The Ranger (Highland Guard #3)(25)
She stepped around Mary, who was taking her sweet time getting up from the blanket.
“Where are you going in such a rush?”
Anna’s cheeks grew hot. “I wish to congratulate Alan, don’t you?”
She picked her way along the rocky path on the edge of the cliffside, trying not to look down as she silently urged the crowd of spectators down the hill faster.
“Are you sure it’s not the young Campbell you wish to congratulate, Annie-love?” Juliana teased from behind her. “Don’t look now,” she whispered, though with the boisterous crowd it was unnecessary. “But I think he’s looking at you.”
Of course she looked.
Anna turned over her left shoulder and gazed down.
She sucked in her breath. Juliana was right. He was staring right at her. Their eyes met in a sudden jolt that reverberated like a powerful shock through her body. For the first time, he wasn’t looking at her with indifference. Actually, it looked like alarm.
Too busy gazing at him, she wasn’t watching where she was going.
“Anna, watch out!” Mary warned.
But it was too late.
She stepped on a rock. Her ankle twisted and she started to lose her balance (which even in the best of circumstances wasn’t very good). Propelled backward, she stepped back to catch herself—which would have been fine if it wasn’t the edge of the hillside and if the rocks hadn’t given way beneath her foot.
“Anna!” Mary shrieked, reaching for her.
Oh God! For one horrifying moment time seemed to hold still as she hung in midair.
Then she was falling.
She could see her sisters’ horrified faces swimming above her as momentum carried her backward. A loud rush of air drowned out the cries of the crowd and for a moment it was eerily quiet—as if she were in a strange, airless tunnel.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
No time to shift her position to try to land on her feet.
She braced herself for impact and hit the ground.
But she didn’t hit the ground.
She gasped, realizing she wasn’t lying in a painful mass of twisted limbs and broken bones. Nay, she blinked up into the handsome visage of Sir Arthur Campbell.
My God, he’d caught her! But how? How could he have gotten there so quickly?
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, because she couldn’t speak. It’s wasn’t fear from her fall that caught her tongue, but something else.
His voice. The look in his incredible eyes.
It wasn’t indifference.
At the first crack in his steely facade, a flutter of awareness shuddered through her. Maybe her father wasn’t wrong after all.
Six
Arthur inhaled deeply, letting his lungs fill with the pungent air.
Freedom, even reeking of cow shite, still smelled sweet. Five days away from the castle, patrolling (or in his case surreptitiously scouting) the eastern borders of Lorn’s lands, and now, courtesy of the good friar, he’d bought himself a couple days more.
In other words, he would have an entire week of freedom from the blue-eyed, honey-haired enchantress who’d tormented him with her innocent flirting and pushed him to the end of his tether.
It wasn’t until she’d fallen—and he’d caught her—that he knew he had to get the hell out of there. So much for his plan to go unnoticed; the entire castle could speak of nothing else. Even the devil’s spawn Lorn had thought to honor him by insisting that Arthur sit beside him at the lord’s table that night. He might as well have been eating nails—that was all he’d tasted. It had taken every ounce of his skill at deception to mask his hatred throughout the long meal.
Apparently, the cold-hearted bastard had a weakness: his daughters. It seemed even the devil could care about something. Arthur had detected the fear in Lorn’s eye when the story of Anna’s tumble off the hillside was relayed to him, and his gratitude toward Arthur had been real enough.
Though Lorn accepted his account of the day’s events, Anna MacDougall wasn’t as easy to fool. He knew she didn’t believe his “I was just lucky enough to be in the right place when she fell” explanation. The lass was entirely too perceptive, and that meant dangerous. The last thing he needed was for Dugald—or worse, Lorn—to start asking questions.
What a mess! Bad luck heaped upon bad. First, the lass he rescued—the one woman who could unmask him—happens to be the daughter of the man he intends to destroy. Then, for some God-knows-why reason, she sets her fancy on him. And worse, she takes a tumble off a cliff, forcing him to betray the abilities that could draw even more unwanted attention his way and making him the MacDougalls’ latest hero—not to mention giving the men another source of amusement. He didn’t know how many times over the course of the journey one of the men had climbed up on a rock and pretended to jump off while yelling dramatically, “Catch me, Sir Arthur!” in a high voice.
Hilarious. Almost made him miss MacSorley.
The “Games” themselves hadn’t been as much of a waste of time as he’d thought. She’d been right: The competition had been good for the men’s spirit. Moreover, he’d learned much about the caliber of the enemy soldiers and would be able to pass on the information to Bruce.
But knowing he needed to tread carefully around the lass—or better yet, tread far away from the lass—he’d jumped at the first opportunity to leave. That it also provided an opportunity to scout Lorn’s lands for Bruce was even better.
Monica McCarty's Books
- Monica McCarty
- The Raider (Highland Guard #8)
- The Knight (Highland Guard #7.5)
- The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)
- The Recruit (Highland Guard #6)
- The Saint (Highland Guard #5)
- The Viper (Highland Guard #4)
- The Hawk (Highland Guard #2)
- The Chief (Highland Guard #1)
- Highland Scoundrel (Campbell Trilogy #3)