Page 27 of The Hawk Laird
If the hawk was a trained bird rather than a wild one, hunters would be nearby. Concerned, he touched the girl’s shoulder to wake her, though she needed sleep. She whimpered and turned. Her body was firm and warm against his leg, and her cheek, soft as a sun-warmed rose, rubbed against his hand.
The sensation plunged through him and whirled in his groin. He withdrew his hand, but several pulsing moments passed before the honest reaction of his body calmed.
The hawk kakked again, somewhere close to the glade. He frowned and shoved his hair back in exasperation. He and Lady Isobel should take to their horses again. Hunters could be Scots or English, and willing to take a forest outlaw and a prophetess as a good day’s quarry.
He must be certain before waking her. As he began to ease away, she moaned and turned further, resting her hand on his thigh.
His body throbbed with the sudden contact. He picked up her hand—delicate and fine-boned in his large fingers—and set it aside. She snuggled against him. He sighed heavily.
Total exhaustion had caused her to collapse last night, he knew. James regretted pushing her stamina and stubbornness so far. He should have made camp long before she fell from her horse. Fortunately, he had caught her before she injured herself further, and he had discovered the little glade where they and the horses could rest safely.
Time had slipped inexorably toward dawn. Now they would be lucky to arrive at his aunt’s house before the sun was high. He sighed again, aware that every plan he had made concerning Isobel Seton had unexpectedly altered since the first moment he had sighted Aberlady Castle and found it besieged.
He had expected the prophetess to be a malicious, hard woman. To his dismay, her courage and grace made it difficult to coldly remember who she was and what she had done.
Subtle but certain, his body hardened and his heart softened whenever he was near her. He could not easily ignore the charm of her eyes or the graceful sway of her supple body.
He had never met a truly irresistible woman. The one girl who had caught his young heart had been sweet and good and had died horribly. In the years to follow, willing village girls interested him, but his fascination was easily sated, and his heart remained safe in his keeping.
The young prophetess enchanted him, distracted him, confused him, and touched off his temper like a flint. And her dazzling smiles, given easily to Quentin and even to rough-edged Patrick, but not to James, had made him simmer with unaccustomed jealousy.
Last night, her exhausted, lonely sobs had sliced through him. He was not proud of himself for turning away, for she had collapsed soon after.
He shook his head, wondering suddenly if he had met a woman he could not resist. What if together they sparked one of those rare alchemical integrations of the male and female natures? He had read about such things in long, postulating theories years ago.
God knew what else it could be. He made a sour grimace at the irony of feeling an extraordinary pull to the prophetess of Aberlady, of all women.
But if he succumbed to the effect she had on him, he would risk his sole chance to save Janet and avenge what had happened to his comrade, his kin, and his reputation. But to accomplish that, he must keep his reason cold and his emotions colder.
Isobel of Aberlady sighed, and her hair slipped over her pale cheek like a fold of black silk. He brushed her hair back, resting his hand on her head. She was finely wrought, delicate yet strong. Thoughts of pleasure and peace slipped across his mind.
He lifted his hand from her satiny head and fisted it against the tree root.
Kee-kee-kee.
The hawk sounded closer now. He eased away from the girl and stood, then stepped through the undergrowth to walk between the trees and look around.
The hawk’s cry sounded again. Overhead, the upper branches of a large oak tree swayed, and he heard the frenzied thrash of wings. He circled the gnarled base, gazing up.
He saw the hawk high up through the leafy cover. Wings flapping, crying intermittently, the bird struggled on its perch. James glimpsed brown leather straps, the bird’s jesses, wrapped around the branch.
Quickly he grabbed hold of a tree limb and hoisted himself up, climbing cautiously, watching the bird. The gray and cream feathers, delicately barred, and the distinctive white slashes overeach blazing red-gold eye told him that the bird was a goshawk, probably male, and not yet fully adult.
“There, now,” he said quietly as he came closer. “Hush you bird, hush.” Knowing that the steady sound of a male voice could calm a trained hawk, he glided upward, keeping his pace slow and careful.
The bird’s jesses—two straps, each several inches long and knotted to slitted leather anklets looped around the legs—had tangled around a branch, probably snagging when the bird perched. James noted with surprise that the hawk wore no bells on its legs. Perhaps the falconer had removed the customary bells to fly the bird silently after waterfowl, and the bird had flown off then. Had the bells been attached, the owner might have found his lost bird already.
As he drew closer, the goshawk bated, violently flinging itself backward off the branch to hang upside down, wings thrashing. Helplessly caught by its jesses, the bird could damage its feathers, injure itself, even die.
James straddled a thick tree limb and took off his waist and sword belts, dropping them to the ground. Then he unlaced his padded leather tunic, stripped it off, and removed his woolen tunic after that, letting them fall as well.
He was careful to make each movement slow while he slipped off his linen shirt and draped it over his bare shoulder. He did not want to approach the bird bare-skinned, for the talons could be vicious, but his shirt would serve as a trap.
Clad in breeches, hose, and boots, he rose higher in the tree, murmuring softly and soothingly. Years of raising hawks like this one had taught him to develop a falconer’s patient tone and a relaxed, alert way of moving, as necessary for falconry as for forest rogues. When he was close enough, he cautiously extended his hand toward the goshawk.
The quickest way to retrieve a bird from a tree, he knew, was to distract and dazzle it with a bright lantern light. Lacking that, a slow approach would have to do. The bird was trapped and could not fly away, and James was aware he might scare it literally to death.
As he drew nearer, the goshawk squawked, helpless where it hung, and beat its wings furiously. Green leaves spit down to the ground, and the treetop shook. James paused and waited for the bird to exhaust itself. Having seen such outbursts in many trained birds, he knew it would not last long.
