“Who are you?” he asked, his broad chest heaving as he breathed heavily from the chase. It was a command, that I supply him this information.
I did not speak. I had no intention of giving up my identity. He might return me to Laird Ogilvie.
He held up his sword and asked the question again, this time more quietly but no less commanding. “I said, to whom am I speaking?”
I held up my own small weapon. It was far less impressive than his own, but I knew how to use it. I’d been training with men for months and had learned how a quick jab could be just as effective as a long swing.
“You want to fight me, aye?” he asked. There was a note of jeering confidence in his question. I allowed him this. My call to arms was clearly foolhardy. I did not want to die here on this hilltop, at the hands of this beautiful warrior, but I had no other option than to fight.
“Show your face,” he said.
I did not.
“Please leave me,” I said, attempting to deepen my voice.
A slight crease appeared between his eyebrows, as if he was having trouble making sense of the situation and my request. He almost smiled. “I’ll not go until you reveal yourself,” he said, and his tone sounded patient, if I was placing it correctly.
“I cannot.”
“Then we shall have to fight. You’ve been caught stealing from our lands. ’Tis punishable by death, thievery. If there’s a reason for your actions, give it.”
“I was hungry,” came my falsely stern, muffled reply.
To this he smiled, clear confusion written across his heartbreaking face. “That’s a fair reason, then. Reveal yourself and you can keep your bounty. If you agree never to return to thieve from us again. Show your face.”
“I cannot.”
His mild amusement irked me. “You cannot,” he repeated. “Why is this?”
My fear, and something else, was causing my control to weaken, to slide. I willed myself to hold it together. “Leave me! Here, take your food! I’ll go, and not bother you again.”
His smile faded, and I realized that I’d forgotten to disguise my voice. He said slowly, as though to make sure I understood, “I’m afraid I’ll not be leaving. Not until I know who I’m dealing with.”
We stood, swords raised, at an impasse of sorts.
Would he show me mercy? Would he force me to return to Ogilvie? Or would he kill me?
As if in partial answer, he stepped closer, clearly not intimidated by me. He lifted the tip of his sword to my chin, as though to use it to tip my helmet backward.
I struck his sword with my own.
He was surprised by my hit, and he lashed back with his weapon, so quickly I barely had time to react. And we were close now, so close that his returning strike sliced across my arm, ricocheting pain throughout my body. My sword, as I fell to the ground, slid across the muscle of his side. He growled and struck my weapon with such power that it sent a jolt of fire through my already bloodied arm. My sword went flying, so I could hear the wo wo wo of its spinning flight before it landed with a clang far out of my reach.
Stunned, pained, grasping to maintain consciousness, I lay still on the ground as he stood over me. Blood was flowing freely from the wound on his torso. He kneeled and removed my helmet. My hair had loosened and spilled onto the ground as he freed it.
When he saw my face, his jaw dropped. He stared for many moments, surveying me with his eyes. He fingered a lock of my hair, rubbing it gently between two fingers for several seconds, as though fascinated by the feel of it, or the color.
“You’re a lass,” he finally said.
“Aye.”
His expression colored with a strange sort of awe that reached to touch me in places I had never before been touched. Inexplicably, I felt a part of myself open to him, like a flower when it first sees the sun. I craved more of this connection. My senses wanted to touch, to feel, to drink in the scent and the sight of his magnificence. His face was too beautiful, too glorious. I was blinded and dazed. And he, as well, looked momentarily overcome.
A long moment passed before he continued, clear notes of disbelief rasping his words. “You’re an angel.”
“Nay, not that.”
“An angel so lovely she stuns my mind. Wearing the clothing of men.”
He sat down next to me, somewhat heavily. The cloth at the front of his tunic was now saturated with blood.
“Why did you strike me?” I asked. “Now I’ve injured you.” In the aftermath of our battle, I felt appalled that it was my own hand, my own sword, that had damaged this unearthly creature.
“I wouldn’t have,” he countered. “If you’d heeded my command.”
My eyelids felt unusually heavy. “Aye,” I admitted. “’Tis a weakness of mine. I’m not very good at heeding commands.”
His hands were on my arm, where my wound was dripping a crimson puddle onto the dirt. “You’re injured, too.”
“Not so badly as you, I think.”
He would need stitching, that was clear enough. Had I brought the stitching thread and the needle? I couldn’t recall. My memory seemed fuzzy at its edges.
“The cave,” I said.
He eyed me skeptically, that hint of amusement still lingering in his eyes, despite our circumstance. “Which cave is this, lass?”
I motioned toward the cave, and he moved to help me sit up. The scent and heat of him seemed to swirl all around me and inside me. The heat of his solid thigh burned through the layers of our clothing as he supported me. Feebly, I led him toward the cave, and he, too, for all his size and ferocity, swooned slightly as we walked.
“There,” I said, not at all sure I wouldn’t black out and crumple helplessly to the ground at a moment’s notice.
I crouched onto my hands and knees at the entrance of the cave and crawled into its interior, sliding onto the welcome warmth of the bed I’d laid. The bloodied warrior crawled in after me, lying down beside me. We held each other’s gaze, and the blue of his eyes seemed to pour into me; it fed me a comfort the likes of which I had not known for a very long time, or maybe ever. I was profoundly grateful, if death was upon me, that I could at least die in the glowing presence of this glorious warrior.
“I’m Wilkie Mackenzie,” he said.
So this was Laird Mackenzie’s notorious brother. I could now understand why it was said that women fell at his feet.
Emboldened by his confession, I told him my name. “I’m Roses.” I had been an Ogilvie for most of my life, but now, I had severed myself from that clan irrevocably. I was on my own.
“Roses,” he said, as though wholly satisfied by my introduction. He did not prod me for more. “An unusual name.” His eyes glimmered in the half-light. “The pleasure is mine, Roses.”
“You exaggerate, warrior,” I whispered. “I’ve hardly given you pleasure.”
“If we live,” he said, his eyes drowsy now from his blood loss, “that is something we will have to remedy.”
“Aye,” I heard myself reply. “It is.”
And darkness overcame