadows. His face was lean and rugged. His wide shoulders and broad chest strained the seams of his chain mail.

Dark, powerful and uncomfortably large.

A shiver worked its way down Catlyn’s spine. Fear, she thought. Nay, not fear, not exactly. There was an untamed quality about this knight that made her feel skittish, she who had worked alongside men all her life. “I—I am Catlyn Boyd, lady of Kennecraig,” she stammered, shaky and unsettled.

“Indeed?” His unusual eyes widened and skimmed her from head to toe. Something flared in them. Something that could have been triumph or smugness or a trick of the light. “Well, I am grateful to you for letting us inside, Lady Catlyn.” He purred her name, then smiled, a slow, dazzling grin that transformed his face from arresting to sinfully handsome.

Catlyn stared at him, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, her mind empty.

Adair cleared his throat. “We’d best be getting inside. The rain grows worse. I’ll see to your men and horses.”

“I would appreciate that.” Ross looked away from Catlyn, but still she found speech impossible.

“Dry clothes, hot food and the care of your wounded is the least we owe you,” said Adair. “Had you not discovered him lurking at our gates, Hakon might well have attacked us the next time we ventured from our keep.”

“Hakon?” The knight scowled.

“Hakon Fergusson. That is the name of the fiend who so foully ambushed you.”

“Is it?” Ross Sutherland glared at the gate once more. “Fiend is an apt description. I begin to see he is more ruthless than I’d supposed.” He turned away and gave orders for his men to disarm.

Catlyn started for the keep, feeling gauche and damp and a little dazed.

Ross stomped across the muddy courtyard in the wake of his reluctant hosts. So, Robert Dunbar had lied about his name. Hakon Fergusson. That name set off a distant bell in Ross’s head, but his mind was so full it scarcely made a dent.

Instead, he cursed the Fates that had brought him here. And he cursed Lady Catlyn for looking younger and more beautiful than he had expected. In her pure white dress, her honey-colored hair flowing loose about her shoulders, she looked exactly right for the part she must play. The virgin sacrifice. The innocent victim of Robert Dunbar’s fiendish plot.

Nay, Hakon Fergusson.

Furious with himself, but mostly with Hakon for forcing him into this, Ross glanced over his shoulder and picked out a narrow, crafty face among the familiar ones of his men.

Donald Dunbar grinned smugly. If that was his name.

Ross cursed and dropped back to walk beside the wiry man sent along, ostensibly to guide them to Kennecraig. “Are you a Fergusson, too?” he hissed.

“Aye, Seamus Fergusson’s the name, but it’d doubtless be safer if ye continued to call me Donald.”

What Ross wanted to do was strangle the man. “Did you know your master planned to attack us?”

“Well...” Seamus shrugged. “He said he might have to do something if yer good looks and glib tongue weren’t enough to talk us inside.”

“Two of my men were wounded,” Ross growled.

“And a dozen Fergussons, as well.”

“Serves them right. Of all the foul—”

“Got us into the keep, didn’t it?”

Ross looked ahead to the litter bearing the still, bloody form of his young squire and his hatred of Hakon intensified. “Your master promised me there’d be no bloodshed.”

“Aye, well, yer men are not like to die from their hurts. And himself is that determined to have the Boyds’ fine whiskey-making secrets for himsclf. By the looks of things, he did well in choosing ye for the task of getting it.” Seamus chuckled. “Young Catlyn was fair struck dumb by that pretty face of yers. Should be child’s play for ye to pry what we need from her.”

“I will get what he wants.” Ross had no other choice. The safety of his clan was at stake. “But I will do it my way.” He glared at Seamus. “And there’s to be no more bloodshed.”

“Like my master, I will do what is needful to win,” Seamus whispered as they crested the steps and entered the keep. “He said as how I was to watch ye close like. At the first sign ye’re failing, I’m to take matters into my own hands.”

Chapter Two

Catlyn sat in her accustomed place beside Adair at the supper table. Her hands clenched tight in her lap, her cheeks still burning with humiliation.

She had acted like a fool earlier in the courtyard, staring at Sir Ross like a green lass. You would think she had never seen a handsome man before.

Catlyn shifted on the bench, cursing the impulse that had led her to don these trappings of a fine lady. The pins holding her comet of braids pressed into her head, making it ache. The high-necked woolen gown itched. She had wanted to appear mature and assured when she encountered the knight again. Instead, she felt foolish, like a child dressed up in her mother’s clothes.

Around her, the folk of Clan Boyd talked and sipped ale while they waited for the Sutherlands to arrive. They did not gossip or engage in idle chatter. Uppermost in everyone’s mind was the all-important whiskey. Roland and Wesley argued the merits of triple distilling. Eoin, Rabbie and Cinaed, chief crofter, went over the plans for bringing in the barley.

Catlyn chafed to be away from here. “’Tis obvious they are not coming,” she said to Adair. “I will take a bowl of stew and go down to my counting room.”

Adair laid a restraining hand on her arm. “Patience, lass. I am sure they will be along directly. It takes time to get men and horses settled into a new place.”