by Paula Quinn
Involuntarily, Davina felt her lips press together. It wasn’t safe for her to do the talking, for she tended to run on with a topic well beyond its natural end. It was because she hadn’t had anyone new to talk with, or hear about the world with in four years, that she was less cautious when she was speaking. She didn’t want to converse with this stranger, but she was going to have to find a way to avoid it without piquing his curiosity. If her enemies did not send him, he might just as easily give her up to them if he discovered her secrets.
“Whatever you like, sir,” she said, relaxing her mouth. “But before we do, I beg you let me tend to the wound in your arm.”
He sized her up with a slow, silent assessment that made her teeth itch. The force of his gaze, the sheer power of will he possessed to refuse her if he decided she was simply putting him off, sent a fissure of panic through her. In that moment, she admired Colin immensely for standing up to his disapproving scrutiny.
“Sir, I wouldn’t want you to fall ill with a fever because of me,” she added earnestly to encourage his compliance.
“Verra well,” he finally conceded, misgivings clearly etched in his features. “But dinna’ call me Sir.” He sat back, giving her leave to touch him. “I’m no’ a knight of the realm, and I’ve never been considered a gentleman.”
Davina didn’t know what to make of that declaration, or why the husky timbre of his voice when he said it sent an odd quiver down her spine. “I’ll need water,” she told him, barely looking at him, her hands folded in her lap. She wasn’t about to fall victim to a temptation that was, and always would be, denied her.
“Will.” He turned briefly to the others. “She needs water.”
“You need to shift a bit,” Davina instructed, trying to think of what he might ask her, and what she might or might not answer.
“Aye, that would help.” He smiled as he turned, scattering Davina’s thoughts like dry leaves in the wind. How could his virility be as tangible as a touch and yet his smile be so guileless and awkward—so much more honest and open than his friend’s, who appeared before them on his haunches?
“Ye’re gushin’ like a peach-faced whelp,” Will said, wearing a smirk that boded ill for Rob. “Are ye certain the fever hasna’ already come upon ye?”
Davina caught the pouch Will tossed her just before the pad of Rob’s boot struck him in the chest. A smaller man would have sailed an inch or two off the ground, but Will only landed hard on his rump and laughed.
“Go easy on him, lass,” Will said, springing back to his feet. “He’s soft,” he added over his shoulder when he was a good enough distance away to safely rest for the night.
Soft? Davina doubted it as she surveyed Rob’s back. Even draped in yards of wool he appeared as solid as the mountains in the distance. “After I’ve cleaned the wound, I’ll need your dagger to cut a few strips of fabric so that I can—”
“Ye’ll no’ be gettin’ my dagger, lass. Though I understand why ye shot me—”
“That arrow was mine?” Her eyes opened wide on him and any hope she had in him helping her faded.
“She shot ye?” cried Finn, voicing the disbelief that marked the faces of his companions.
“Aye,” Rob answered, drawing out a heavy sigh as if it was the last thing he wanted to admit. “And I dinna’ feel at ease with her holdin’ a knife to my back.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Davina argued. “I would never stab a man….” Something he’d said suddenly struck her. He’d mentioned earlier how she’d almost killed him, but she’d been too grief-stricken to catch it. “How do you know the arrow came from my quiver?” When he didn’t answer right away, another realization hit her like a cannon to her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “How do you know Edward is dead, or who he was? You were not acquainted with him, were you?”
“Nae, I didna’ know him,” he said quietly, avoiding her searching gaze.
“And you knew I was inside the Abbey.” Everything was beginning to make more sense now. Dear God, he was one of them! It didn’t matter that he was a Highlander. Her enemies were powerful men with allies in almost every country and fat enough purses to hire mercenaries if their soldiers failed. Trust no one. Her fingers balled into fists and her eyes glistened with tears. Here she was concerned about the man who likely took Edward’s life. She didn’t think about the other three watching her. She didn’t care if they killed her.
“Bastard!” She leaned over him and snatched the dagger from his boot.
