The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(67)

Then why the hell did he feel like he was about to jump out of his damned skin? Why did he have to fight the urge to race through camp like a madman and tear open the flaps of the tent to assure himself that she was all right?

When they turned the corner around the Great Hall and the second row of tents came into view, he was about to heave a sigh of relief when he caught the flicker of something in the trees.

“What’s that?” Seton said.

Robbie didn’t take the time to answer. He snapped the reins and kicked his mount forward, plunging into the darkness toward the light. A moment later he heard the sound of a soft cry that sent a torrent of ice rushing through his veins.

The man came out of nowhere.

After hours of tossing and turning, telling herself there was no reason to be scared, and certainly no reason to hold her breath like a terrified child every time someone walked past the tent, Rosalin finally found sleep only to wake up a few hours later with a pressing need that could not be ignored.

Everyone is abed. There is no reason to worry. No one will harm you. But just knowing that Robbie wasn’t here lent a new vulnerability to her situation. She hadn’t realized how much his presence reassured her. How instinctively she knew that he would protect her. Without him, she felt like she was sitting in a den of hungry lions without a sword and shield.

After attending to her business in a matter of a couple of very relieved minutes, she was making her way back to the tent when a man stepped out from behind a tree to block her path.

Her heart jumped, and she let out a startled cry that strangled in her throat. The candle dropped to her feet.

He loomed over her, a dark, forbidding shadow. He wasn’t exceptionally tall, but he was thick and heavily built. The pungent scent of drink accosted her as he bent down and picked up the candle.

“What do we ’ave ’ere,” he slurred, holding it up to her face, “a new whore?” The burr of his accent was so deep, it took her a moment to realize he was speaking English—the Northern English common at the Borders.

Her blood turned to ice. She opened her mouth to protest, but he’d already slid his arm around her waist and jerked her up against him.

“Let me go,” she said, trying to push away.

“What the ’ell?” He pushed her up against a tree and lodged his forearm against her throat. “You’re f**king English.”

Holding the candle close to her face, he gave her the first clear look at him and the cold, black eyes that looked at her murderously. It was the face of nightmares. A thick scar sliced through his heavy brow across a squashed nose and disappeared beneath the edge of a thick beard. The legacy of a sword or battle-axe blade, it gave a menacing edge to an already brutish appearance. When he opened his mouth and sneered, his big, yellow teeth reminded her of a boar’s tusks. That was what he looked like—a big, ugly boar, with thick, wiry black hair and a flat squashed nose.

But it was his heavily lidded eyes and the way he was looking at her that sent chills racing through every corner of her body. She struggled to free herself, but it only made him lean in harder, pressing the forearm laid across her neck and cutting off her breath.

His face was so close, she could smell the sour scent of whisky on his breath. “Who the ’ell are you?”

“Hostage,” she managed to get out in a soft breath. “Boyd.”

She wasn’t sure whether her words had penetrated the drunken haze.

They had, but not in the way she’d hoped. His mouth curled in an ugly sneer. “An English bitch as a hostage? A whore, more like.” His hand covered her breast and she tried to cry out as fear stiffened every inch of her body. “I hope the cap’n taught you something. Let’s see ’ow much yer worth.”

She could see the intent in his eyes and renewed her struggles. She clawed at the arm across her neck. “He’ll kill you,” she managed.

He caught her hands and pinned them up over her head, the soft skin of her wrists digging into the bark. But it was nothing compared to the pain and horror of having his body pressed against hers. She twisted against him, trying to break free, wanting to retch nearly as much as she wanted to breathe.

“Boyd?” he laughed. “He hates the English as much as I—”

A noise behind him made him turn. A dark figure plunged out of the shadows on a horse. As he leaped down, his cloak flying like the wings of a demon behind him, Rosalin caught a glimpse of his face and nearly fainted. Beneath the darkened nasal helm there seemed to be only emptiness.

Her scream was strangled even though the man’s arm was no longer at her throat. He’d turned to defend himself, but he could barely get his hands up before the battering ram of a steel-gauntleted fist came crashing into his jaw with enough force to send him flying through the air a few feet before landing with a thud on his back.

The dark, cloaked figure was standing over him a moment later, pounding him into the ground with powerful blow after powerful blow.

She’d seen something like it once before. “Robbie!”

The word escaped from between her lips as if in answer to a prayer.

He paused long enough to glance at her. Beneath the shadow of the terrifying mask she could just make out his familiar features. But his expression was one she’d never seen before. It was fierce and menacing, without a hint of mercy. It was the face of a warrior in the heat of battle, the face of one of the most feared men in Scotland.