Highland Warrior, McCollum, Heather [carter reed .TXT] 📗

“My horse.”

She summoned two lads in her native language, and they ran forward. “They used to handle our horses before they were stolen and have some turnips to lure him to the barn.” Kára smiled wryly. “I also reminded the boys not to eat him.”

Joshua snorted and patted his gallant bay. He wished he could say that Fuil would not fall for another trick of turnips to get him to move, but his always hungry warhorse would prove him a liar immediately. When they returned home to Girnigoe, resisting temptation and remaining focused were lessons Joshua would be emphasizing with his young bay. Maybe with himself as well.

He followed Kára up the hillside, watching her hips sway naturally. “Your people seem to hate me,” he said.

“You do not seem the type to worry over what people think of you,” she said, glancing at him before turning to trudge on down the hill behind the cottages. “Once they believe that you do not work for Lord Robert anymore, they will not hate you.”

“Ye could have mentioned this suitor before we arrived,” he said.

“It did not seem important,” she threw over her shoulder, and he took two faster strides to come even with her.

“Aye, it is important,” he said, stopping her by clasping her wrist.

She turned to look at him, her eyes narrowing as she studied his face. “Why?”

Because he wanted to tear apart any man that might lay a claim on the wild beauty standing before him, but he bloody hell couldn’t say that. “A warrior must always know when he could be seen as the enemy, so he can be on guard against attack.”

One side of her lush mouth lifted into a half smile. “I did not think the Horseman of War would worry over a group of women and old men or a simple man whom I had sent off with a refusal.”

She was using shame as her weapon. Joshua knew the tactic of irritating an opponent so that they walked away from what could be an argument. He’d employed it often back home, along with poking at vulnerabilities and plucking at anything a person found uncomfortable. Mo chreach. It was a wonder his brothers hadn’t locked him up or exiled him for his crimes against their peace.

Joshua met her challenging gaze with narrowed eyes. “Do not keep anything else from me, Kára Flett,” he said and watched her smile slip away. A strike of warning shot through him, but she turned away and trudged on before he could pry out any truths. They walked in silence next to each other.

Over the crest, the hill fell away where a series of doors sat cut into the back side. He counted five crude doors. With the size of the hill, there could possibly be ten rooms hidden under the windblown sod. Smoke snaked up from various holes in the hillside, but the wind scattered it so fast that the holes were hardly noticeable unless one inadvertently stepped into one.

Kára waited for him by an open door, tipping her head to get him to follow her inside. Joshua ducked to enter the stone passageway. As in Kára’s den, the rocks were fitted tightly together to make walls, held in place by the thick earth packed against them. His head brushed the stone ceiling, and he bent to move quickly down the tunnel. It opened into a good-sized room with a central fire pit that was lit and radiating heat throughout, along with a haze of trapped smoke. Furs sat along a wall beside a stack of pallets. A long table held bowls and baskets in the middle.

“Follow me.” Her voice, alluring as the first time he’d met her, came from an open doorway on the interior wall.

She could be a siren and this a trap, but her bloody spell had already been cast back in her barn the moment she’d lowered her legs onto his shoulders and he’d inhaled her scent. Mind made, he walked directly into what looked to be a bedchamber, half the size of the first earthbound room. Kára stood beside a bonny lass who was quite obviously with child and the lad with the sparse beard from the village. An elderly woman, with her white hair braided and coiled around her head, sat on the bed.

“Horse thief,” Joshua said, nodding at the wide-eyed young man, who did not strike him as a suitor for as capable a lass as Kára.

“You brought him here?” the lad said to Kára. She answered in their own language, making Joshua frown. Those who spoke purposefully in another language were hiding something. But then he’d already guessed she had secrets.

“Where is Geir?” Kára asked in English.

“Learning with Corey,” the man said.

“Corey met us on the hill. Geir was not there.”

“He probably stayed inside when you two rode up.”

Who was Geir? Not knowing the players in all this…whatever this was, put him at a disadvantage. Joshua’s instincts prickled. Why exactly had Kára brought him there?

Joshua turned to the elderly woman, bowing his head. “I am Joshua Sinclair from Caithness in the north of mainland Scotland. Thank ye for welcoming me into your home.”

The woman’s firmly set mouth turned up at the corners, her brow rising. “Robert’s Horseman of War has manners.”

“I am God’s Horseman of War,” he corrected.

She stared at his eyes for a long moment and then nodded. “I am Harriett Flett, Kára’s grandmother.” She pointed to the horse thief. “And Oskar’s. He is her brother.” Brother? Had Kára been helping her brother steal Fuil the other night?

“I am Brenna Muir,” the pregnant woman said, slowly lowering into the one chair in the room. “Kára’s closest friend.” She rested her hands on her stomach and blew upward at a piece of hair that had fallen over her nose. The whole time she stared between Kára and him, her eyes wide with questions.

“Brenna?” a man called from the front room. “The Horseman