Highland beast, p.16
Highland Beast, page 16
Bàs held his fingers to his mouth and let out a long, high-pitched whistle. Dòchas’s ears twitched, but he stayed still beside him. From out of the dense middle trotted the wolf, right toward Bàs.
Bàs spoke in Gaelic to his friend as he bent to examine him. Shana held her breath. It still amazed her that a wild wolf could form such an attachment. Bàs ran his hands over the predator’s face and neck, even checking underneath. Still crouched, he looked to Shana. “I don’t feel any wounds, but something is wrong to bring him out here, especially with all these men nearby.”
He straightened and watched Beò trot deeper into the trees. The faithful animal turned to look over his shoulder at him. “Something must be wrong at home.”
“At your cabin?” Shana asked.
“Aye.” Bàs looked at her. “I’ll ask one of the men to take ye back to Girnigoe.”
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking and went to Dòchas. “I’ll go with you to help,” she said. “It could be Betty.”
“I don’t think Beò would search me out to help the squirrel.” Bàs walked over but didn’t mount.
Shana stuck her boot into the stirrup, which pushed her petticoat up to an indecent level. Luckily, the horse blocked her from the field. “Another animal could use my help.” Shana straightened, lifted herself up the side of the tall horse, and threw her leg over, tucking her petticoat under her spread legs. She looked down at Bàs. “Are you coming?”
Bàs grabbed his tunic off the back of Dòchas and threw it on before mounting the horse. He settled behind Shana, and she breathed evenly to calm the hard thump of her heart at his nearness. Bàs Sinclair was brawny, lethal, and as graceful as any courtier she’d seen walking with royalty before Edinburgh Castle.
And she was riding off alone with him into the forest, following his wolf.
He’s more than Death. She repeated the words, feeling the rightness of them, and realized she believed them.
…
I should’ve ridden her down to Girnigoe.
Bàs chided himself for the twentieth time as he neared his cabin, slowing Dòchas. But the fact that she wanted to go, so different from the last time they’d been here, made him unable to say nay.
Beò trotted ahead, stepping nimbly over the ropes that Bàs kept strung between trees to alert him of any visitors. “Do you see anything wrong?” Shana whispered.
“Nay,” he said, his mouth near her ear. He couldn’t help but inhale the fresh strawberry fragrance that had been teasing him the whole ride. Combined with her natural warmth, it made Shana smell like a fresh baked tart.
One I’d like to devour.
He led Dòchas through the bramble-flanked path that allowed easy access to his yard. Beò paused ahead in the center of his clearing and looked back at him as if wondering why he’d stopped. “Doesn’t look like there’s any danger,” Bàs said.
“Except from the mud,” Shana said. Water stood about the yard in puddles and small lakes, and the tall grasses along the riverbank were all brushed down, showing how the river had breached.
“The rains last night were fierce,” he said. Bàs dismounted. All seemed quiet, especially with Apollo and Artemis back at Girnigoe Castle. Banshee and one of the other cats ran out of the barn, coming up to him. “Do you two know what’s amiss?” he asked. The cats slid around his legs, purring.
“I’ll look around,” Shana called.
“I’d rather ye stay up there and be prepared to ride Dòchas back to Girnigoe if needed.”
Apparently, she didn’t agree. She leaned forward and threw her leg over the horse’s rump, preparing to slide down. Bàs caught her waist, helping her land without scraping herself on the saddle.
“Thank you.” She adjusted her blue gown. It looked like it’d been brushed clean at Girnigoe, and a bonny edge of white lace showed from the low neckline, teasing the skin above her ample breasts.
He turned away before he did something that would shock her or worse, make her afraid. Daingead. He needed to get ahold of himself. Joshua had kidded with him that he was so stoic that he’d never warm to a lass, but Bàs felt very warm, even hot, anytime he was near Shana. The memory of their brief kiss played over in his mind so often that he could still feel the warmth of her on his lips. But then the memory of her fearful face staring at him on the scaffold replaced the heat with ice. He could never make up for causing that fear in her.
She walked toward the cabin. “I’ll check on Betty if she’s still here.”
