Chapter Eleven

Gifted with another chunk of bread, a horn of ale, and offerings of even greater value, Austin and Fiona set off from the small, hospitable village within the hour.

"I feel whole again, or fairly close to it," Fiona said as they put the cluster of houses, the fields, and the tithe barn behind them. "Thank ye," she added, knowing it was because of Austin's request that she once more wore a sword at her hip.

When they'd been freed from their shackles and had given profuse appreciation to both Edgar and Ewan, Edgar had offered Austin one of the long swords hanging on the wall of his smithy's shed.

"Might come in handy," Edgar had said, retrieving from the grouping of various swords the largest one, which boasted a double-edge blade three inches wide at the hilt. Austin had accepted the gift in his outstretched hands, staring almost reverently at the shiny metal and twisted wooden hilt before testing its weight. It had a round pommel, a slim handle, and the familiar crossguard that narrowed toward the long blade.

Impressed with the sword and the generosity, Austin had said, "If ye have vellum and ink, and a means to get a message to Balenmore, I will instruct the steward to send down coin—"

Both Edgar and Ewan had kindly rebuffed his offer.

"Nae, sir," Edgar had said. "We canna offer much to the cause, but this we can do."

"Might I trouble ye for another sword?" Austin had asked next. "This one is built—magnificently, by the way—for power, but my lass prefers a needle sharp one, being more dexterous and agile with a thinner blade."

The my was likely intentional; if they would freely and generously arm the warrior male, they were more likely to arm his companion, even if she were a woman.

While this request had given Edgar pause and wrought a more thorough study of her person from the smith, he did relent, pulling another sword from the wall.

?Twas smaller and lighter than the hefty one given to Austin, but far better suited to her size. An arming sword it was, the blade narrow and the hilt smaller, both of which pleased Fiona greatly.

She wouldn't have said that she and Austin had been either morose or melancholy during their confinement in the dungeon or in the wagon, but she realized that her step was livelier now, having gained a weapon and having lost the shackles.

"Seems a guid fit," Austin commented about her new sword.

They followed along a winding river, just north of Lannoch, their location having been confirmed by Ewan. According to the man, the river headed due north and ran into another, the name of which he'd been unable to recall.

"Dinna follow that one, neither left nor right," Ewan had instructed, "nae if yer wanting to get north still. Straight across ye'll go and find yerselves near the Aberlea Forest. If'n yer lucky, ye'll find the Wolf within—he'll get ye where ye want to go."

Fiona was thankful thus far that Austin had said nothing of the kiss she'd given him inside the smithy's shed. The memory of it burned in her mind, a mix of embarrassment and something she couldn't quite name, but which she wholeheartedly refused to believe was excitement.

He might yet bring it up, she imagined, being that he seemed the type to address things head-on. She steeled herself for the possibility, rehearsing the explanation she would give if it came to that.

She told herself—and she'd tell him as well, if needed—that it was naught but a necessary evil, a tool, a ruse, simply something to keep him from howling with pain. What other remedy had she available to her at the moment, seated as she was in his lap, with their wrists at that point still bound together?

She scoffed without sound. It wasn't really a kiss, anyway. She was almost sure of it. Their lips had barely met, just a brief, hurried touch meant to silence him. Having never kissed or been kissed before, she wasn't entirely certain, but she was willing to bet that fleeting contact, though warm and resulting in a swift spark of some rebellious delight, did not truly constitute a kiss.

Whatever it might be categorized as, it meant nothing, of course. Certainly, it had aroused no thrill in her, she tried persistently to convince herself. The press of her lips against his had been purely functional, an act of desperation to stifle his cries.

But even as she repeated these justifications in her mind, she knew she was lying to herself. She could still feel the warmth of his mouth, the unexpected gentleness—possibly his shock had abated quicker than hers so that for the briefest moment, his mouth had gone tender as he'd moved his lips against hers. A shiver ran down her spine at the memory, betraying the thrill she tried so hard to deny.

Fiona wrestled with her emotions, torn between the pragmatic need to dismiss the kiss and her seeming inability to do so, too riled still more than an hour later.

