The Arrow by Monica McCarty
Was she being a fool? Was it ludicrous to think he could ever love her back?
John muttered a curse and dragged his fingers back through his dark-blond hair. “Damn it, I know. But he shouldn’t leave it here for so long if he doesn’t want someone to drink it.”
Cate tried not to laugh. “Let me know how that excuse works.”
John shook his head. “You’ll know.” He grimaced, unconsciously rubbing his shoulder as if already feeling the thrashing he would take on the practice yard. “I hope he hasn’t learned any more new wrestling moves. The last time I had bruises for a week.”
Cate laughed, walked over to him, stood up on her toes, and placed a fond peck on his cheek. “Poor John.” When she drew back, his eyes looked a little odd. She hoped he wasn’t coming down with the ague. Maddy had been sick for a week.
“Don’t worry about the money,” she told him. “I’ll see where Pip has gone. He’s probably on his way back with your spices right now.”
Despite what she’d told John, Cate wasn’t so certain about Pip’s location. After searching the tower house and the handful of wooden buildings inside the peel, she hurried along the path in the woods the short distance to the village. If she happened to be heading toward the alehouse, she told herself it didn’t mean she didn’t trust him. Pip—Phillip—was a troubled, confused fifteen-year-old lad who’d been abandoned by his mother. He needed someone to believe in him. And Cate did. Really. She was just being diligent in her covering of all possible locations.
As it turned out, Cate’s faith in him was warranted, although she would have rather found him at the alehouse.
Barely had the old wooden motte-and-bailey tower house of Dunlyon, built by Gregor’s grandfather on the site of an ancient hill fort, faded into the distance when she heard a burst of laughter followed by the excited shouts and cries of children playing, coming from the River Lyon on her right.
She smiled and continued on her way. But a small prickle at the back of her neck made her stop and listen again. In the cacophony of noise she tried to sort out the different sounds. A chill spread over her skin, and she started to run. It wasn’t laughing, but jeers. And it wasn’t the excited shouts of children playing, but the inciting chants of a mob.
Her heart pounded as she ran through the canopy of trees and burst out into the bright sunshine of the boggy riverbank. Her stomach dropped seeing the circle of boys—although two or three of them were already the size of full-grown men—gathered around watching something.
Please don’t let it be …
“Get him, Dougal!”
The hard thump of a fist in the gut, followed by a sharp “umph” and moan, were enough to confirm her suspicions, even before she caught a glimpse of the black hair caked with mud and the bloody too-big nose.
Rage stormed through her. “Get away from him!” she shouted, running toward the not-so-little brutes.
The sound of her voice parted the circle of spectators like Moses at the Red Sea. The thugs-in-the-making gaped at her as if she were a madwoman. Which, as furious as she was, wasn’t far off.
Be smart. John’s admonitions came back to her. Lead with your head, not with your heart.
She scanned the faces. She knew most of them and wasn’t surprised by any, except for one. Willy MacNee met her gaze and quickly turned away, his face as red as a ripe tomato. Willy was the younger brother of one of her friends, and a sweet boy. She’d expected better of him, and he knew it.
But her attention was soon focused on the two boys at the center of the spectacle. One was big, thick, and mean; the other was small and thin, and didn’t know when to back down. After assuring herself Pip was all right beyond the obvious broken nose (the last thing the already overlarge feature on his small face needed), she turned to Dougal. “What is the meaning of this, Dougal? How dare you hit him!”
The boy obviously wasn’t used to being taken to task by a woman. Recalling the bruises she’d seen on his mother’s face, she wasn’t surprised. The father was just as brutish as the son.
But when he looked her up and down, she realized it wasn’t just her sudden appearance that had startled him; it was also her clothing. She’d forgotten about the fine gown and realized he’d never seen her dressed like a lady before—like the daughter of a chieftain. Except she wasn’t the daughter of a chieftain, and everyone knew it.
They thought her an orphan rescued by the absent MacGregor laird. Not a peasant, but not a lady either. Somewhere in between. By not telling Gregor the truth about her father, the stain of her bastardy had not followed her to Roro.
Seeming to remember her status, Dougal puffed up and thrust out his chest like a preening peacock. “ ’Tis none of your affair, mistress. This is between us men.”
She lifted a brow at that, making the seventeen-year-old boy flush.
She took a step toward him. Though she was about half his weight and a full head shorter, the fierceness of her expression must have startled him. Instinctively he moved back. “Pip is my business,” she said firmly. “He is my family.”
“He’s a worthless, thieving no-name bastard!”
Rage expanded every vein in her body. Pip, too, let out a roar that belied his size and launched himself at the other boy, fists pummeling. “I’m not a thief. It was you who took my money. I was only trying to get it back!”
Pip’s advantage of surprise didn’t last long. He landed only a few blows before Dougal retaliated with an upper-cross to his jaw. Blood sprayed out of his mouth as Pip’s body went flying back through the air like a sack of bones.
Cate didn’t think; she reacted. Dougal’s fist had barely returned from his side when she took hold of his arm and twisted it around his back.
Leverage, position, and hitting the right spot, she reminded herself, not physical strength. Still, her pulse was racing. This wasn’t the training yard.
