“Hush, hush.” She tried to soothe the horses. But their eyes rolled back, and they grew wilder still. Glynis felt a prickle at the back of her neck—and suddenly she knew why the horses were still upset.
She screamed and pulled her dirk as she turned. A half dozen warriors had entered the small clearing.
“Stay back!” She stood in front of the horses, holding the bloodied stick in one hand and her dirk in the other.
Her gaze flew from one to another. God, no. She recognized these men. They were members of Magnus’s personal guard.
“We’ve been looking for ye for days.” The one who spoke was Fingall, a huge man with broken teeth who was known for terrorizing the weak among his clansmen. “Magnus sent men in every direction looking for ye, but we got lucky when we came upon some Campbell fishermen who saw ye.”
“We were beginning to wonder if they lied to us about which way ye went,” another of the men said. “But we couldn’t go back and ask them again because we left them all dead.”
This brought a round of laughter from the others.
“Ye murder defenseless fishermen, and ye call yourselves warriors?” Glynis said. “Ye disgust me!”
“Ye always did have a sharp tongue.” Fingall said. “But we’ll soon wear the fight out of ye.”
He signaled to the others, and they all started moving toward her. Behind her, the horses were rearing and whinnying again.
“Magnus wants ye back alive, that’s all,” Fingall said. “We’ll have some fun with ye on the way back.”
* * *
Alex whistled to himself as he walked down the side of the hill through the tall, wet grass. Glynis wasn’t just another woman, but this was just another affair for him. All he’d needed was some time to roam on his own to realize he’d exaggerated it all in his mind. When it came to women, it didn’t pay to think too much.
A scream echoed off the hills and reverberated through his bones.
Alex ran hard for the camp, icy fear coursing through his veins. The camp was empty. Without pausing, he continued running in the direction from which her scream had come.
“Alex!” Glynis screamed his name this time.
His feet pounded down the path toward the lake. He drew his claymore as he burst through the low-hanging trees into the clearing.
The details of the scene before him ticked in his mind in an instant. Glynis, her dirk in one hand, a stick in the other. A body at her feet. Six warriors, their weapons out, in a half circle in front of her. They had Glynis backed up against the horses, who were rearing dangerously close to her.
Alex shouted to draw the men’s attention as he ran straight at them. As he jumped over a log, he threw his first dirk. It caught the man closest to Glynis in the chest and dropped him. Another of the attackers reached for her, and Alex threw his second dirk into the man’s throat.
Four men left. Alex swung his claymore into the one brandishing an axe. When Rosebud reared, he shoved another under her hooves. Red fury pounded through him as he swung his claymore into yet another.
“Move away from the horses before they trample ye!” he shouted at Glynis, as the last man came at him.
Alex pulled another dirk from his boot as he ducked below the swing of the man’s sword. As he came up, he buried the dirk under the man’s rib cage.
The last attacker was down. Alex blew out his breath.
Then Glynis screamed again. When he turned, Alex saw that the man he’d thought was dead when he first came into the clearing had gotten to his feet. Blood poured from a wound on his head as he stumbled toward her. She swung too soon with her dirk.
Alex was running hard toward them as the wounded man caught Glynis’s arm that held her knife. Before the man could pull Glynis in front of him to use her as a shield, Alex skewered the wretch. He pried the dying man’s fingers from Glynis’s wrist and pulled her into his arms.
“Are ye all right, lass?” he asked when he could get the words out.
“Aye,” Glynis said into his shoulder. “They were Magnus’s men.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a shaky voice. “I didn’t realize I could be seen from the loch.”
“It’s my fault. I never should have brought ye.” Alex was so accustomed to these sorts of dangers that he hadn’t recognized how foolish it was to take a woman by himself on this journey.
“I did hide,” she said, “but then I saw one of them hurting the horses.”
“
“He was whipping Rosebud.” Glynis leaned back and looked at him with wide eyes. “I only saw the one man at first, and I knew ye hadn’t gone far. As soon as I saw the others, I screamed for ye.”
“What if I hadn’t gotten here in time?” In the blink of an eye, one of those men could have slit her throat or had her on the ground with her gown up to her waist. “Ye are a danger to yourself, woman.”
He was furious with her. And at the same time, he wanted her so badly his teeth ached.
* * *