“Someone could be inside.” He leaped onto the porch, throwing open the door before Shana could reach it. Betty skittered along the rafters. He made a quick circuit of the upstairs where his bed seemed untouched.
When he thumped back down the stairs, Shana was looking upward, her chin tilted back, exposing the lovely column of her neck. “Only Betty is here,” she said. “She looks healthy enough.”
Why had Beò risked himself to find Bàs? He trudged across the clearing, splashing with each step, toward the barn that sat on the bank of the river that was gushing along, swollen from the rains. His eyes opened wide. “Ilsa!” he called to the Scottish coo. The river had broken over the bank and swept away the back part of the barn’s fence. “Iona!”
“What is it?” Shana yelled, splashing after him, her skirts held high.
“The river has swept into the coos’ barn,” he said, running to the front of the structure and throwing open the doors. Beò trotted inside and then back out, standing watch.
“The cows must have been washed downstream in the storm surge when the river swelled over its bank,” she said.
“Bloody hell,” Bàs said and grabbed their halters off the nail in the barn.
Shana gasped. “The calf.” Iona was only four months old and vulnerable to predators and the rushing waters. Her mother, Ilsa, could survive as long as a pack of wolves didn’t surround her.
Bàs threw an arm out to the river and looked at Beò. “Where are they?” The wolf trotted toward it. Shana followed behind Bàs as he ran after the wolf. Bàs kept slowing and glancing behind him to make sure Shana wasn’t in trouble. Even holding her skirts up, they dragged in the mud as she sunk.
She shooed him ahead. “Don’t wait for me. Find that babe.”
“Yell if ye need me,” he said over the rush of the water. “Don’t get too close to the bank. ’Twill give way.”
“Go on!” She shooed him again, and he took off after Beò, leaping over increasingly large puddles and dodging trees that gripped the soggy banks with knobby roots washed clean by the raging river, as if they held on for dear life.
For long minutes he followed the swollen river until water had risen to flood the forest floor, creating a wide estuary.
Ahead, a low bellowing rose over the rushing water. “Ilsa!” Bàs yelled. He tore forward, dodging a thick tree. “Ilsa!” She stood mired in muck with Iona next to her. Bàs let out a huff of relief. “Thank ye, Lord,” Bàs said, lifting his feet high as the mud sucked them into the boggy area. Old leaves floated by, lifted from the forest floor, and the tops of ferns were tugged by the slower water flowing over the land.
Ilsa bellowed again. Her eyes were wide under the long hair, and Iona huddled near her, mewing in a higher voice.
“You found them!” Shana called. “Are they stuck?”
“I’ll see,” he said, pulling his legs up one after another to climb closer to them. He hadn’t thought to grab a rope. Mo chreach! Ilsa weighed a thousand pounds. When he reached the spot where they stood, Ilsa’s legs were muddy but not mired where she stood on a buried plateau of rock. She remained there because Iona was stuck.
“There now, mama,” Bàs said, his voice calm as he approached. He slipped her large, soft halter over her nose, avoided her horns, and buckled it in the back.
Ilsa snorted, her thick tongue curling out to lick her gray nose. She tossed her head upward, her curved horns thrusting about, and snorted again. Bàs dodged her horns as she lowered her nose to her calf who stood beside the rocks mired up to her belly.
“Ilsa must have followed her down the river,” Shana said from a spot six feet back. “What a good mama,” she called.
Beò trotted around them, staying on firm ground. His smart friend had known the cows would be attacked by wolves that night if they weren’t rescued today. The water and Ilsa’s horns would hold the pack off only so long.
A sucking noise came with each pull of his boot from the mud, and Bàs came up to Ilsa, scratching the wide part of her nose where the hair lay in a stringy mess. “How long have ye been out here?” She snorted again, glancing down to make sure Iona was still there.
The calf weighed a bit over a hundred pounds from what Bàs guessed the last time he lifted her. The mud would add to the weight, but where Ilsa would be impossible to get out without ropes and men, Iona should be easier.
A gasp behind him made him turn in time to see Shana land hands first on her stomach. “Shana!”