But it was working. She couldn’t believe it was actually working! She was really doing it.
Dougal let out a yelp of pain and stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Levering her foot around his body, she pulled his arm until his eyes started to water and sweat poured off his reddened face. His knees were buckling to absorb the pain, so when she leaned toward him their noses were only inches apart. “You are nothing more than a big bully, Dougal MacNab. A weak boy who preys on those physically smaller than you. But size doesn’t equal strength.” She tugged his arm a little harder until he cried out. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson because if you touch one hair on his head again, I will find you and ensure you do.”
Suddenly, she was conscious of the other boys. Coming out of their shock, they’d started to murmur and shift back and forth a little uneasily, as if they knew they should do something. She’d been so carried away by her success that she’d forgotten about the others. But Cate was painfully aware that using what she’d learned on one man was vastly different than on a half-dozen.
“Please,” he said, the crack in his voice reminding her of his age. “You’re going to break my arm.”
“You’ll remember?”
He nodded vehemently.
“Good.” She released him and took a few steps back. He was rubbing his shoulder, staring at her with a mixture of disbelief, embarrassment, outrage, and hatred. “Being mean doesn’t make you a man, Dougal. And fear is not respect. I hope you will remember that as well.”
Deciding it might be prudent to get out of there as quickly as possible, she turned to help Pip up. The next thing she knew, she was facedown in the mud. It wasn’t the first time she’d been knocked down from behind, but it was the only time she’d ever wanted to cry. The sodden, muddy edge of her pink veil reminded her of what she was wearing. Her gown was ruined.
The gown Lady Marion had bought for her.
The gown she’d wanted to impress Gregor with.
The gown that had made her feel … pretty.
She heard Pip shout in outrage, spewing a litany of inventive threats tha
Making a show of slowly dragging herself to her knees, she waited, her pulse racing. Just like practice …
Dougal’s feet appeared by her side. “You stupid bitch. I’ll show you who is a real man.”
His words unleashed a twisted flurry of anger and pain, his threat a brutal reminder of what had happened to her mother. She wanted to lash out. She wanted to cry. She wanted to punish any man who would ever think to rape a woman.
But John had warned her that her weakness wasn’t in her limbs but in her quick temper. So instead she waited patiently for what she hoped was coming.
He didn’t disappoint. Dougal moved his leg to kick her in the ribs, and she caught it, using the momentum to catapult him onto his back with a ground-smacking thud. A moment later she had her knee on his chest and her blade pressed against his thick neck. “You are a bully and a coward, Dougal MacNab.”
He looked at her wide-eyed. “What kind of lass are you?”
“The kind who has a blade to your throat, so unless you want to continue this, I suggest you take your friends and go on home.”
This time when Cate let him up, she made sure to keep an eye on him as he rejoined his friends. They whispered back and forth, and every now and then Dougal would cast a scathing glare in her direction.
She still had her dagger drawn and ready, but when they didn’t leave right away, she felt the first prickle of sweat on her brow. It was the worried look Willy sent in her direction, however, that made her pulse flutter. They were planning something, and there were so many of them. Six, not including Willy. If they chose to fight as a group …
Cate swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Her advantages were surprise and quickness. She’d lost the first, which would seriously impact the second, even with one opponent. With six …
Deciding that she’d made her point, and perhaps she should be the one to back off, she motioned for Pip to come to her side.
Before he’d reached her, however, the sound of an approaching horse did what her threat had not, sending Dougal and the other boys scurrying off toward the village.
Cate let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She turned to face their unwitting rescuer just as the rider drew his horse to a halt on the edge of the riverbank.
She froze, the blood slowly draining from her face in horror.
No … Please, no. Not like this. He couldn’t see her like this. She’d wanted to impress him.
Her throat tightened, and a misty sheen of hot tears blurred her mud-streaked vision, as she took in the familiar white charger and the muscular, leather-clad warrior who sat atop the magnificent beast, staring down at her like some golden hero in a bard’s tale.
She blinked, feeling the urge to put her hand up as if she were staring straight into the sun. He didn’t need to wear chain mail to shine; he caught the light in a blinding array all on his own. But for once she did not feel like sighing.
It wasn’t fair! Did he always have to look so perfect? So shiny and polished? Always impeccable, as if dirt wouldn’t dare stick to him.
While she … she was a muddy mess. She wanted nothing more than to sink into the boggy ground and disappear.
He pulled off his helm and shook out his hair. It fell in spectacularly tousled waves around his face. Her heart squeezed at the unfairness. Her hair after being in a helm looked like it was plastered to her head.
“What in Hades have you done this time, Caitrina?” His mouth twitched. “Or do I want to know?”
Caitrina. He was the only one who’d ever called her that, and it wasn’t even her real name. Catherine. She shouldn’t have lied about her identity—or, by omission, her age (she realized he thought her younger)—but she’d been fifteen, traumatized, and desperate for him to take her with him. She’d known that if she’d told him the truth, he would never have done so. By using her dead second stepfather’s name of Kirkpatrick, there was no chance anyone would connect her to the bastard daughter of Helen of Lochmaben. And that was the way she wanted it. No more pitying looks. No more teasing. No more secret prayers that her father would come for her. She’d been given a chance to put that life behind her, and she’d taken it.
