Page 41 of Bound to Her Highland Lord
“I am in awe of you, Sorcha,” he told her candidly. “Your ability to stare danger in the face without flinching is… well, I do not have the word for it. You have more courage than any man I have ever known.”
She shrugged off the complement, leading her horse to the stream they had come upon, just as she had told him they would.
“As I said, I was nae always this way. Meeting Aila, seeing how she shaped her own life, how she did what she wanted, showed me I could do the same thing. So I did.”
“And now you have joined with the Kincaids, taken on a handful of children, and are facing down one of the mostruthless English lords I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, all while claiming it is nothing.”
He slid from his saddle, landing lightly on his feet before moving quickly to her side. Without waiting for permission or an argument, he clasped Sorcha around the waist and lifted her from her seat. Staying too close for it to be proper, he lowered her to the ground slowly, savoring the way she felt in his arms.
Neither of them had broached the subject of their shared kiss in the stables during their ride, but he was not going to pretend it hadn’t happened. Not when it was one of the best things to have ever happened to him. The pink tinge in her cheeks and on the tops of her ears, paired with her inability to meet his eyes as they stood together, his arms still wrapped around her, told him all he needed to know about her feelings.
“I never said it is nothing,” she argued quietly. “I merely believe that everyone, nay matter yer background, yer family status, or how much money ye have in yer pocket, can rewrite their story. We dinnae have to be bound by the decisions others have made for us our entire lives. I was nae content to let my father and then my husband tell me how I was going to spend the rest of my life. So I left.”
He stepped back, letting her words drift over him as he tied the horses to a branch hanging lazily over the river.
“It has nae been easy. I have spent many a night cold and hungry. I have been afraid for my life. I have even wished for death in the lowest of times. But even with all the struggle and hardship I have faced, it has been because of the choices I have made.”
“And that makes it all worth it?” he questioned, trying to sort through her explanations.
“Aye. That has made it all worth it.”
Silence fell on them then. The creek babbled while the horses stepped into the frigid waters. There were still a few patches ofsnow on the ground, and spots where the grass had yet to grow back, the early spring frost keeping the lushness at bay for a little while yet. Oliver braced his shoulder against the nearest tree, a wide trunk of oak, and watched as Sorcha bent to refill her canteen. She splashed a handful of water on her face and sighed. Oliver was utterly entranced with her every move.
“We used to spend weeks, sometimes even months beside creeks like this,” Sorcha told him, her back still turned as she watched the water drifting by. “On the occasional chance that we would snag some work that provided us with enough money to buy enough food, the three of us would disappear into the woods. We would make up a campsite complete with a fire pit and target practice.”
She tilted her head back, eyes closed, and let the sun wash over her. Her hair took on that shimmering shade of copper once more. Oliver could do little more than breathe.
“We would spend a few days carving and stringing our own arrows, hunting for stones to sharpen and feathers to tie to the ends. I would sit by the water, just like this, and hone all our blades until they could slice through anything. And then, when we were rested enough, we would spend hours practicing. At first, none of us were truly strong enough to hold the swords outright. We had to get accustomed to the weight of the steel blade. Then there was the swinging and the slashing. Only once we could all move easily enough with it did we start practicing on each other.”
“You fought each other?” he blurted out, incredulous.
“Of course. How else were we to get any good?”
She rose from her haunches then and stalked towards him, a gleam in her eye.
“None of us were any good at first, so we would sneak into the villages to watch the men training. But eventually, we learned all the same exercises they did. Some days we would train one onone and when we outgrew that, we would practice two against the other.”
“To what end?”
With every word, she grew closer and closer until she was standing under him, her hair tickling his nose as it blew in the breeze.
“We wanted to be sure that we could defend ourselves against any man.” She spoke with a steeled determination, a confidence that only came from countless hours of practice. “I wanted to ken that I would be able to keep my sisters safe should I ever have need to.”
“Can you?” he breathed, his lips scant inches from hers.
“Ye ask as if ye dinnae already ken the answer,” she retorted, angling her chin up towards him. “Need I remind ye that ye lost yer dagger to me the moment ye were within arm’s reach, despite the bars that separated us.”
Her words rung true. Oliver had no problem recalling the impressive way she had disarmed him within a matter of minutes upon their first meeting. It was one of the things that had fascinated him most about her. A fascination that had yet to simmer to anything other than a raging boil. He wanted to see her skills with the sword and her bow and any other weapon she could find on full display almost as much as he wanted to kiss her again. Almost.
“You only succeeded because I was distracted,” he countered, savoring the way she leaned into him.
Her eyes slid half shut, her cheeks flushed as her breath hitched in her chest. Everything about her, told him that she felt the same pull he did, the one that would end with them so entwined that nothing could separate them. While he awaited that time with excited anticipation, he savored the moment they were in, the dance they did back and forth as they tried to discover each other.
“Ye would never be able to do something like that again now that I have the full measure of ye,” he murmured, his brogue on full display.
Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt her hand reach around his waist. She pressed her chest into his, tilting her chin up until their lips barely touched. But he had anticipated her.
Moving in a flash, Oliver reached one hand around to the small of her back, pulling her into him until he no longer knew where his body stopped and hers started. With the other hand, he encircled her wrist, the small bones fitting perfectly between his fingers. She gasped. Whether in surprise or frustration or something else, he didn’t know. He didn’t take the time to analyze it as he spun her around, his dagger she had pulled from his belt firmly in her grip while she stayed firmly in his. In one swift motion, he had her back against the tree he had been leaning against, her waist in his grasp, and the wrist that held his dagger raised in the air.