“Blasted mud.” She slowly relaxed there on her stomach but kept her head up with her elbows squishing into the mud. “My foot stuck in it.”
Her dress lay in the dark reddish-brown soup of river water and floating brush. He traipsed back to her, grabbing one arm at the same time she tried to roll onto her back.
Feet stuck in the thicker mud, Bàs wobbled, thrown off-balance. “Mo chreach!” He hit the muddy water with a splash. His eyes shut right before his face went under.
“Bàs!” Shana yelled.
He pushed a hand down, his fingers squishing through the soft, cold dirt to raise his head. Turning onto his side, he wiped a hand over his wet face, probably smearing more mud on than he removed. They looked at each other, and Shana’s lips curved upward. She brushed a dirty finger over her nose. “You’ve got a little dirt on your nose.”
Laughter pushed up from deep inside Bàs, coming out with a natural smile. “Ye do, too.”
Her eyes opened wide, and she gave a shocked frown. “Do I? Where?”
He laughed harder and crawled closer, one of his boots staying behind in the mud. He reached Shana, pointing at her nose. “There.” She wiped it, her smile returning. “And there.” He pointed at her forehead.
“How about my cheeks?” she asked.
They were close, both lying in the mud with cold creek water running under and around them as if they were boulders in this shallow inlet. His hand rose, and he slid his thumb across a little leaf stuck to her cheek. “Aye,” he said, his smile fading at the intensity in Shana’s gaze.
They stared at each other for a moment. Bàs felt pulled to her. He inched closer, staring at the greenness in her eyes. The light of the trees enhanced it. Even covered in mud her beauty wasn’t dimmed at all. Her lush lips parted, and he drew in a shallow breath, his heart pounding as hard as during intense training.
He wanted so badly to kiss her again, just one kiss. He leaned closer, and by some miracle Shana didn’t pull back.
Chapter Thirteen
“If I could be anything in the world, I would want to be a teardrop because I would be born in your eyes, live on your cheeks, and die on your lips.”
Mary Queen of Scots, 1542-1587
Shana’s eyes closed, her heart beating hard as she waited for whatever this yearning between them would bring. Another kiss like the one that plagued her thoughts?
Moooooo! Ilsa bellowed.
Shana’s eyes snapped open, and her gaze shifted past Bàs. “Is she in trouble?”
Bàs’s face was so close to hers. He paused, as if frozen in the air. He’d been about to kiss her, and she’d looked away. By the devil!
Before she could stop him, he exhaled and rolled to his side in the mud, sitting up. “Nay. She’s ready to see her calf out of this muck.”
Disappointment made the mud stickier as Shana slowly pulled up onto her feet, her petticoats clinging to her legs with what felt like fifty pounds of mud. “You lost a boot,” Shana said, watching him trudge back over to the cows.
“Maybe ye could find it while I dig this calf out.”
They both began to push mud about, getting dirtier with each stumble. “I will never get the grime out from my fingernails,” Shana said, her voice surly, although the mud was only part of her annoyance.
As she watched him work to save the cows, Bàs didn’t seem at all like Death. Executioner was the role he played for his clan, but it wasn’t him, it wasn’t the kindhearted man who risked all to save his cow and her babe. The anger at finding out his secret, in the worst way possible, had receded, and it seemed that unbidden heat was growing in its place. The cold water helped to cool her ardor, and she shivered as she waded over to the boot.
Shana frowned at the boot and yanked the oval rim, grunting. Slowly it slid up through the suction of the mud until it gave way. She yelped as she landed on her arse, but it was free. “Got it!” She struggled to stand and then held the boot high. “Victory!”
Bàs stood next to Ilsa, his hand on her side as he smiled at Shana. “A successful outcome in our campaign against the vicious mud monster,” he said.
She chuckled, glancing down at herself. “I think I’ve still succumbed.” She was completely covered with dirt, bits of leaves, and clinging mud.
Bàs shoved against Ilsa to get her to move away from the calf so he could dig around her babe’s short legs. Ilsa snorted but stepped over, the rock base beneath giving her the leverage to pull each leg up from the muck.