"Do ye ken the Wolf?" Fiona asked now, wanting to distract herself—and him, if the reason for his silence in the last quarter hour might have anything to do with that hardly-worthy-of-the-name kiss.

"Mac Cailean? Aye, I've met him a few times," Austin said. "He was entrenched briefly with Caelen MacFayden when we fought at Glen Trool. He was up in Ayr last I heard so we may nae run into him in the forest."

"The Carnoch Cross is nae a fortress, by my understanding," Fiona remarked, giving up what little she knew about the legendary Ruairi Mac Cailean, the aforementioned Wolf of Carnoch Cross. ?Twas said his army was no more, had been reduced to numbers fewer than the Roses even, and that he sprung from his forest encampment, taking matters of justice into his own hands.

"?Tis nae but ruins," Austin replied. "Roman mayhap, tucked deep within the Aberlea Forest, naught but a huge stone monument depicting a sanctified cross, stands ten feet tall and of a width wider than a man's outstretched arms. From the cross springs the Wolf," Austin said, repeating parts of the legend.

Despite knowing little about the Wolf, Fiona had for quite some time been intrigued by what he'd accomplished, and with so small a force. Though she had no agenda to make a name for herself, she was encouraged by the fact that the Mac Cailean had kept what remained of his kin together, alive, and useful. Until she somehow acquired an army large enough to take back Dunraig, her aspirations for the Roses were no more than dreams, but she had often drawn encouragement from what the Wolf had managed to achieve with so few at his side.

They marched on, neither showing any evidence of fatigue even after several hours of walking under a sun whose brightness was diffused a bit by scattered clouds, but whose warmth was not. They paused only briefly, once to relieve themselves, Fiona thrilled to do so privately for the first time in days. Around noon, they'd halted, having detected some noise that was not the chattering and cawing of busy crows or the melodic swaying of the river's water. They'd ducked low behind a fallen tree encased in vines and had waited. The sound, fairly quickly assumed to be the grunting and chuffing of a foraging animal—wild hog, Austin had suggested—was gradually quieted by distance, allowing them to resume their trek.

Though she'd have liked to have a fire when they stopped for the night and mayhap roast some hunted game, neither had any means to start a fire and there remained a risk of discovery if they permitted themselves such a luxury.

"I dinna want to walk until dark," she told Austin late in the afternoon. She could, if needed, if no safe place presented itself to them, but she would rather not. "I want to find a spring or pond or loch and wash away the grime." And she'd rather do so under the uncommon heat of the sun.

?Twas a feminine bent, she'd always thought, the want to be scrubbed clean of all that was distasteful—the stench of war, moldy dungeons, dusty wagons— one which her Rose army was accustomed to from her and yet was not shared by the men under her command. They bore the grime and filth as badges of honor, indifferent to the discomforts that she found so intolerable. Whether or not Austin Merrick felt the same, she did not know or care.

They'd put a good number of miles behind them already, she guessed, mayhap more per hour than what the marching English army had managed. They could afford to camp while the sun still shone.

Perhaps not tomorrow but the next day, she expected they would reunite with the Merrick and Rose armies—if, as anticipated, they were yet abiding around Wick. She wondered if they'd maintained the siege, if their efforts now were made with an attempt to rescue their comrades. Often, she pondered the fate of those who'd been imprisoned in the dungeon with her and Austin, wondering what had become of them.

It was difficult to adhere to Fraser's counsel regarding anxiety over things she simply did not or could not know.

"What we dinna ken will forever be part of our lives," he'd said at one time. "But ye drain yer energy and yer focus worrying over what it is ye dinna ken." He'd cautioned her several times that worry was a passive and unconstructive activity from which she should stay far away.

Easier said than done, of course, even as she understood the truth and practicality behind Fraser's counsel.

Curiosity bade her inquire of Austin, "What do ye ken might have happened to yer Merrick men and my soldiers, and the others left in de Rathe's dungeon?"

Walking at her side, half a pace ahead of her, Austin turned a frown upon her, the expression possibly wondering what had brought this to mind.