His reflexes were too quick and he caught her wrist with bone-crushing strength. Before his companions even had time to gain their feet to rush to his aid, he flipped her completely over his shoulder, delivering her flat on the ground so hard it knocked the air from her lungs. Before she could roll away and run, he pinned her with his weight and halted the others with a stroke of his hand.
“Are ye bewitched? Possessed by a demon?” he demanded, his eyes on her as merciless as his fingers still squeezing into her wrist. “Is that why they want ye dead?”
“You know the answer to that,” she bit out, then swung at his jaw with her free hand. He blocked her fist with his forearm and grimaced as pain lanced up his arm to his wounded shoulder. “You killed Edward to get to me.”
“Who the hell is Edward?” Colin demanded, hovering over them both. He took one look at his brother’s dagger clutched in Davina’s fingers and bent to pluck it from her grasp.
“Captain Edward Asher,” Rob informed him, holding fast against her renewed efforts to free herself. “He was struck doun after he begged me to save her. Aye”—Rob returned his hard gaze to hers when her struggle ceased—“’Twas yer captain who told me about ye.”
Was it true? Was that why he saved her? “Edward would not have told you that I shot you.”
“His eyes did, when he saw yer arrow in my hand.”
Dear God, Edward would have recognized her feathered arrows. “What else did he tell you?” Davina asked, breathless from their fight and still wary of him.
“No’ enough, but ye’re goin’ to remedy that as soon as ye give me yer word that ye’re done tryin’ to kill me.”
“First I would hear all that Edward told you.”
He stared down directly into her eyes and hooked one corner of his mouth in a grin that sent her pulse racing. “Ye’re no’ in a position to bargain.”
“Nor are you,” she countered, trying to match his confidence. “You’re dripping blood all over my robes. When you lose consciousness neither of us will get our answers.”
Rob’s smug smirk vanished when Will chuckled above them. “She’s clever.”
Davina waited beneath her captor while he weighed his options. He could kill her so easily now and bring her body to the men who wanted her dead, but if he already knew her secrets and why she’d been hidden at St. Christopher’s, why did he insist on questioning her? Did he truly save her because Edward had asked him to? And what if Edward had told him more about her? This Highland warrior might have rescued her with good intentions, but perhaps when and if Edward told him the truth… Oh, she didn’t know what to believe, and she certainly couldn’t think with him on top of her. Saints, he was heavy, and as stubborn as a bull. Well, she could be just as inflexible. She shifted, trying to pull more air into her lungs, and became uncomfortably aware of every muscle that formed him. Though the Abbess had frowned upon it, Davina often touched the men of Edward’s regiment; a tender, light touch to an arm while she spoke, a playful shove when they teased her about her pitiful lack of skill at chess. She’d felt their bodies, but never on top of her. Rob’s weight and the heat of his body had quite a dizzying effect on her senses. She would have kneed him in his nether regions if her robes weren’t tangled around her legs.
He must have sensed her discomfort because his penetrating gaze on her softened, sending a flutter across her belly. “I’m no’ yer enemy,” he said thickly, meaningfully.
But everyone was her potential enemy. Edward and even the Abb
ess had made certain she understood that. She’d never had a friend because there were never any children at St. Christopher’s besides her. No villagers to chance sighting her, or hear a rumor of her existence. No one but Davina, the sisters, and a small regiment of the King’s Royal army who knew who and where she was. Everyone could be bought with coin… or fear. Anyone was capable of betraying her.
“You’re hurting me.” She broke their gaze and turned her face away from him, afraid that he might sway her from her caution.
Thankfully, he wasn’t a completely uncaring barbarian and rolled off her. The instant she was free, Davina rose to her knees and crawled backward a few inches, her eyes wide on all of them. For the moment, Colin was the only one glaring at her as if he distrusted her as much as she did them. Will was watching her with something akin to admiration curling his lips, while Finn’s cherubic expression had gone soft on her.
