The Hunter Read online

  Men like him. Was she correct in her characterization? He didn’t want to think so, but then again, she’d managed to surprise him. He’d underestimated her because she was a woman—not to mention a nun.

  He couldn’t remember the last time someone had been able to get a blade close enough to him to do real harm. It was probably Viper. Lachlan MacRuairi had earned his war name for his silent, deadly strike. He’d snuck up on Ewen once in training and managed to get a blade to his neck.

  Obviously, she’d had training, too. But unless the recently disbanded Templars had opened their ranks to include nuns, it hadn’t been at a convent.

  “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

  She glared back at him. “My sister-in-law.”

  His brows drew together; it wasn’t the answer he was expecting. Another woman? “Unusual family you have. Or do they teach knife skills to all little girls in Italy along with needlework?”

  He was watching her closely and saw something flicker in her gaze. She seemed to shake something off, and then her mouth curved in a smile. “Was that a joke, monsieur?”

  To his surprise, he realized it was. It was the kind of wry jest he would make to MacLean or MacKay. But he didn’t jest with women. Actually, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had this long of a conversation with a woman. Hell, this was the longest conversation he’d had with anyone in a long time.

  He was staring at her, trying to make sense of it, when she gave a flick of her head in the direction of her hand.

  “If you let go of my wrist, I’ll put the knife back where it belongs.”

  He released her with all the subtlety of a hot iron. But he watched her hand carefully this time as she slowly returned the dirk to her boot. He caught a quick glimpse of the scrollwork on the handle and stopped her. “May I see that?”

  The hesitation was brief, but it was there. She handed it to him. He looked at the intricate scrollwork on the horn handle, knowing that he’d seen something similar before. Though the design on the grip was Norse, he suspected the blade was from Germany and very fine. It had probably been a large eating knife for an important man, but it made a perfectly sized weapon for a woman. “Where did you get this?”

  “My sister by marriage.” She held her hand out, and he gave it back to her. He didn’t think he was imagining it when her shoulders relaxed after slipping it back in the scabbard above her boot, which must have been made for her. “Her family is Norse.”

  That explained it, but something still bothered him. He knew he’d seen it before. “What is her name?”

  She laughed. “I hardly think you would know her. Do you know many Italian ladies?” She paused expectantly, and when he didn’t respond added, “Her family came to my village many years ago. The knife was passed down from her grandfather to her father.”

  “And she gave it to you?”

  “She did.”

  “You must have been very important to her. It’s an exceptional knife.”

  A shadow of sadness crossed her face. “I was. And she to me.”

  “You miss her?”

  “I do.”

  “But you will return home soon?”

  Though he’d been trying to make her feel better, he sensed his words had the opposite effect. She shrugged as if indifferent, but he knew she was not. “Perhaps when the war is over.”

  “But it is not your war. Why do you involve yourself in the problems of a country not your own?”

  “My reasons are my own.” She turned back around to face forward. “We should proceed? If we hope to reach Roxburgh before the rain.”

  He took her cue and snapped the reins, urging the horse forward. She was right: they were making abysmally slow progress. But she was wrong about their direction. “We aren’t going to Roxburgh. We’ll stay north of the Tweed on the way to Berwick—it will be safer.”

  His pronouncement was met with a quick snapping around of her head. “No! We can’t. We must go to Roxburgh!”

  Four

  Ewen Lamont was having a bad influence on her. Apparently, Janet’s oratory skills were deserting her, and she was blurting out whatever came into her head just like he did. First she’d mentioned her sister-in-law without thinking, then had the near disaster with the blade, and now she was showing a lack of finesse in handling the news of his plan to cross the river.

  She could tell by the way those steely blue eyes fixed on hers that he had questions. She shouldn’t have pulled the knife on him, but he’d stung her pride, and she’d wanted to prove to him that she could protect herself. Instead, she’d made him suspicious. Nuns didn’t wield weapons like that. Most women didn’t. But her sister by marriage wasn’t like most women.

  Christina MacRuairi, the Lady of the Isles, was the heir to one of the greatest lordships in Western Scotland and a force to be reckoned with, much to her brother’s frustration. Christina had learned how to defend herself from her pirate scourge of a brother, the disreputable brigand Lachlan MacRuairi.

  Christina had passed on those skills to Janet when one of Duncan’s men in a drunken stupor had tried to force himself on her. He might have succeeded if Christina hadn’t come to her rescue. The cut her sister-in-law had given him in the back of his leg had hobbled him for life, but it was nothing to the punishment her brother Duncan had exacted. She shivered, recalling the brutal flogging Janet had been forced to witness, as was her duty.

  In many ways, Duncan would have made a better chief to the clan than her eldest brother, Gartnait. Duncan, like Ewen Lamont, possessed the firm authority and unyielding attitude that was necessary for a leader that her fun-loving elder brother had not. But now both her brothers were gone, and the earldom rested on the young shoulders of her eight-year-old nephew Donald, who was under King Edward’s authority.

  War had stripped her of most of her family. She’d learned of Duncan’s death at Loch Ryan only upon her return to England last year. Of the powerful family of Mar, all that remained were her, Mary, and Donald.

  The last thing she wanted to do was to make Lamont suspicious about her true identity. Not only would her ability to do her job be compromised if it became known that Janet of Mar was alive, but her safety would be at issue as well. Edward of England already had her twin sister in his control; he would be only too happy to have her as well.

  Nay, it was better that Janet of Mar stay dead—exactly as she would have been had the fisherman and his son not fished her out of the river, after her disastrous attempt to secret her sister out of England three and a half years ago.

  Had she really thought she could simply ride into England and sneak Mary out from right under Edward’s nose? That was the problem: she had thought she could do it. She hadn’t wanted to listen to Duncan’s warning that it would only make things worse. She hadn’t wanted to wait for a better opportunity. She hadn’t wanted to hear “no.”

  So she’d gone to her sister-in-law Christina, persuaded her to let her borrow some of her men, and gone after her sister on her own. But something had gone wrong. Or rather, everything had gone wrong. Christina’s men had been discovered, and Mary, her son David, Janet, and their loyal servant Cailin had all been caught up in the ensuing battle. Janet would never forget seeing Cailin felled by that arrow on the bridge. She’d tried to help him, but suddenly the world had exploded in thunder and lightning—the most terrible she’d ever heard.

  Janet remembered little of what happened after the bridge had seemingly burst into flames. She’d woken up a day later in a convent surrounded by a sea of nuns, thinking she’d died and gone to heaven. She’d been quite relieved on that point, actually, the alternative having been threatened by her father and brother often enough.

  She been confused at first, stricken and unable to remember anything, so when the nuns assumed she was one of them (which wasn’t surprising given her attire at the time), she hadn’t protested. After a day or so her memories returned, but by then the abbess of the convent where the fishermen had taken her had