"I dinna ken on it," he answered. "?Twould only lead to doomsayin' and ye ken, the worst possible outcomes we imagine are oft unrealistic."

"Ye dinna give it any thought at all?" She asked, clearly doubtful.

"I try nae to. We'll discover their fate when we return to Wick," he said. "What I ken might have befallen them dinna change what actually has, and I dinna want my judgment clouded or my decision-making affected by what I canna control."

Och, but he sounded so much like Fraser in that moment.

Reluctant to be instructed by him on how to deal with her worry, Fiona kept her mouth closed, did not challenge the improbability of denying himself any thought at all regarding their captured comrades.

Without acknowledging her earlier request to halt their trek before the sun set, he announced within an hour of that time that they were but a few miles from the forest of Aberlea, suggesting they call an end to their day.

The terrain here was wild and uninhabited, with gently sloping meadows covered in heather and bracken. Though they hadn't particularly been following any path, Austin led them away from the open area and through a thicket of trees, their branches whispering in the evening breeze.

After a short walk, they emerged into a small clearing. A lochán, too small to be a loch properly, lay at the center, its surface reflecting the fading light like a mirror. The water was clear and inviting, surrounded by a natural barrier of rocks and tall grasses and reeds that provided a measure of privacy.

Fiona nearly gasped at the perfect setting. The clearing was encircled by trees, their dense canopy creating a sense of seclusion and safety. A soft carpet of moss and grass covered the ground, providing a comfortable spot to lay their heads tonight. "Ye are familiar with this area?" She asked, finding it difficult to believe he'd only stumbled fortuitously upon exactly what she'd been hoping for.

"A wee bit," he allowed. "If we—the Merrick army— want to skirt round Aberlea Forest when we make our way south, we generally travel this route."

Fiona removed her plaid, the sorry, dirty, trauma-stained garment. Using her fingernails, she brushed and scraped away as much debris as she could, dreading the idea of covering herself with the dirt-encrusted fabric after her bath even as she understood she had little choice.

She chewed her lip, pleased with the seclusion of the lochán but anxious about its small size. Though well-hidden, the tiny loch offered little privacy from Austin. If there were more hours of sunlight, she would stride into the pond fully clothed to wash her garments, confident they would dry in the remaining daylight. But she could not now do so, and then freeze overnight garbed in drenched clothes.

However, with little choice, and the want to be clean overriding other considerations, she walked around the edge of the pool of water, ducking behind the tallest and thickest clump of bulrushes she could find and divesting herself of her boots, belt and new sword, her tunic, and her breeches, leaving herself clothed in only her braies and short-waisted shift. She reached inside the linen shift and unpinned and unwound the linen breast binding, drawing in a huge breath of relief for being unencumbered finally. With a cautious glance through the tall reeds to where she had last seen Austin, and noting his back was turned to the water as he shook out his plaid, Fiona stepped barefoot into the pond. Her toes sank into the squishy bottom, and she made a face of girlish disgust, wondering what oozed between them, but she continued on, holding onto a clump of the bulrush stems beneath the seed pods. Before she emerged from the protective barrier of the cattails, she allowed her body to become accustomed to the coolness of the water.

The squishy bottom was stable at first, allowing her to wade to her knees into the water. But with a few more steps, after having released the bulrush stems, the ground beneath her feet abruptly gave way. One moment she was knee-deep, and the next she plunged into the cool water up to her neck, gasping loudly at the sudden drop.

And bluidy hell, it was icy, the depths of it.

"God's teeth," she cursed, goosebumps raised on every inch of her flesh.

She dunked her head, less out of want than the fact that the bottom was softer here, her feet sinking in a good several inches. When her face cleared the surface a second later, she pushed back toward the water's edge and a more shallow depth but was jerked around by the sound of a hard splash.

Assuming Austin had leapt into the lochán, she scanned the water's surface, searching for where he might emerge. Her eyes widened in surprise when he appeared only a few feet away, his wet hair swept back from his forehead and a mischievous grin on his face.