“Was Asher yer husband?” Rob asked, clutching his shoulder as he sat up. His expression on her was harder to read, for it was neither angry nor forgiving.
“No, he was my friend.” She felt a small pang of relief that obviously Edward hadn’t told him anything of great importance. But that still didn’t explain what Rob and his men were doing at the Abbey on the morning they were attacked. “What were you doing at St. Christopher’s?” she demanded of whoever would answer.
“I was acquainted wi’ one o’ the sisters there.”
Davina glanced up and caught the silvery sparkle in Will’s eyes behind his mop of straight, minky hair. Acquainted indeed. Did they think her so simpleminded as to believe that one of the sisters would have anything to do with such a devilish rascal?
“Sister Margaret Mary was once m’ nursemaid,” the handsome wolf told her, seeing the doubt in the quirk of her brow and easing it.
“Now I’ll ask ye the same question,” Rob said, snatching Davina’s attention back to him. “What were ye doin’ there?” He pulled on the plaid swathing his shoulders and her eyes followed the wool as it slipped down his chest.
“I lived there.”
“But Asher called ye Lady Montgomery.”
“My parents were peers. They died when I was a child and the sisters of St. Christopher’s raised me.”
He said nothing but let his eyes linger over her robes. Then, in a sterner voice, he asked, “Which duke and earl did ye speak of earlier?”
She watched him try to pull his tunic up over his belly using only one arm and failing. “The Earl of Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth.” No harm in telling him that much, since he likely knew already.
He stopped moving and looked at her, surprise and a flicker of alarm making his eyes spark like jewels in the twilight. He cut his gaze to Will. “Monmouth? King James’s nephew?”
“James is not yet King,” Davina reminded him.
Both Highlanders looked at her at the same time, but it was Rob who spoke. “And ye are no’ a novice of the Order.”
“But I am. I will take my vows next spring.”
Rob’s eyes darkened briefly as disappointment skittered across his features. Just as quickly, his resolve hardened, along with his jaw. But the flash of something soft in him was a thousand times more dangerous than his friend’s effortless charm.
“Monmouth and Argyll have both been exiled to Holland,” Colin said over the crackle of flames.
Davina nodded. “And it was their Dutch army who attacked us.”
“Why do they want ye dead?”
She turned to Rob when he asked the question. What if he truly didn’t know? She wanted to believe that he didn’t, that he’d saved her for no other reason than he was a decent man. She did not know the world or how to stay alive in it on her own and needed someone to help her, just for a little while. That moment of vulnerability she saw in him tempted her to trust him.
“’Tis ye they were after, aye, lass?” he continued when she remained silent. “All the sisters were killed with the hope that ye were among them.”
Davina swiped a tear from her cheek at the stark truth of his words. They were all dead because of her.
“Why? Who are ye?”
“I am no one.”
Oh, how she wished it were true. She would give anything, anything to have it be true.
Chapter Five
As breathtakin’ as ye are, lass, I canna’ believe so many men lost their lives over no one.”
It wasn’t the way Rob’s hard eyes warmed on Davina or the low lilting cadence of his voice when he called her breathtaking that made her look away. Though in truth, she did not know how to react to such boldness, or why it made her palms warm. She dragged her gaze from his because what he said after that was correct, and she could not hide the pain of it.
He moved closer to her, the warmth of his body seeping into her own. “Verra well, then, Davina. Ye are no one. Fer now.”
He merely crooked his mouth at her when she looked at him again, but it made her want to tell him everything. She smiled back instead and reached for his shoulder. “Forgive me for shooting you… if you are innocent.”
“I am, and I already have.” His breath along her jaw as she helped him out of his tunic sent a warm spark down Davina’s spine. The firelight bouncing across the golden expanse of his bare back awed her. She didn’t have to trust him to appreciate his splendid male physique, something she would surely have to ask forgiveness for later. He looked just as hard as he felt.
