“You don’t know them!” Stephen retorted. “You’ve met only the scum. I was embarrassed by my own people at the way they treated you at Sir Thomas’s.”
“None of them left me standing at the altar in my wedding dress.”
He chuckled. “You’re not about to forget that, are you? When you meet my sister-in-law Judith, perhaps you’ll forgive me.”
“What…what’s she like?” Bronwyn asked tentatively.
“Beautiful! Kind and sweet-tempered and smart. She runs Gavin’s estates with one eye closed. King Henry was quite taken with her and more than once asked her opinion.”
Bronwyn sighed heavily, her breath catching in her throat. “It’s good to hear of someone who is competent and doesn’t mishandle her responsibilities. I wish my father had a daughter who was worthy of the title of laird.”
He laughed and pulled her back against him, stretched out on the cold, damp ground. “For a woman, you’re quite capable as a laird.”
She blinked. “For a woman? Does that mean you think no woman is capable of being chief of a clan?”
He shrugged. “At least not one so young and pretty or so ill-trained.”
“Ill-trained! I have trained all my life. You know I can read better than you as well as add a column of figures.”
He laughed. “There’s more to ruling men than adding numbers.” He looked at her for a moment. “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly as he bent forward to kiss her.
“Let me go! You are an insufferable, narrow-minded, ignorant—” She stopped because his hands were on her legs, caressing them.
“Yes,” he whispered against her mouth. “What am I?”
“I do not know and I do not care,” she said as if from a long way away. She arched her neck backward as he touched it with his lips.
In spite of the seeming privacy Bronwyn and Stephen were not alone. David MacArran stood on the hill above them, watching them. “The whore!” he whispered. She put her own lust before the needs of her brother. And to think Jamie MacArran thought she was more worthy to be laird.
He raised his fist toward the couple below him. He’d show them! He’d show all of Scotland who was the most powerful man, the true laird of Clan MacArran.
He sharply reined his horse away and headed back toward his secret camp in the hills.
The sun was barely up as the wagons rolled down the steep path to the mainland. Stephen’s men, now so brown, hardly distinguishable from Bronwyn’s Scots, rode beside him. They were a quiet group, apprehensive about the outcome of the journey. The wagons were loaded with English clothes, and Bronwyn’s men wondered if they’d be able to function in English society.
Bronwyn had her own worries. Morag had lectured her for a long time when the old woman heard about Davey’s plan. “Don’t ye be atrustin’ him,” she said, pointing a short bony finger at Bronwyn. “He always was a sly one, even as a boy. He wants Larenston, and he’ll stop at nothin’ to get it.”
Bronwyn had defended her brother, but now she remembered Morag’s warnings. She looked about her for the hundredth time.
“Nervous?” Stephen said from beside her. “You needn’t be. I’m sure my family will like you.”
It took her a full minute to understand what he was talking about. She put her nose haughtily in the air. “You should worry whether the MacArran will like them,” she said as she spurred her horse forward.
It was sundown when the first arrow whizzed past Bronwyn’s left ear. She’d just begun to relax and forget her apprehensions. At first she didn’t realize what was happening.
“Attack!” Stephen yelled, and within seconds his men had formed a circle of defense, their weapons ready. Bronwyn’s men slipped off their horses, out of their plaids, and into the woods.
She sat stupidly on her horse as she saw one man after another go down.
“Bronwyn!” Stephen yelled. “Ride!”
She obeyed him instinctively. The arrows flew about her. One grazed her thigh, and her horse screamed as the shaft burned the animal’s skin
. It suddenly came to her why she was so stunned. The arrows were all directed at her! And one of the archers she’d seen in a tree was one of the men who’d left the clan to join Davey. Her brother was trying to kill her!
She put her head down and urged her horse forward. There was no need to turn around; she could feel the pounding of the horses’ hoofs behind her. She followed Stephen’s horse as he led her away from the flying arrows. For once there was no thought of whether she trusted him or not.
She screamed once when her horse was shot from under her. Before the animal could even go to its knees, Stephen had circled back, and his arm was about her waist as he pulled her to the front of his saddle. She twisted until she was astraddle, then bent low over the animal’s neck.