Chapter 4
Four
Catarina paused by the fire as she listened to the three men plotting their attack against Ewan MacAllister.
Viktor, who was the closest thing to a father she had ever known, held an old tattered bag in his left hand. It was a bag she had repaired earlier that day. “I say we attack him from behind. Bavel, take this sack. We toss it over his head and conk him right on the noggin.”
Bavel nodded in agreement. Not much taller than her, Bavel was the musician of their clan. At a score and a half in age, he was only three years older that she, with black hair and flashing black eyes. He was a handsome man who had always been like a brother to her.
“I can use my hammer and we can have him in the wagon in a matter of minutes,” Lysander added.
“Or the lot of you could kill him,” Cat said, joining their discussion.
She looked at each man in turn. Viktor’s tired gray eyes held an uncommon spark to them while Lysander’s green ones glinted in anticipation. Bavel looked away shamed-faced.
“What do you know of it, woman?” Lysander said. “‘Tis men’s business you’re interrupting.”
“Oh aye,” she said, laughing bitterly. “Murder most often is, but if you’ll recall we were paid to abduct Ewan MacAllister, not kill him. Think you, what would happen if we return with his corpse?”
“Have you a better plan?” Viktor asked. Unlike the others, he respected her ability to think.
“I say we drug him.”
“A devious woman’s trick,” Lysander spat. “I say we be forthright like men.”
She scoffed. “You’ll kill him if you do. A man like him won’t come with you peacefully. If you attack him, he’ll attack you.”
Lysander made a rude noise at her. “Come, let us be about this. Cat, you make the wagon ready for him.”
She threw her hands up, unwilling to argue further. “When he ends up dead, remember who had the voice of reason.”
As Viktor started off with them, Lysander made him stay behind. “You make too much noise, Viktor. It’d be best if you leave this to Bavel and me.”
Reluctantly, Viktor agreed.
He ambled back toward the fire where Cat still stood with her hands on her hips as she watched the other two imbeciles head off.
“They are such fools,” she said under her breath.
“Now, Cat, don’t be so angry because they didn’t listen to you.”
“I’m not angry. I’m perfectly calm. See.”
He laughed at that, then helped her clean up their dinner remains. Catarina washed their cups and platters while Viktor fed the scraps to their wolfhound, Tem.
After a short while, Bavel and Lysander returned, empty-handed. Both of them had lost a good deal of color in their cheeks.
“Well?” Viktor asked.
“Have you seen the size of the man?” Bavel gasped. “He’s taller than a tree.”
Even Lysander’s face was pale and Cat had never known anything to daunt the ex-soldier. A veteran fighter of the Crusades, Lysander had always had nerves undaunted by any fear.
“I don’t want to be hitting this man to be sure,” Lysander agreed. “Like as not, it will only upset him.”
“How big can he be?” Viktor asked.
Lysander stretched his arm over his head and stood on his tiptoes. “He’s a giant. No one said anything about kidnapping a giant.”
Bavel nodded furiously. “We’ll need a bigger wagon to hold him.”
Viktor stroked his gray beard as he considered their words. “I was told he drank much. Was he not in his cups?”
Lysander shrugged. “All I know is he had an ax and I watched him cut down a tree twice the size of me with only three strokes. I wasn’t about to get between him and that ax to figure out if he were drunk or not. And if he could do that drunk... Well, I’m thinking he’s a mighty fine terror.”
Suddenly, all three men looked to her.
“Oh,” Catarina said snidely. “Now why you be staring at me, huh?”
Lysander cleared his throat. He looked at the others, then back to her. “What’s your idea, woman?”
“So now you be facing me for ideas, eh? What makes you think a simple, brainless woman like myself would have any idea on how to accomplish men’s work? Why, I feel faint just trying to think any thought at all.”
Lysander curled his lips.
“Please,” Bavel said, moving over to stand by her. “You’ve no idea what we’ve just seen. If you be having anymore ideas, I’m willing to listen.” He shot a look to Lysander over his shoulder. “And if he insults you again, it’ll be his noggin we conk.”
Nora woke up early, even before the brewer and his wife did. As quietly as she could, she left the small cottage to attend her needs.
It was barely after dawn, with the light just creeping through the village. This was one of her favorite times of the day. She almost always woke up before anyone else and she treasured the handful of time where she was alone in the world.
But she wasn’t alone she realized as she neared the small stream that ran behind the cottage.
