Chapter Thirteen

With a hissed curse, Kirk darted to Lillian’s side.

She, too, had gone rigid, her eyes wide on the darkening forest where the man’s voice had drifted.

He gripped her elbow, giving her a little shake to bring her gaze to him. But once he had her attention, he hesitated. Had he rushed to her side to prevent her from doing something foolish like scream for help from the approaching stranger, or protect her from whoever now stomped toward them?

“Dinnae say aught,” he murmured after a long moment, giving her a hard look.

Her daze flashed down to his other hand, where the dagger glinted dully in the fading light. Kirk gritted his teeth against the fear in her dark eyes as she looked back up at him and nodded slowly. Christ, he wasn’t wielding the dagger to threaten her into silence, but he could not tell her that. He had to keep up the ruse, to be naught more than a heartless bounty hunter toward his captive.

“Where are ye, ye bloody flying rat?” The man’s voice was close now.

Keeping his grip on Lillian’s elbow, Kirk turned to find a kilted Scot stumbling from the gloaming toward the netted hawk.

“Hold there.”

The man started in surprise at Kirk’s command. In fact, he hadn’t seemed to noticed Kirk and Lillian standing a few paces away from the hawk at all.

“That’s my beast to deal with as I see fit,” the man said, narrowing his gaze at them. “I caught her, fair and square.”

Kirk angled himself in front of Lillian, as if the man’s glower might harm her. “And what right do ye have to trap a goshawk in the first place?”

Kirk made sure to let his Highland brogue stretch broadly while still keeping his voice firm. Nevertheless, the man’s narrowed gaze swept over Kirk’s English-style breeches before returning upward to send him a suspicious glare.

“What right do ye have to stand in a Scottish forest?”

Damn . The last thing Kirk needed was to stand out in any way in this bastard’s mind, especially as an English sympathizer. He cursed himself again silently. The man had seen their faces. Still, twilight was approaching swiftly, which helped obscure their features. Plus, Kirk thought he’d detected a slur in the man’s speech a moment before. Was he drunk?

“As much right as ye, friend,” Kirk said carefully. “This land belongs to the King of Scotland—which means that this hawk is Robert the Bruce’s, no’ yers. ”

Puffing up with outrage, the man stepped toward Kirk, only to stumble over a fallen tree branch. Cursing the branch soundly for simply lying there, the man straightened and continued toward the bird, his gait swaying precariously.

“Aye, well, the King of Scotland isnae here to be bothered over one wee bird—nor is he here to stop me.”

Kirk stiffened at that. If he’d come across a man illegally trapping goshawks a year ago, he’d have proclaimed himself the King’s warrior and enforcer of justice. But now he’d been ordered to act like a traitor, a mercenary working for the English.

The goshawk cried out as the man approached, its short, high-pitched screeches growing increasingly urgent.

“What do ye plan to do with her?” Kirk blurted, hoping to deter the man.

The Scot cast a withering look at Kirk. “What do ye care?”

“She is too old to be taken in and trained for falconry,” Kirk said, taking a casual step toward the man and the hawk. “And ye’d be a fool to expect to keep her even if ye thought to train her in secret. No one but a nobleman may keep a goshawk. Besides, they are fickle, tempestuous beasts. Ye’re liable to lose a hand—either to the sheriff for trapping a bird above yer station, or to the hawk herself.”

“I’m no’ going to train her, ye dolt,” the man slurred. “I’m going to kill her.”

Kirk heard Lillian inhale sharply behind him. He shot her a look over his shoulder to warn her to remain silent. The last thing he needed was her velvety English accent making them even more memorable to the man.

Still, his own anger flared unexpectedly. “Ye cannae think to gain any value from killing her. She’ll have no meat on her, and the feathers of a chicken are better for down.”

The man belched, and even from more than a pace away, Kirk could smell stale, sour ale on the man’s breath.

“I dinnae mean to eat her, just shut her up. Her screeching in these woods reaches all the way to my farmstead a mile away. She doesnae cease squawking all day.”

Kirk took another step forward, narrowing his gaze on the drunkard. “If ye were seeing to yer farm during the day and sleeping at night instead of getting sotted, she wouldnae bother ye.”

The man finally seemed to notice that Kirk loomed over him—and that Kirk was a half a head taller and a fair bit broader with muscle as well.

The Scot’s hand darted toward the hawk where it struggled in the tangled netting on the ground, but his motion was slowed with the excessive drink he’d consumed. Kirk gripped the man’s wrist in a steely hold with one hand, letting the dagger in the other flash before the man’s eyes.

