Page 52 of Bride of Mist
“So your clan never boasted about their exploits?” he prodded. “About how they barricaded the bloody door and torched the church? For the love o’ Mary! The poor souls trapped inside must have pounded at it until their bones cracked. Clawed at the wood until their fingernails bled. Screamed until the flames licked—”
“Stop it!” she cried, upset by his words. “I don’t know about any of that.”
“Maybe ye do. Maybe ye don’t,” he admitted. “But the fact remains ’twas your clan committed the atrocity, whether ye were with them or not.”
“I don’t believe you. The mac Girics are a noble clan. They would never burn a church.”
“I saw it with my own eyes. The ashes. The corpses. I intend to make the mac Girics pay.”
“Is that why you came to Creagor? To exact revenge for some imagined—”
“’Twas not imagined!” he roared. “And I mean to take vengeance, even if I have to use ye as leverage.”
Unintimidated by his vehement threat, a threat that would make most men tremble, she looked him in the eye and said, “That would be a mistake.”
“I doubt that.”
“You can’t use me for leverage.”
“Watch me,” he challenged.
“Nay. I mean you can’t use me for leverage,” she said, arching a fine dark brow, “because I’m not a mac Giric.”
He blinked, startled. “What?”
“I’m not a mac Giric. And neither is the woman you almost killed.”
Stunned speechless, he could only stare at her with his jaw slack.
“So you see?” she said. “Your berserker outburst at the tournament was wasted on the wrong clan.”
Surely that was untrue. “Ye don’t deny Creagor belongs to the mac Girics?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “But Morgan Mor mac Giric was only awarded Creagor when he married intomyclan.”
“Your clan?”
She answered proudly. “Rivenloch.”
Dougal’s heart dropped into his stomach.
“Rivenloch?” His voice came out on a frayed thread.
Not the warrior clan of Rivenloch? The one that generations of kings had stationed at the border to keep out the English?ThatRivenloch?
Thosewere the knights he’d mowed down at Creagor?
Theywere the men hunting him through the woods?
Thiswas the army planning an assault on Castle Darragh?
He felt ill.
He’d heard the tales. Everyone had. But he’d always imagined the legends of the famed border clan of Rivenloch were highly exaggerated. He’d never actually believed that maids wore mail and fought in battle.
Now he realized the legends must be true. And to his chagrin and at his peril, he’d had the misfortune to capture one of the intrepid lasses.
“Shite.”