"Did ye ken I was drowning?" She asked, his unexpected presence instantly stirring a disquieting sensation within her. Memories of what might have been a kiss stirred, leaving her unsettled.

"Nae, lass." He chuckled, the sound echoing across the tranquil water, while his eyes, more blue than gray now, sparkled under his spiked lashes. "But yer yelp and muttered oath did advise of the unexpected depth and the temperature, so thank ye for that."

With that, he cleaved his hand against the water, palm forward, spraying her with the small wave he made, before he rose out of the water and dove off to the left.

Fiona wiped her face with her hand, feeling the cool droplets trickle down her arm, and searched the water's surface again, watching to see where he would appear next.

"Yer arm," she reminded him when he materialized a dozen feet away. "The bandage...?"

"Left over there with my clothes," he said, facing Fiona, only his eyes and nose and lips visible above the waterline. "The water'll nae do any more harm than the lack of proper cleaning before it was wrapped," he attested, his position and more acutely, his stare, nearly predatory for the way it lingered on her.

Shivering anew, Fiona nodded and turned her back on him, using the fabric of her shift and braies to scrub different parts of her body, standing now with only her head and shoulders exposed. Carefully, she cleaned the wound at her forehead, which she'd decided had been more a bloody scrape than a deeper gash.

She was aware of Austin at all times, small splashes and smacks against the water advising her of his location. She hoped he stayed away, far away, he and his blue eyes. Unable to discern which was more threatening to her—the nearly boyish, playful glint or the predatory stare—she remained on edge, wary of his every move.

THE ICY WATER DID LITTLE to cool his ardor.

In truth, ?twas neither sudden nor unexpected, had only been mostly denied in favor of greater concerns: escaping the English, getting free of those shackles. He dove deep into the lochán, touching the muck of the bottom with his hand before springing again to the surface, wondering if he might actually regret losing the bond of those shackles, for how it had kept her tied to him.

It was only a few days that he'd known her, but he felt as if she'd been woven into the fabric of his existence. Their joint adversity, having suffered and survived it together, was likely to blame. His physical desire for her had been instant and overwhelming, but this...connection he felt to her, as if the natural culmination of his desire for her would and must reach its ultimate conclusion, was born of the ordeal withstood together, uniting them more deeply in some way, he decided.

And, of course, there was that kiss, he happily recalled.

They would part eventually, their armies going their separate ways, and the bond would become frayed and then be broken completely.

But for now....

Austin ducked his head under water once more, vigorously scrubbing his fingers through his hair. He rose again and sluiced water from his face, just in time to see Fiona slowly wading toward the reeds. The sight of the braies clinging to her willowy figure raised a brow at the same time it ignited a fire in his loins. Strange, that he'd not given any thought to what she wore beneath her breeches. And provoking, how the sodden linen hugged her arse, cleaving to each individual globe and the cleft between, revealing the exact shape of her bottom. He imagined his hands on her arse, lifting and kneading each gently rounded cheek as he plunged deep inside her.

As if she felt, deep in her soul, his thoughts, she whipped her head around and glared at him.

Of course she could not know exactly what he'd been thinking, but she did catch him, still and silent, ogling her, and thus the glare was not unwarranted. But she moved on, almost completely out of view as she gained the privacy of the thick stand of bulrushes.

Austin shoved off from his feet, floating on his back with his arms stretched wide. He closed his eyes and brought to mind the image of another time he'd seen her bathing. One more bath, he mused, and he might have a complete picture of her, front, back, top, and bottom.

He compared the memory of her reaction then to now, recalling her haughty, fearless mien on that first occasion as opposed to this now. The glare she'd shown him a moment ago had been forced, had it not? Compelled by some sense of self-preservation? Had he not glimpsed moments of an equal awareness? Of womanly intrigue?

Despite their natural enmity, born of a feud decades in the making and honed by his initial reception of her as a soldier, and then rekindled or exacerbated by his surrender at Wick, he sensed a subtle tension between them that hadn't anything to do with any of those things. The tension he sensed felt more like one of those powerful, smoldering connections between a man and a woman, where desire simmered just beneath the surface.