“As I told ye,” Kirk said softly, controlling the man’s gaze with the slow drift of the dagger back and forth before his face. “This isnae yer bird to harm. It is the King’s. Now be on yer way before I take it upon myself to see to yer punishment for poaching and illegally trapping a hawk reserved for nobles.”

The man’s eyes widened in outrage, but after a long moment, he muttered a curse at Kirk and turned away, stumbling back through the woods the way he’d come.

Kirk waited until the last traces of the man had disappeared in the dark forest then swiftly bent to one knee, bringing the dagger toward the struggling hawk.

“MacLeod, nay—” Lillian gasped behind him, but before she could say more, Kirk sliced through the netting and pulled it away.

The goshawk sounded its high, staccato cry of alarm, but then it shook its wings free of the remaining netting and hopped backward. Kirk stepped back quickly, giving the wild creature plenty of room. She didn’t appear hurt, but there was no telling what a juvenile bird of prey would do if it felt threatened.

The hawk called out again, then launched itself upward into the darkening branches overhead. Even in the swiftly falling night, she seemed to know where her nest was. Her speckled chest and chestnut wings soon disappeared into the foliage.

Kirk slid the dagger back in place within his sleeve, then turned to Lillian to find her staring intently at him.

“Why did you do that?” she asked softly.

“What?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Why did you stop that man? Why did you set the bird free? Why did you care at all?”

Discomfort made him roll his shoulders. He shouldn’t have interfered with that drunken fool, for it put his mission in danger. Some remaining shred of honor had made him act idiotically.

“We cannae stay here for the night. That drunkard may stumble back here looking for a fight,” he said to avoid her questions. He strode to her, scooping her into his arms as he continued on toward his waiting horse.

She gasped at his brusqueness, but she looped her arms around his neck without protest. Yet when he set her down and swung into the saddle, she stepped away from the horse.

“Why are you so afraid to answer me?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

Her resistance was short-lived. Kirk simply reined the horse closer to her and lifted her easily, settling her across his lap. Damn, but this position was becoming all too familiar—and enjoyable.

“I’m no’ afraid,” he snapped, his anger more directed at himself than her. He nudged the horse into motion, his hands tight around the reins to keep from pulling Lillian even closer. God, he’d been foolish to get involved with the drunkard and the goshawk, and even more foolish to let his bodily desire for Lillian cloud his thinking.

“Then why won’t you answer? Why did you help that bird?”

Kirk exhaled through his teeth. The rigidity of her spine against the inside of his right forearm told him that she was set on getting an answer.

“It is as I told that fool,” he gritted out. “Goshawks are reserved for nobility. He had no right to poach in these woods—especially no’ a hawk.”

“You are a Scot.”

He felt his brows drop. What kind of statement was that? Was it some sort of trap?

“Aye,” he replied simply.

“Yet you work for an English organization of bounty hunters.”

Where in bloody hell was she going with this?

“Aye.”

“Why would you care what some drunken Scottish farmer does in King Robert the Bruce’s forests, then? Why defend the Scottish King’s rights?”

Shite . Bloody fucking shite. He needed to put an end to this line of questioning—now.

“I dinnae care a whit for the Bruce,” he shot back. “I thought to scare the man away by invoking the King, but the fool was too drunk to heed the warning.”

She sat silently before him for a moment, rocking into him with each of the horse’s steps.

“Then why did you free the bird?” she asked at last. “Why not let the man kill her, or simply leave her in the net once you’d gotten rid of him?”

“Because,” he said, but the words explaining away his actions failed to come. He groped the recesses of his mind for a plausible explanation, but the silence stretched. At last, he simply blurted the truth. “Because she was innocent. Because goshawks are noble creatures. Because they are said to contain great courage in a small body.”

Once the words were out, he cringed, thankful for the full darkness that now shrouded them. He sounded like some chivalric knight. Worse, he could have been talking about Lillian herself.

She didn’t miss the opportunity to pounce. “Surely you cannot overlook your own hypocrisy, can you?”

When he held a stony silence, she went on. “You claim not to care why you are being paid to bring me to whoever hired you. You claim only to care about the mission before you. Yet you clearly know wrong from right—and think it wrong to capture and harm an innocent. How do you sleep at night?”

Anger, hot and unexpected, suddenly boiled over within Kirk. “I sleep just fine, as ye well ken.”

She reeled back, and if he hadn’t had his arms around her, she might have toppled out of the saddle.

He cursed himself for being such a bastard, but having her think ill of him was better than exposing his cover—and threatening not only his mission, but his chance to finally break free from the life of a soldier.

