All but the last were events rife with emotion . . . strong emotion. Even the sword, for she believed it belonged to the gap-toothed English soldier who had almost slit her throat. That must be the key, emotion, but he would not tell her that yet. First he would test his own theory.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SCOTIA HAD TRIED to sit on a stone near the small lochan, but it was beyond her ability to sit still. Ever since Duncan had disappeared, leaving her wondering what this mysterious new part of her training would be, her mind had been swirling like a whirlpool, sucking in every possibility but lingering on none. Her feet were as active as her thoughts, and she’d spent the time since they had parted pacing, first up and down the trail, then across the ben to the lochan, and now along the edge of the small body of water, back and forth. She snagged another stick as she walked, peeling the bark off and shoving it into a cloth sack that hung at her waist. At least she’d have a good supply of tinder for the fire to show for her time waiting for Duncan.
But he was coming now.
The thought popped into her head, quieting all others. She closed her eyes and tried to see if she could know from which direction he was coming, the same way she had found her sword yesterday. She turned slightly, still with her eyes closed, until the knowing grew louder in her mind. She opened her eyes just as he became visible through the leaves.
Excitement shimmered over her skin until she realized he had no weapons with him. In fact, he had nothing with him out of the ordinary.
“What have you been doing?” she demanded as he stepped into the sunlight filtering through the trees.
Duncan stopped, as if he was surprised to find her waiting for him even though that’s what he’d told her to do. “Preparing for your training today.”
There was a hitch in his voice that caught her attention but before she could ask him about it he stopped in front of her.
“Do you ken where your sword is, lass?” he asked her. His eyes were narrowed as if he did not expect her to know.
“Of course,” she answered, crossing her arms but not stepping away. “It is . . .” She was about to say “in the clearing where we train” but suddenly she stopped as she knew it was not there. “It is not where we train anymore, is it? What have you done with my sword?”
Duncan held himself so still she could barely tell he breathed. “Where do you think it is?” His voice was flat.
Scotia closed her eyes and she knew. “You have moved it.”
“Can you find it?” His voice was still flat.
Without a word she turned and made her way around the lochan and into the wood on the other side. She headed down the ben, cutting through dense underbrush, and around long, reaching canes of thorny brambles, until she arrived at a boulder with a large tree literally growing around it. Her first thought was to look around the base of the tree for her sword, but when she stopped and quieted her thoughts she knew.
She looked up and found it high in the branches of the ancient oak.
“You ken climbing is not easy in a gown, aye?” she said as Duncan slowly joined her. She waved her hand to stop any answer he might give. “I know, I know. I must be able to do anything a warrior can do while in my gown, for I will not know when I might need to fight.” She kilted her skirts up into her belt and flashed him a grin. “Except perhaps now I will know.”
She made short work of retrieving her sword and was quickly back on the ground next to Duncan. She expected that wonderful broad smile that he gave her when she’d accomplished one of her training tasks particularly well, but his face was still unreadable.
“There is more to this test?” she asked, but he said nothing. “Very well.” Now that she knew what the training was today she was anxious to continue it. She let her mind drift, waiting for that moment when she knew something. And then it was there, in her mind. “You have hidden the dagger that killed my mum,” she said. “If I find it, ’tis mine again.”
Duncan nodded. “That seems fair, but first you must find it.”
She closed her eyes and returned to the knowing, but this time she added a silent chant: the dagger, the dagger, the dagger. She did not say anything but headed up the ben, past the lochan, and on up the steep slope until she found a downed tree. Without hesitating, she reached inside a rotted-out portion of the trunk and pulled the dagger from under leaves that had gathered in it—or that Duncan had added to the hollow after he’d hidden the knife. She turned and showed it to him.
“’Tis mine once more,” she said, sliding the sheathed blade into her belt.
“Do not lose it again,” Duncan said.
“Never.” She pinned him with a look. “Why is this working when it did not for Jeanette’s healer’s bag?” she asked. “These are but things—blades both,” she said, putting one hand on the pommel of the sword and her other on the haft of the dagger, “but things nonetheless.”
Duncan looked at her but his usually readable face was still a mask to her. “You did not ken Conall was among the allies when they arrived, did you?”
“Nay, though I would not have mentioned him if I had. I did not ken exactly which allies were arriving, only that some were.”
“You kent I was joining you at the lochan, did you not?”
She nodded slowly. “How did you know that?”
“You were standing as if you knew exactly where I was coming from, though ’twas not a direction any of the trails or any of our usual locations lead from. And while you looked a bit irritated with me, you did not look surprised to see me coming that way.”
“I knew you were coming, and then I closed my eyes and . . . I do not ken how to explain it exactly but ’twas as if I felt for where you were. I turned until the feeling was strongest, and that is where you came from.”
She watched as her words sank into him.
“And you were irritated with me for keeping you waiting so long?”
“Of course.”
He nodded and looked about him before he turned back to her. “Emotion is the key for you, Scotia,” he said. “You must have a strong emotional connection with the thing . . . or person . . . in order for you to know where they are.”