“I would not have you think me insolent or unappreciative of what you did for me today.” Oh, why couldn’t she just shut up? Because she needed something to keep her mind off his silken angles beneath her fingers. She’d never touched a man’s bare flesh before and felt her face growing flush. “I do not wish to lie to you, so if we continue to travel together, please consider my silence repayment for saving my life.”
“Ye’re protectin’ me?” His half-smile returned, this time sweet with indulgence.
“All of us.”
“Ye must know somethin’ o’ great consequence aboot these two men that they dinna’ want gettin’ oot,” Will said, stepping around the fire to sit across from her. After giving her one last wary glance, Colin followed him.
Davina shook her head and watched Finn fold his legs beside her. “I know nothing about them save that they have many Protestant supporters here and in Holland who do not favor a Roman Catholic ruler. Monmouth was involved in the Exclusion Bill….”
“The Bill that divided the country into two parties,” Colin finished, ignoring the curious look Will aimed at him, and then at Rob. “The Whigs who supported it and the Tories who opposed. James was convinced to withdraw from all decisions made in the government, and was exiled by his brother, King Charles, fer many years.”
“That’s correct,” Davina told him, surprised and intrigued by his knowledge of politics. There were some things she would never tell these men, or anyone else, but what danger was there in finally being able to share her opinions on matters of state and religion? “Unlike the man who is about to be crowned king, Monmouth and Argyll, and many others, staunchly oppose religious liberty.”
“Aye, we know,” Colin said, watching her over the flames. “’Tis our religion the Protestants want to extinguish. We know where Charles stood on the matter, but we’ve heard little aboot James of York. What d’ye know of him?”
Davina decided that this young man’s full attention was only a little less daunting than the warrior’s beside her. Proceeding with caution, she met his gaze. “He is a man who stands for what he believes in.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his voice laced with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.
“Yes, it is,” Davina answered, taking up the challenge. “He refused to denounce his faith when the Test Act was introduced several years ago, even relinquishing his post as Lord High Admiral. He faced opposition that would have made other men crumble, and all because of his beliefs.”
Colin nodded, and though his features softened in the firelight, his eyes smol
dered from within. “I know a man like that, but he wouldna’ have wed his daughters to Protestants.”
Davina gave him one last, measured look before turning to find the pouch of water Will had tossed to her. She suspected Colin knew more about the Duke of York than he was going to admit. Still, he didn’t know everything, and his questions were innocent enough. “That was King Charles’s doing in an attempt to convince James’s enemies that he had not converted,” she said, finding the pouch and turning her attention back to Rob’s wound.
“How d’ye know all this?”
She blinked at Finn’s softly spoken question. Her hand, in the process of yanking the plug from the pouch, stopped in mid tug. How did she know all this, indeed? A curious question, and the most deadly. She’d been so intent on boasting her knowledge of the House of Stuart that she hadn’t considered if any one of her listeners would wonder how she had attained it. Damn her, she had no skills when it came to deception!
“I read every day,” she told Finn, averting her gaze from his. It wasn’t an untruth. “Part of my instruction at the Abbey included reading over old parchments and books about England’s history.”
“Well, I dinna’ care who’s after ye, lass,” Will announced, thankfully putting an end to the conversation. He pulled part of his plaid off his shoulder, bunched it up beneath his head, and closed his eyes. “Ye’re wi’ MacGregors now.”
“And a Grant,” Finn added, squaring his shoulders with just as much pride and offering her a smile that tempted her to smile back before he too settled in for the night.
They were MacGregors. Little was known about them at the Abbey. The Reverend Mother had only spoken of them once while Davina was studying her lessons on Parliament. After centuries of bloody battles with the Campbells and the Colquhouns, the MacGregors had been proscribed by King James VI back in 1601. They became outlaws who defied kings and butchered nobles in their beds. If these Highlanders were true ambassadors of their clan, Davina doubted the MacGregors followed any laws, even now. Were they mercenaries then? No, they were enemies of the Protestant Campbells. Surely they would not work on Argyll’s side. But why should they give their allegiance to the throne when it was a king who had tried to abolish them?