He'd decided earlier that a kiss so basic as the one she'd given him this morning should not have affected either him or her if not for an underlying current that something more profound existed between them.

All day long, he'd been bothered by one simple question: why had it occurred to her to use a kiss? There were countless other ways she could have silenced him. A hand over his mouth, a firm command—anything would have sufficed. But she had chosen a kiss, and that choice spoke volumes.

But shite, was he only imagining what he wanted to see?

Nae, it was in the way her eyes sometimes lingered on him just a fraction longer than necessary, the barely perceptible hitch in her breath when he'd doffed his tunic last night. He replayed these fleeting moments in his mind, analyzing every nuance of her demeanor, every inflection of her voice. He recalled the way she had stared at his mouth not too long ago, her own lips parting as she'd studied him, as if memorizing the shape of his lips...or imagining them joined to hers? Though he knew she was a warrior, proud and unyielding, he wondered if beneath that hardened exterior, how often she felt the stirrings and yearning of a woman.

The rogue in him then wondered, if she did not, could he rouse those desires in her?

Putting his feet onto the lochán's floor, he shook himself mentally and physically, admonishing himself for this detailed and juvenile internal assessment. He was no inexperienced youth wondering if the dairy maid would allow him to kiss her. He was a proud warrior, an adept commander, and an accomplished lover who rarely struggled to find bedmates. Never before, he realized with frustration, had he invested so much thought into a potential seduction.

Austin exited the water at the same point of his entry, mindful of the sounds of Fiona attempting to dry herself twenty feet away, concealed from prying eyes—his—by the natural defenses of the lochán. He used his plaid to dry his arms and chest and stripped off his braies, donning his dry but soiled breeches. He left off his hose, considering their sorry state, and would have next donned his boots but was given pause as Fiona arrived, fully clothed once more, securing her belt as she walked.

Arrested by the sight of her and what he believed was a purposefully averted gaze—telling, that—Austin wondered if, with the threat of imminent danger removed and the possibility of a grim end now behind them, they were more aware, more attuned to each other, to a larger degree than when they'd been joined together by shackles.

Her sudden display of shyness—a side of Fiona he had never anticipated—hinted that she, too, was conscious of his presence.

In his mind, he thought, The hell with it, and tossed aside the plaid and tunic and strode to where she stood.

She lifted her gaze, eyes widening as he approached, her expression a mix of apprehension and breathless anticipation. The latter stirred something primal within him, tightening his groin with desire.

Her coppery, sun-tinted locks, still damp from the pond, lay heavy and loose around her shoulders. Her green eyes, flecked with hints of amber, shimmered with a mixture of emotions—uncertainty, curiosity, and a flicker of something deeper, perhaps longing. Despite her attempt to maintain composure, Austin was vividly aware of the subtle tremor in her hands as she adjusted her belt. In that moment, she appeared both vulnerable and...amenable, a combination that only strengthened his intention.

He would have hauled her into his arms and crashed his mouth onto hers, would have thrust his fingers into her hair at the same time he thrust his tongue into her mouth.

Would have—save that at the last moment, she lifted her hand, her palm colliding with his chest, effectively bringing him to a halt.

"Dinna kiss me," she uttered in a ragged voice.

"Ye want me to, though," he replied calmly but firmly, little surprised after all that she'd stopped him.

"Why do ye torment me?" She asked, not bothering to deny his claim.

He snickered, the sound tinged with self-denigration. "?Tis my own self I torment, lass.... I want ye."

"And now ye mean to assault me?"

"Nae assault," he corrected, grinning. "Nae forced but persuaded."

"Ye imagine because I kissed ye today—because I had to—that ye...that ye...can now have yer way with me?"

He grinned at this, such a maidenly—virtuous—accusation.

"Do ye nae have longing, Fiona? To be kissed? Caressed?"

She shook her head, veins in the smooth column of her neck pulsing while her green eyes begged him to cease.

"I dinna," she whispered.

"Ye lie," he accused softly, unwilling to accept her denial.

She didn't refute his mild accusation. Her gaze remained beseeching. "And let it be."