Ewan had beaten her awake and to her spot.
She froze the instant she saw him. His black hair slicked back from his sculpted face, he was waist deep in the water, holding a knife to his throat as he shaved himself.
Her gaze feasted on the sight of his tanned flesh. On the way the waves of the water lapped against his bare, tawny skin, caressing and teasing it to a fine sheen.
She traced the line of his muscles with her eyes, watching the way his body bunched and flexed with every move he made.
Aye, Ewan MacAllister was the finest looking man she’d ever beheld.
Always sheltered at home, Nora had never known such desire for a man, but she felt it now. Felt it in every part of her body. Her heart that raced, her lungs that struggled to breathe, her legs that threatened to buckle.
What was it about this unrefined ruffian that he appealed to her so? He wasn’t the kind of man to woo her with poetry. Nor the kind of man who would sit for hours with her while she listened to a bard sing.
Like as not, he’d be like her father, ever impatient with a minstrel. She couldn’t count the times her father had forced her mother up to their room rather than sit and listen to a bard’s tale.
Her father was ever quick to bellow for her mother and never content to sit and listen to others.
Her mother, God bless her soul, was ever patient and caring as a wife should be. But Nora wanted more than that.
She didn’t want to be the dutiful wife who lost herself to her husband’s bidding.
When she closed her eyes, she saw her perfect man. A man of culture and thought who would read with her and compose poetry and songs.
Not one who stormed off to attack trees with an ax every time he got angry.
But as she stared at Ewan’s bare form, she had to admit that attacking trees had certainly done fine things for his body. It had given him powerful shoulders that bulged with strength. Thick, muscular thighs that were dusted with dark, curly hairs and a chest that rippled with masculine beauty.
Suddenly, he turned around and caught sight of her.
Nora froze, unable to move.
Unable to breathe.
Time seemed to have stopped as they stared at each other. But what struck her most was just how gorgeous his face was when clean-shaven. The graceful lines of it...
If not for his size and manly presence, he might have even been called pretty.
But there was nothing pretty or feminine about the man before her.
He was raw masculinity incarnate.
“Did you need something, lass?” he asked.
The deep tenor of his voice shivered through her. Nora swallowed and tried to speak only to find herself strangely mute.
“Is something amiss?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Nora squeaked at the thought of him coming out of the water. If she were this affected by nothing more than his bare chest and back, she shuddered at what the sight of him awake and completely unadorned would do to her.
When he’d been naked in his bed yesterday, he hadn’t seemed this...
Large!
“I’m fine,” she said, spinning around and running back toward the cottage.
Ewan smiled as he watched her haste.
So, the lass had caught him bathing...
He smiled even wider as his body reacted instantly to the thought of her staring at him. She had a bold, unflinching gaze. One that hadn’t caused her to blush or giggle.
She had stared at him like a woman who knew her mind and her desires.
The thought warmed him.
Imagine taking a woman such as she to his bed...
That thought was quickly followed by another. He would never know her. Not like that. Even without his promise to Kieran, there was the small matter that she was promised to another.
He’d taken a woman from a man once before. He would never make that mistake again.
Isobail had assured Kieran that her betrothed, Robby MacDouglas, didn’t care for her just as she had convinced Ewan that his brother didn’t love her.
In the end both Robby and Kieran had been willing to sacrifice their lives for the viperous bitch.
While Kieran had chosen to die, Robby had fought a feud that had almost destroyed both the MacAllister and MacDouglas clans.
No woman was worth that.
Nora belonged to Ryan.
No matter what he felt for her, he would honor her as if she were already the man’s wife, his own desires be damned.
Nora spent the rest of the morning avoiding Ewan. Something that proved extremely difficult once they left the brewer’s house and were once again on their way toward Lochlan’s castle.
“You are so strangely quiet, lass, that you’ve got me fearing for your health. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Quite well,” she hastened to assure him. He’d asked that question entirely too many times.
The last thing she intended to tell him was the matter that bothered her was him. Who knew that the absence of his beard would make such a significant change to his face?
He no longer looked quite so off-putting or beastly. There was an elegant grace now to his features. An air of powerful predator.
Why would any man with a face so breathtaking seek to bury it under hair? Surely there should be a law to prohibit such a crime.
All day long she’d been trying to banish the images of him that she had in her head.
The sight of him naked and sprawled in his bed. The sound of his deep laugh.