Page 34 of Laird of Flint
Allowing herself a small smile of triumph, she gave Hamish a soothing scratch behind the ear and tugged him forward. “Come on, Hamish. ’Tis all right now.”
“Stay where you are, lad!” a new voice called out to her. “I’ll come to you!”
Carenza’s smile instantly drooped into a frown. Now what?
She wasn’t about to stay where she was. She’d already outsmarted the Boyle brothers. She wasn’t going to let anything else stand in her way.
But before she defied his command, shewouldsteal a sidelong peek at the new arrival.
Her breath caught.
He was big. Bold. Brawny. His hair shone like wheat in the moonlight as he strode across the sod between the great black charging beasts. He had the face, not of a berserker as she’d expected, but of a god.
For a brief yet impressionable sliver of time, she stood stunned. Breathless. Enthralled. Overwhelmed by the magnificent cut of his jaw. The furrowed determination in his brow. The dark promise in his eyes. Then, in the next instant, her gaze fell to the axe clenched in his fist, and fear struck her heart.
This must be the Viking warrior. Sir Hew of Rivenloch. The prospective bridegroom she was supposed to invite to Samhain three nights hence.
Thank God they’d never actually met. If a Rivenloch warrior discovered the daughter of Dunlop reiving cattle, her reputation—and that of her father and her clan—would be ruined.
Ballocks. This was a disaster.
Chapter 7
Hew tightened his grip on the axe.
There was a benefit to being hotheaded. Passion made one fearless.
It was passion that had made him boldly follow the monk to Dunlop.
Passion that had pushed him to brazenly track the cateran across Dunlop land.
Passion that had urged him to brashly insert himself between two brutes and their victim.
Now, suddenly, one glimpse of a familiar delicate moonlit cheek, the sweet curve of a jaw, the flutter of an eyelash, the open gasp of a soft mouth, drained that passion. For one awful moment, his hotheaded fearlessness wavered. He was stunned by sheer terror for the cateran.
He told himself it didn’t matter that the thief wasn’t a lad, but a lass.
It made no difference that the lass was not just any lass, but Lady Carenza.
He told himself these things. But his heart still pounded with icy fear for her. His breath still froze in his chest as more of the raging black beasts swirled around her.
Thank God, he was a trained warrior. His heart might be tender, but fierce blood pumped through it. He would protect her. And he would die before he’d reveal her secret.
“Stay there,” he repeated.
To his shock, she ignored his command.
Not only did she ignore it. She did the exact opposite of what he instructed. She turned her back on him and resumed leading her captive coo away.
The foolish lass seemed not to notice she was surrounded by stamping, snorting beasts that were twice her size. Beasts that could crush her in an instant.
He dared not cry out to her again. That would only further agitate the cattle.
There was only one thing to do. Dropping his axe, Hew let passion convince him to charge into the maelstrom of wild cattle.
No sooner did he enter the fray than his shin was struck by a stray hoof. The tip of a coo’s horn grazed his shoulder as it passed. And he was nearly crushed between two beasts determined to collide.
Dodging the lunging, darting cattle, he picked out the fastest, the one that looked like the leader. He shadowed the animal, running alongside until he could catch the base of its long horn in his bent arm. Then he dug in his heels and pulled back with all his might, slowing the coo and steering it aside.