Still, familiar shame at his lack of honor rose to his chest. “Why do ye care why I do what I do?” he murmured in an attempt to soften his crass retort. “It doesnae matter. Yer fate would be the same whether I freed the hawk or let that fool kill her.”

The silence stretched so long that he thought she’d given up at last, but then her softly spoken words drifted to him through the dark. “I ask because I am trying to make sense of your character.”

That caught him completely off guard.

“My what?”

“Your character. The nature of your soul. The rhyme and reason to your actions.”

Suspicion mingled with unease in the pit of his stomach. His foolish desire to help the trapped goshawk had already put him dangerously close to revealing his true identity. But what did Lillian have to gain by trying to sort him out?

“Why?” he demanded through locked teeth.

“Mayhap because you are to be my captor for the foreseeable future, and I have naught else to do.”

“Or mayhap ye are plotting an escape in that bonny head of yers,” he replied, leaning forward to murmur the words into her ear. “Is that it? Ye think to trick me somehow, to learn something of me and use it to flee?”

He felt a shiver race up her back. When she shook her head in denial, her silky hair brushed his cheek. “ Nay,” she whispered.

He’d gathered in the five days of holding her captive that lying, like riding horses, wasn’t her strong suit. However, he’d also gathered that behind her wide, dark eyes was a blade-sharp mind that intuited much. Something she’d said several days back still bothered him, though.

“How much do ye already ken about why I’ve been hired, and who I’m taking ye to?”

It disturbed him to think that she knew more about his mission than he did. The Order liked to keep its men in the dark to avoid having information tortured out of them if they were ever caught. It was wrong to use her to learn about his mission, he knew, but the need to understand was only growing stronger.

Lillian turned slightly in the saddle so that she could look up at him in the dark. Her eyes were black pools that glistened only faintly with the thin sliver of moon overhead.

“You are taking me to the men who killed my husband.”

“The Master Mason. Fitzhugh.”

“Richard,” she corrected, her voice turning soft. For some reason, that made Kirk’s hands clench into fists around the reins.

“He was selected by King Edward II himself to build the town wall around Berwick. He did his duty to his King, and now he is dead because of it.”

To his surprise, her voice was steady as she spoke of her late husband, not tight with tears or anger.

“Someone—some Englishman, and mayhap even the King himself—began to suspect that there might be a weakness in the wall,” she went on, “a weakness that would lead to Berwick’s fall to the Scots.”

She glanced up at him once again, and Kirk was careful to keep his features smooth.

“Richard was taken captive and tortured to death. Whoever took him was not satisfied with what he said—because there was naught to tell, of course. Richard would never do something as devious as construct a flaw in the wall. But his torturers must believe that I know something, that Richard informed me of this supposed plan to make the wall faulty somehow. And now you are going to deliver me to them.”

Her normally rich, low voice was hollow as she spoke the last, as if she were speaking of someone else’s tragic fate. She must truly believe that Kirk was a heartless bounty hunter, and that there was no chance of escape.

That should have sent relief crashing through Kirk. Inside, though, his stomach cinched into a tangled knot. The Bruce needed to know all this. His thoughts lurched ahead. The Bruce already knew of all this, and that was why he’d sent one of his bodyguards to protect Lillian.

Christ, what had he stumbled into? He was working directly at cross-purposes with his King. He was taking an innocent woman to be tortured. And he couldn’t break his cover, for that would mean not only failing to take down the Order, but also forfeiting his chance to get out of this bloody war once and for all.

“So aye, I want to know why you freed that hawk, but also why you would hand me over to lawless men,” she said quietly. “I wish to understand the character of a man who is both cruel and kind.”

The words stung as surely as the slice of a blade. Kirk steeled himself against her softly spoken chastisement. Damn it all, it didn’t matter what she thought of him. It only mattered that he complete this mission without losing himself in Lillian’s depthless gaze.

But even as he sealed the walls around his heart, fear slipped in through the cracks. Kirk was in over his head. He needed to get word to Colin, to tell him that he had Lillian and reaffirm that even in completing this mission for the Order, he was still working for the Bruce’s larger cause.

Yet dare he approach Inverness knowing that men knew his face there? And could he trust Lillian not to try to escape if they were near a populous town?

It was a dangerous gambit, but he had to take the chance.

Shoving down his uncertainty, he suddenly jerked the reins to the left and urged the horse into a gallop.

Lillian had to cling to him to maintain her seat across his lap at the sudden change of direction and speed .

“Where are we going?” she asked breathlessly.

“Inverness,” he replied, holding her close as the horse sped through the darkened woods.