“Can ye come around to the firmest ground and tug Ilsa up onto dry land?” he asked over the rush of the river beyond them.
“I’ll try,” Shana said and watched Bàs yank a long strip of wool from his plaid, turning to Ilsa to tie it to the halter he’d buckled onto her.
Shana retreated to dry land and walked around the flooded plain as far as she could and then waded back to Ilsa. The cow turned her head, and Shana dodged her curved horn as she grabbed for the flapping end of the woolen strip. “Come along, Ilsa,” Shana said, tugging.
Ilsa snorted and turned her head back to Iona. Shana gasped as her strength pulled her once again to the muddy floor of the forest.
“Go on,” Bàs said, his voice firm as he shoved the cow, his shoulder pressed into her side. “I’ll get your bairn.”
With another snort, Ilsa turned to Shana, who’d struggled upright, and took a step forward. “That’s it. Come on, mama coo,” Shana said, using a soothing voice.
Iona bellowed, and Shana dodged Ilsa’s horns again as her head swung back around, but Shana was ready this time and dug her heels in. The calf cried as Bàs hugged her hard in a squat. He lifted the calf slowly straight up, the mud sucking at the little hairy legs as if not wanting to let go of its catch. Bàs held all four legs together as he scooped her against his chest. The water made his tunic stick to his skin, outlining the mounding of his muscles as he carried the calf slowly through the flooded area.
“Move, Ilsa,” Shana called, pulling hard at the huge Scottish cow. The ground kept shifting under Shana’s feet. She fell to her knees once but pushed back up, slowly leading Ilsa to drier ground. Bàs reached it first and lowered the calf. He held Iona as she tried to run back into the muck to reach her mother, letting go once Shana had led her out. Iona ran right under Ilsa, shoving her nose against Ilsa’s udder and then suckling.
Bàs stretched his arms. “Iona’s grown. I’d say she’s closer to two hundred pounds now, at least with mud all over her.”
For a moment, Shana stared at the show of masculine strength standing before her. Covered in mud and water, Bàs looked like a god formed of granite and earth. What would it be like to be surrounded by all that strength? The thought of Bàs’s body against hers made chill bumps rise along her body, her nipples hardening.
“Aye,” Bàs said. “I think ye have the right idea.”
Shana’s mouth opened, her brows rising. “Right idea?”
He pointed up the stream. “The storm must have washed away the fence, and they were swept downstream. ’Tis bloody lucky that Iona didn’t drown.”
Shana shut her mouth, swallowing against the dryness there. “And Beò came to find you.”
His fingers brushed Shana’s as he took the muddy sash from her that was tied to the mama cow. Each touch was a teasing jolt.
“Let’s get them back,” he said.
The shadows had grown longer through the forest as they led Ilsa along, Iona following eagerly. A soreness was settling into Shana’s muscles, and she rubbed her shoulder as they stopped before the barn. The day had turned warm, and with all the activity and mud covering her, she felt sticky. “You don’t have a bathing tub,” she called after him as he left the cows to disappear inside.
He’d dumped buckets of fresh river water over the cows to get the worst mud off and was fitting them with clean halters. “I can take ye back to Girnigoe for a bathing tub,” he said, glancing at her. “I bathe in the creek.”
She looked over to it rushing along. The clear water beckoned. “I’ll wash up a bit there then,” she said. Did he bathe nude? Certainly, he did while living out here alone.
“I’ll join ye after I put them in Dòchas’s stall.”
Join her?
Bàs must have realized how that sounded because he quickly added, “Farther down in the deeper pool.” He glanced at her, and she swore she saw a red hue infuse his face.
It was such a human reaction, and it warmed her. The Horseman of Death blushed. There really was more life to him than death.
…
Bàs watched Shana lower onto the bank of the rushing creek. Her arms were coated in semi-dried mud, and her dress was stained and wet. Her hair lay in a tangle over one shoulder, tied loosely to keep it out of her way. “Ye know how to swim, don’t ye?” he said.
“I do.”
He lifted the tunic over his head, pulling it off. “Because the bank is slippery and could give way if ’tis too saturated.”