“But I dinna give a rat’s ass about you,” she said quickly, and to his unexpected satisfaction, not very convincingly.
“You do. You always have, but since we kissed ’tis stronger. Can you not admit that? Since then you have known where I was, have you not?”
Scotia wanted to deny it but what he said was true, though she had not realized it until this moment. “Aye, though not all the time. But if I think of you, or someone says your name, I ken exactly where you are. I do not remember being able to do that before . . . before you kissed me.”
“An emotional connection,” he said.
“But I do not feel—”
He stepped closer to her and touched her hand. Her heart thumped harder in her chest.
“You do. ’Tis why you ken where I am even when I am not here with you.”
“But why?”
“Why?”
She pulled her hand away from him. “Why just you? I have kissed Conall, but I get nothing even when I say his name. Rowan, Jeanette, they are important to me. Why do I not know where they are?”
“Do you not?”
“Nay!”
“Then why have you always found it so easy to elude them when they were looking for you? Think about it, Scotia. Calm your thoughts and think back to a time you did not want to be found. How did you stay hidden?”
Her eyes grew wide. “But that is nothing new, nothing special. I thought everyone could do that.”
“It may not be new, but it is special. Tell me, is it the same now as it was then, or has this knowing grown stronger of late?”
She had to really think about that. “It grows stronger. Clearer, really. I used to get this . . . itch . . . in my mind when Rowan or Jeanette drew near and I did not wish to be found. Now it is as if the thought ‘Rowan is on the trail to the burn’—
” She looked at him with her brow scrunched together and a startled look in her eyes. “Rowan is on the trail to the burn. She is. Right now.”
Duncan smiled, that broad grin that she loved, that he seemed to save only for her. That thought stopped her. Surprised her.
“And Jeanette, do you ken where she is?”
Scotia closed her eyes and thought about her sister. “Aye. She is studying the Chronicles at the back of the main cave.”
“Is there anyone else you can know about?”
“My da. Uilliam sometimes, but only if he is angry with me. I knew Nicholas came for me and Ian in the fire, but that is the only time I have known where he was.”
“Emotion is the key, Scotia. There was no emotion involved when you were asked to find Jeanette’s bag of herbs, but you have a soft heart for the weans, so you were able to find both Maisie and Ian when they were frightened and alone. Nicholas feared for your life in the fire. The sword almost took your life. And the dagger . . . I suspect you will always be able to find that dagger no matter how well it is hidden, or how far away you must travel to retrieve it.”
“And you. I know you.”
He nodded, holding her gaze with his own. “Aye.”
She would not let herself look away from him, from his dark brown eyes gone soft as he waited for her to say something, to do something. But she would not let herself close the small distance between them. She knew herself, and she knew Duncan. They would drive each other daft if there was anything more between them than teacher and student, big brother and bratty wee sister. And yet she did not think of him as brotherly anymore. There was nothing brotherly at all in the way Duncan had invaded her thoughts, and her dreams. Nothing brotherly when he had kissed her. And there was nothing sisterly in the desire for him that swamped her at odd times.
Besides, they both knew she was a fickle creature. Her infatuation with Conall had only lasted until she had other things, more important things, to fixate upon. And there had been lads before him, fleeting flirtations, a few stolen kisses. Of course things had gone a bit further than kisses with Conall. She turned away from Duncan then, pretending she had heard something behind her. She was not proud of what had happened with Conall, though at the time it had been thrilling to know he wanted her so much, to know he would put his life in danger to lie with her. It had been a heady rush of power that she had never experienced before. It had been an escape from the impending death of her mother. And yet she had found no joy in learning of his arrival at the caves.
But she did find joy in her time with Duncan, and not just from the training. She found herself looking for his smile when she finished one of his tasks, and was disappointed if it did not appear. Spending time with him made her forget, sometimes, the things that had happened, and managed to suspend her fixation on the battle to come, allowing her to simply be with him, in the moment.
Daft. She was daft. She wanted no escape from the horrors that had befallen her and her clan since those days of naïveté. Now she wanted to hold the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and the grief close to her so she would never forget, so she would stay focused on what mattered, on vengeance, on driving the English devils from this land, on killing as many of them as possible so they could not return, yet again, to try to break Clan MacAlpin of Dunlairig. She had two deaths to avenge. If she gave in to whatever this was between her and Duncan she would lose her focus, her edge, her burning anger.
She realized she still stared into Duncan’s eyes, but at least her resolve was once more in place.
“How can we use this ability of mine as a weapon against our enemies?” she asked, turning the tension between them back to what she really wanted.
Vengeance.
FOR THREE DAYS Duncan had driven them both hard with sword practice, testing her gift, obstacle courses in the wood, tracking practice for those things she could not find with her knowing, discussions of strategy . . . anything he could think of to tire the two of them out so much and so thoroughly that neither had the energy to dwell on the change in their relationship, for even though she had not admitted as much, the very fact that she could know where he was at all times spoke volumes about the emotions she refused to acknowledge.