Any twinge of guilt she might have felt, however, was quickly forgotten when she saw that mouth twitch. How could he be so ungallant as to laugh at her? Because he thinks you are a child. A child who needed rescuing from a well. Not a woman full grown.
His amusement seemed the final slap of injustice on her mud-strewn indignity. She adored him, but the man could be a thoughtless horse’s backside at times. The tears that had threatened were forgotten; instead she fought the urge to put her dirty hands on him and knock him off that pristine white horse into the mud. Usually she admired his cool unflappability, but just once she’d like to see him ruffled.
Pip had obviously taken umbrage at the newcomer’s attitude as well. He angled his thin body in front of her. “She saved me, that’s what she did. One of those boys took my coin, and when I tried to get it back, he and his friends came after me. But Cate nearly broke his arm. And when he pushed her down, she pulled a knife on him.”
“She what?” Gregor exploded incredulously.
Cate tried to stop Pip, but apparently mistaking Gregor’s anger for admiration, he was eager to continue the story. “Aye, she flipped him on his back like a dead chicken and had her dirk right up to his neck.” The boy whose nose had swollen to the size of a turnip looked at her with unabashed adoration, and then back over to Gregor. “You should have seen her.”
Gregor looked at her as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to take her over his knee or be ill.
She winced; he definitely wasn’t impressed with her skills. She suspected there was going to be hell to pay for this—and not just from Dougal’s father.
Gregor gave her a hard look before turning to Pip. “And who perchance are you?”
Pip flushed. Seeing the boy’s discomfort, Cate thrust her chin up and met Gregor’s gaze. “He’s your son.”
Three
In retrospect, perhaps it had been a bad idea to laugh, but, damn it, Cate looked so adorable and fierce with the mud streaked all over her face and clothes—an unusually pretty dress for her, actually. Seeing her look so refreshing girlish had been something of a relief, after the uncomfortable and far from guardian-like thoughts Gregor had been having about her since his last time home.
But he hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and would have apologized had he not been struck by what could only be described as sickly panic when he heard what she’d done (she could have been hurt, damn it!), and then momentarily struck dumb by her announcement.
“My w-what?” he sputtered.
“Your son,” she replied calmly.
The words didn’t lose any impact on repeating. If Gregor had been more shocked in his life, he couldn’t recall. She might as well have proclaimed herself the Queen of bloody England. She had about as much chance of claiming that position as he had of having sired this whelp.
Aside from the fact that the boy looked nothing—nothing—like him, he was at least fifteen or sixteen years old. Gregor was thirty-one, and the only woman he’d had relations with before he was twenty hadn’t given birth to this boy. He should know, since she married his older brother a few months after their relationship had served her purpose.
He gritted his teeth, casting a sharp glance at the bloodied, mud-splattered youth. “I don’t know what hard-luck story he’s told you, but that boy is most assuredly not my son.”
The whelp shot him a black scowl, looking as if he’d like nothing more than to stick a blade between Gregor’s ribs. Cate, however, acted like the wee blackguard had just been grievously injured and hastened to protect him by wrapping her arm around his shoulder.
“Of course he is. Just like Eddie and Maddy.”
“Who in the hell are they?” Gregor exploded. He’d given up trying not to swear and blaspheme around her years ago. Not even God would hav
“Did John not tell you? Congratulations—you have two sons and a daughter!”
This was the “emergency”? The lass wasn’t only trouble, she was mad—especially if she thought he’d ever have a son named after the English king.
He told her so, and what skin on her face wasn’t covered with mud turned red. She turned to the boy. “Pip, you go on ahead. Your father and I have something to discuss.”
This Pip could give Viper a contest in venomous glares. The lad looked like he wanted to argue, but when Caitrina added, “Please,” he nodded and left—though not without a few more black scowls cast in Gregor’s direction.
Christ, did the lad think he would hurt her? Gregor hadn’t strangled her in the five years he’d known her; he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. With any luck, in a few weeks she’d be out of his hair for good. Although in light of today’s events, his plan to marry her off was going to be even more of a challenge than he’d thought. He shook his head. Brawling in the dirt like a … he didn’t know what, but it certainly wasn’t befitting a marriageable young lass.
She turned on him, hands on her hips, as soon as the boy moved out of earshot. “How could you say that in front of him? You hurt his feelings!”
Gregor jumped off his horse, preparing to square off for the battle he knew was coming. If he didn’t know better, from the way the blood was racing through his veins, he might think he was actually looking forward to it.
“Hurt his feelings? My good name is the one being dragged through the mud.” Her eyes flared at that. “The little charlatan has lied to you and taken advantage of your kindness. How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
Gregor smiled; it was as he suspected. “It’s impossible for him to be my son.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know how to subtract.”
Clearly, she didn’t understand, and he was in no mind to explain. His age when he’d first been intimate with a woman was not a proper topic for a young lady’s ears. But that wasn’t the only reason. She’d closed the gap between them to a few feet—which, as it turned out, was too damned close.