The Ranger Read online

  “There’s your knight,” her sister Mary teased, pointing to the group of warriors lining up below.

  Anna winced. If Mary had noticed, everyone must have noticed. Her normally blissfully unaware sister defied their father’s rule that women were more perceptive than men.

  “He’s not my knight,” she quipped.

  Too adamantly, she feared, judging by her eldest sister Juliana’s grin. “It certainly looks like you want him to be. A little sisterly advice, though”—Anna could tell she was trying to hold back her laughter—“you might want to be a little more … uh, subtle.”

  Anna pursed her mouth. She’d tried that. It hadn’t worked.

  She lifted her chin, pretending not to know what her sister was talking about. “I’m merely trying to be a good hostess. Being friendly to all the knights who have answered Father’s call.”

  That caused both of her sisters to burst out into peals of hysterical laughter. “Lud, I hope you aren’t that friendly to all of them,” Juliana said. She leaned over Anna, who was seated on the plaid between them, to address Mary. “Did you see that dress she wore yesterday? It must have been five years old. It wouldn’t fit Marion,” she said, referring to their petite twelve-year-old niece.

  “Mother was furious,” Mary nodded, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “You should have seen her face when she saw Anna come in for the midday meal. It was the angriest I’ve seen her since Father fell ill.”

  At least one good thing had come of Anna’s humiliation. It had been wonderful to see her mother cast aside her worry, if only for a moment, to berate her. Lord knows, nothing else had come of it. She could have been wearing a sackcloth for all Sir Arthur took notice of the gown.

  She knew she should be ashamed, stooping to such wanton lengths as donning an indecent dress to get his attention. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And after a week of making a fool of herself, chasing after a man who didn’t want to be chased, she was at her wit’s end. Sir Arthur Campbell was almost as much of a mystery to Anna as the first time she’d bumped into him. She knew that he was an able knight, who was focused on his duty and liked to keep to himself—but she’d known all of that before.

  He was an impossible man to read. Faith, he was an impossible man to get in the same room! Inventing reasons to be near him wasn’t easy, and Anna had been growing increasingly frustrated in her efforts to keep an eye on him. None of the other men had ever been this much trouble. Probably because they hadn’t been trying to avoid her.

  So far, she’d seen nothing to warrant suspicion—unless being monosyllabic and unforthcoming were reasons for suspicion. He had to be the most difficult man she’d ever tried to converse with. Sir Arthur was the master of the short reply, not to mention as prickly and cantankerous as a bear roused from its winter slumber. If this was an indication of his interest in her—not that she gave any credence to her father’s claim—she couldn’t imagine what he was like when he wasn’t interested.

  Yesterday, however, she’d made an important discovery. She’d learned how to make him talk: Get him angry. Perhaps she’d been going about this all wrong.

  Her eyes narrowed on the enigmatic knight, currently moving with the other participants to the far end of the field. Though he’d done nothing suspicious, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was hiding something. Whether this was due to her powers of womanly perception or simply her pricked pride, however, she didn’t know. But there was definitely something different about him.

  When her sisters had finally stopped laughing, Juliana said, “I must admit I’m surprised by your friendliness toward the knight.” She bit back another laugh. “He’s handsome enough, but you usually avoid men of his sort.”

  Warriors, her sister meant. She was right.

  “His brother is the far more handsome of the two,” Mary interjected, her gaze fastened on Sir Dugald’s impressive form below.

  Anna didn’t agree, but she certainly wasn’t going to give them any more reason to tease her.

  “And Sir Arthur is not nearly as popular with the ladies, either,” Juliana pointed out as a way of warning to Mary.

  She spoke from experience. Juliana had been widowed years before, but her marriage had not been a happy one. Her husband Sir Godfrey de Clare, an English baron, had blamed her for their inability to produce an heir and according to her sister, lifted every skirt he could find to try to prove it.

  Anna desperately hoped Juliana’s next husband was a man her sister could love. Though love usually had nothing to do with how marriages were arranged, the sisters were more fortunate than most. Three marriageable daughters was a treasure trove for any nobleman seeking to enrich his lands and connections, but their father was not unreasonable. He took their wishes into consideration when finding them potential husbands.

  Juliana had wanted to marry Sir Godfrey—at least initially. Just as Anna had wanted to marry Roger.

  Sir Roger de Umfraville had been the third son of the old Earl of Angus’s younger brother. They’d met when Anna had accompanied her father to Stirling Castle a few years back for Parliament. She’d been immediately drawn to the quiet young scholar with the winsome smile and dry sense of humor.

  Educated at Cambridge, Roger had been considered a great scholar and promising politician. He abhorred bloodshed. As a third son, he should have been safe from the war. But when his two elder brothers died—one at Falkirk and the other from a fever—Roger had felt it his duty to take up the sword. Anna had been heartbroken when he’d died after a seemingly insignificant wound he’d suffered at Methven festered.

  Unlike her sisters, Mary had yet to settle on a husband. That her father hadn’t pressed, Anna suspected, was because he hoped for an important alliance—preferably English—from her beautiful sister. Once Bruce was subdued, her father would be able to find them all husbands.

  Her chest squeezed. When the war was over.

  “I thought Father was going to arrange a match with Sir Thomas or some nice, staid English baron for you when King Hood is brought to heel?” her sister said.

  “Faith, Juliana, this has nothing to do with marriage! I barely even know the man,” Anna said truthfully. She was attracted to him—perversely intrigued by his indifference, even—but a Highland warrior wasn’t the husband for her. A life of quiet and peace, a father who would know his children, that was what she wanted.

  But why did Thomas MacNab’s face suddenly seem … womanly? Pretty Alan had called him. She bit her lip, suddenly agreeing.

  She was tempted to tell them what it was really about, but her father wished for her to keep her tasks on his behalf between them. Probably so her mother wouldn’t find out.

  Whether her sisters believed her explanation or just decided to give up teasing her because the challenge was about to start, she couldn’t be sure, but she was grateful when they turned to the field below. Their seat on the edge of a rocky hillside gave them a perfect vantage of the entire field below.

  It had been Sir Arthur’s idea to have the entrants not simply toss the spears at a different range of targets but do so in armor from horseback at a full gallop.

  In his terse, matter-of-fact tones, he’d quickly and efficiently helped organize the different challenges. She suspected it was partly in the effort to be finished with her as soon as possible. What she’d hoped would take all day had taken only a few hours. He’d also elicited plenty of help from other men-at-arms, probably to avoid being alone with her.

  Sighing, she turned her attention back to the field. One by one, the men urged their mounts to a gallop down the path and threw their spears at the straw buttes secured to a post. If this were the real Highland Games, there would be both spear throwing and thrusting. For the latter, a longer spear was used and the rider would position the spear under his arm in the manner of a joust.

  The challenge was harder than it looked, as evidenced by the number of spears that went wide or fell short of the target. But a few of the contestants w