That alone, hiding her emotions, was remarkable and told him in no uncertain terms that she did not want the feelings she held for him. Which was fine. He did not want these new feelings she was engendering in him, either.
But Scotia fought like a demon now that she had a real sword. No longer did she dance through the lessons he set her. The sword, and a better understanding of what her gift could and couldn’t do for her, had honed her to a fine edge, making her move through the exercises with more force, more grace, and far greater purpose than ever before.
“Ouch!” he said as Scotia landed a blow with the flat of her sword on his upper arm.
“If you held your targe where you should, I could not hit you like that,” Scotia said, her sword once more up, her targe in place, and a wicked smile upon her lips. “If ’twas a true battle, I would not have turned my blade, and you would be without that arm.” She shifted her weight side to side, her sword at the ready, enjoying far too much his momentary distraction and her momentary victory.
Duncan attacked. Swords clashed, and for a moment his focus was absolute. Scotia put everything she had into her parries and counterattacks, forcing him to think fast to keep up with her.
She fluttered her eyelashes, the smile still in place, drawing his attention away from her fighting stance to her eyes. The moment his focus wavered, she spun, landed a vicious blow on his targe, then used that force to propel her into another spin. He stopped her next blow with his sword, the blades sliding down each other until the cross guards stopped them, jamming their weapons together and bringing Duncan within inches of Scotia. Her eyes locked with his as she fought for control of the battle.
Duncan could barely hold his ground, struggling to keep his mind on the battle now that she stood so close he could feel her rapid breath upon his face, but they were at a stalemate.
“Enough?” She licked her lips, and he was lost.
Somehow she hooked a heel behind his knee and pulled him off balance, toppling him to the ground. He managed to hold his weapons away, pulling hers free of her grip at the same time, but that meant he could not break his fall. He landed hard with an “Oof!”
In one motion, so fluid ’twas like a dance, Scotia drew her dagger and straddled him, her knife point coming to rest just under his ear. At least she was breathing hard from the exertion. He could barely breathe at all, and it had little to do with the knife at his throat, and everything to do with the woman who sat atop him in a position far better used for pleasure than for war.
Scotia was motionless, her gaze, still locked on his, showed surprise, and awareness.
His body stirred. She did not move. Her breath stuttered and grew unsteady.
And then she closed her eyes and caught her lower lip between her teeth and rolled her hips almost imperceptibly. Duncan groaned. He swiftly relieved her of the dagger, throwing it away from them as he rolled and pinned her beneath him so he lay in the cradle of her thighs. She reached up and pulled him down into a kiss that was every bit as fierce as their first, though there was no anger, no argument, this time.
Duncan’s focus was absolute.
The slide of her lips against his, the touch of their tongues, fanned his desire. She let her hands roam over his back, pulling him tighter against her, then she slid her long fingers into his hair as he deepened the kiss, urging her mouth to open for him. It was all he could do not to push her skirts and his plaid out of the way and do what clearly they both wanted right then and there. One bit of sanity and a promise he’d made to himself kept him from that. But that promise didn’t keep him from enjoying the moment.
He slid his hand slowly down her side, his palm skimming over the side of her breast, then down the curve of her waist.
The fervor of her kiss slowed, as if her att
ention had shifted from his mouth to . . .
“Ahhh,” she whispered against his lips as he ran his fingers over the exposed soft skin of her thigh where her gown and kirtle had bunched up, until he found her damp and ready. Before his mind could catch up with him, he pressed a finger into her and felt her shudder. She let her head fall back, and closed her eyes. The look of utter concentration on her heart-shaped face almost undid him.
He pressed deeper into her, then out, and in again, and she began to move her hips against him, matching the rhythm of his fingers. He found her bud and ran his thumb over it as he delved his finger into her, all the while watching her as intense concentration gave way to intense pleasure. She tensed, arching her back, pressing her breasts against his chest and her sex hard against his hand.
She let out a long, low moan of pleasure, her flesh pulsing against him, and it was all he could do not to join her in her release.
He let his forehead rest against hers for a long moment, breathing in the scent of her, letting it wrap around him and settle into him, and he realized he had truly lost the battle, and not the one with swords and shields.
“Get off me, Duncan,” she said but he could not tell her mood. He pushed back and sat down facing her, grateful when she settled her skirts back where they belonged. She said nothing as she got to her feet and found her dagger. She looked at it in her hand as if only seeing it for the first time.
“We cannot do that again,” she said, sliding the dagger into its sheath at her belt.
“I ken that.” He got to his feet and gathered his own weapons. “’Twas not my intention.”
“Nor mine,” she said. “I should have stopped you, but . . .”
“ ’Twas the heat of battle,” he said, though he knew it was far more than that. “It riles the blood.” ’Twas a poor excuse for letting his desires get the best of his intentions. “ ’Twill not happen again.”
Highlander Redeemed (Guardians of the Targe Book 3) Page 12