Page 5 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
The man raised his eyebrows at this, but did not answer. Instead, he held out his hand to her. It was in the exact same way that Charlotte had held her own hand out to the fox cub, she could not help but notice.
“Let me take a wee look at that arm, lass,” he said, giving her an encouraging smile. “How in the world did ye manage that out here? Did ye run across a wulver or something like it?”
“Awulver? What in the world is one of those? I’ve never heard of such a creature,” Charlotte replied.
The man snorted. “It’s naught but a legend, lass,” he replied. “A legend that comes down from the far north o’ Scotland, from the Shetland Islands. Folk tell o’ a man-shaped beast, covered in short brown hair, but with a wolf’s head.”
To her astonishment, Charlotte found that while the man had been talking, she had moved towards him without consciously being aware of it.
“That sounds completely horrid,” Charlotte said.
“Ah, that’s where ye’re wrong, miss,” the handsome Scotsman said to her. “The wulver is nae one of those beasties that thrives on the taste of human blood.”
He took her arm gently in his large, callused hands––a hunter’s and outdoorsman’s hands, Charlotte thought them––and inspected the perfect gashes down the back of her arm.
“It has a kind heart,” he said softly, as he ran a finger around the claw marks. “As is sometimes the case though, it is judged wrongly afore it has time to make its good intentions kenned.”
He looked up suddenly at Charlotte then, and she found herself captivated by those warm, brown eyes. She also saw, down in their depths, the distrust and the––
Something else. Something secret. Something that has hardened his heart, maybe?
The evidence of the man’s distrust rekindled the general cynicism that she was supposed to feel towards all those who came from Scotland. It was a mistrust and doubt that her father had tried to instill in her ever since she had been a young girl, so that everyone that she met from north of the border was instantly a subject of suspicious scrutiny.
Charlotte pulled her arm out of the man’s hands, wincing as she jerked it free of his tender grip. Then she said, “It was nowulver, sir, but a fox cub that I thought was injured.”
To her consternation the man snorted again and shook his head. Then, seeing the ruffled look on her face, he tipped his head back and laughed. One of the beams of hazy sunlight that was lancing through the trees caught him full in the face and turned some of the strands in his blonde hair to molten gold.
“A fox cub did this to ye?” he said, once he had gotten himself back under control. “Good God, lass, but ye want some lookin’ after and nay mistake, eh?”
“I thought it might be hurt,” Charlotte said, defensively.
“And ye went and stuck yer hand right in its maw, judgin’ by the state o’ that arm of yers. And ye never thought that the cornered or the injured animal is the one around which ye need tread most carefully?”
“Well…I––that’s not the…” Charlotte said.
The man cocked his head at her in a very annoying, overly superior way.
Especially for someone who is doubtless no better than a run of the mill hunter or tracker or woodcutter.
“Aye,” he said. It could have meant anything.
In an attempt to change the subject, Charlotte gestured at the young Scot with her good hand and said, “You do not look the typical Scotsman, do you? Where is your kilt and the, ah, the, you know, the little bag that they carry on the front of their belts?”
“Sporran?” the man supplied.
“That’s it. I was expecting more tartan,” Charlotte blustered. “That’s why you took me a little unawares, I suppose.”
The cocksure smile that had adorned the man’s face slid from it like mud from a boot.
“Aye,” he said again. “Aye, I suppose ye might say that I’m dressed fer the work that I’ve ahead o’ me.” He looked down at his worn, but well-made, breeches and plucked at them. “Besides, England is nae the place to be wearin’ such garments, perhaps. Especially nae in the present climate. Especially nae on the very border of the land that it hopes to rule.”
Charlotte stared at him. He sounded far more educated and worldly than she might expect a hunter to be.
He is not telling me something.
“Lass,” the man said, waving his hand about him and finishing by pointing it at the bleeding arm that she was cradling in her other hand, “the night is settin’ in. Come wi’ me now, and I’ll take ye to me camp.”
He stepped forward and took Charlotte’s upper arm in a grip that was at the same time gentle, but firm. It was a grip that spoke of a man who was used to taking charge, to getting his own way when he needed to.
