Page 3 of Highlander Redeemed
Scotia would not come back to the caves just because he told her to. Nay, he’d likely have to carry her back over his shoulder or drag her back, hissing and scratching like a cat. He did not look forward to it. He did not like the idea of humiliating her that way, but she gave him little choice since she had once more put her own selfish desires before those of the clan, and if that meant he had to treat her like a wean to get her attention, then that was what he would do.
After more back tracks and false trails than he had anticipated, he heard an odd sound, along with quiet muttering, and knew he’d found his quarry. He crept up to the edge of a bright area in the wood, too small to be called a clearing, and discovered Scotia standing in a narrow beam of sunlight. It glinted off her night-black hair, reflecting iridescence, like the sun on a raven’s wing. She held a stick in her hand like a child’s play sword. A real targe, a round shield, was strapped to her left arm,and she gripped a dirk in that hand. Irritation sizzled through him. He knew she had to have pilfered the targe and dirk from somewhere, perhaps denying them to someone who needed those weapons. He touched the dirk at his hip, just to make sure she had not taken his. If only he could convince her to think of someone other than herself for a change, then he might be able to help her redeem her past behavior. He might be able to convince the clan to forgive her.
If he could not, he feared the clan might choose to take more extreme steps than shunning her in their midst. They might banish her altogether. Such an action, though justified, would tear her family apart and put Scotia’s life at risk. The Highlands was no place for a woman alone. It was no place for anyone alone. Duncan might not have the role he wished in the clan, but if he could avert the need to send her away, ’twould serve the clan well.
He braced himself for the verbal battle to come, but before he could make himself known, Scotia began to move, hesitantly and without her usual grace, but so focused on her task he could almost taste her determination. She watched her feet, letting her weapons go slack in her hands. Even so, he quickly recognized the exercise Malcolm had been teaching the lads a few days ago. She shook her head, then started the series of moves again, talking to herself just under her breath. She repeated the process over and over until, all of a sudden, she flew through the short exercise as if it were a dance she had known her entire life, thrusting, parrying, spinning, attacking the dirt-clad roots of a toppled tree. The sharp sound of wood on wood reverberated through the forest like a woodpecker hammering on a hollow log.
His breath caught in his chest. She was magnificent. Beautiful. Strong.
She fought as if demons threatened her life.
And Duncan could not take his eyes off her. She was everything he would expect her to be if he did not know her so well. That thought stopped him.
Each time Scotia did the exercise she moved a little quicker, until suddenly her feet tangled in her skirts and she landed hard on the ground.
“Blast and damnation!”
Her curse resounded through the wood. Duncan noted that even as she fell she was wise enough to hold her weapons away from her. Clearly she had been carefully watching Malcolm work with the lads, and even without the hands-on guidance of a trained warrior she was remarkably adept at mastering the moves.
She got to her feet quickly and untangled her skirts, revealing well-worn brogues and shapely, strong calves as she did. She took her starting position and began again, repeating the exercise as she had before, faster and faster, until her sides heaved and she stopped, pushing damp hair away from her flushed face with the back of her sword hand.
“Take that, you damned Sassenachs,” she said as she stared at the tree roots, her stick once more held at the ready. “I have killed each and every one of you this day and you shall not harry my home and my family again.”
Duncan’s breath hitched and his mind raced. If this was what she wanted, to be trained as a warrior—and he did not doubt for even a moment that was her intention—he had the weapon he needed to keep her close. If she wanted to be treated like the adult she must become, if she truly wanted to learn to fight for her home and family, he would give her a reason to behave like a woman worthy of her lineage. He would give her a reason to be reasonable. And he did not care if Nicholas or Kenneth or any of the others agreed with his plan. They had given her over to his keeping.
Duncan would teach Scotia to be a warrior.
The lass was immune to any negative reactions such training might instigate in the clan, as evidenced by her behavior past and present. She could train herself with anger and selfish goals—for he knew she still sought her own vengeance against the Englishno matter what Nicholas and his council planned. That way would likely end up being even more dangerous to her own kin.
Or he could convince her to let him train her properly, not just physically, but to fight without anger, to fight with the keen intellect he knew her to have, and to fight with the natural talent she appeared to hold. He could train her to be an asset to her clan, something no one thought she could ever be after the last few weeks.
He was certain everyone would be safer if Scotia knew how to fight, how to defend herself and those who fell within her realm of troublemaking. If she’d known how to fight, Myles might yet be among the living.
He held his ground as she once more paced herself through the exercise slowly, just as Malcolm had the lads do, muttering each move as she did so. But this time, when she flew through it, he watched her with new eyes, with the eyes of a teacher, assessing her weaknesses and her strengths—making a plan for her training.
SCOTIA TRIED TOignore the pain in her side where she’d landed on a large stone. She must remember to bring the trews she’d “borrowed” from one of the lads and hide them with her training gear. Skirts clearly did not mix with battle.
She shoved loose tendrils of hair out of her face, reset her stance, and prepared to do the exercise yet again. She refused to stop until she had it perfect. She gripped the stick hard, pulled the targe up to guard her torso, took a deep breath—
“If you turn a bit more to the side, you shall present a smaller target to your foe.”
The calm focus she’d been cultivating shattered with the first startling word. She’d spun around to face the intruder, her poorexcuse for a weapon gripped hard and held high to defend herself, before she even realized ’twas Duncan.
He leaned his long, lanky frame against a young oak tree, his thumbs casually hooked in the belt that held his faded green, brown, and the palest yellow plaid about narrow hips, as if he’d been standing there watching her for some time. A fitful breeze ruffled the unruly curls of his shoulder-length, dark-brown hair, and the errant thought that he should braid it at his temples as her da did destroyed what remained of her battle focus. His posture spoke of relaxed indifference but she knew him too well to be fooled. His intense curiosity, a curiosity that easily matched her own, lit his dark eyes, giving the lie to his guise. Damn the interfering man!
“I thought you were at the council meeting,” she said, turning back to the exercise as if she cared nothing that he had discovered her secret. She hoped he would leave now that he had found her, now that he knew she was not haring off across the bens to kill any English soldier she could find, though she knew the tenacious man would not.
But her mind was no longer sharply focused on the exercise. Instead, though she took the starting stance, she prepared herself for another of Duncan’s lectures on her disrespect for the safety of others, or on her disrespect for the rules laid down for her behavior by Nicholas, Kenneth, Uilliam, Jeanette, Rowan, auld Peigi, and even himself.
“Surely they are not done rehashing their plan so soon this morn.” She did not bother to hide the disdain she felt for the blethering that went on and on in that circle day after day.
“Nay, they are not.”
She took the first step in the exercise, determined to irritate him further by ignoring him, hoping he would, as he sometimes did, stomp off muttering about how childish she was. But then the words that had startled her came back to her as if Duncansaid them only now. She turned her torso a little more sideways, shifting her forward foot a little closer to her center for balance, surprised at how those small changes increased her reach, protected her torso more easily, and strengthened her balance. She began once more.
“Put more of your weight on your back foot when defending and loosen your grip on the stick just a little,” he said as she moved into the exercise. “You do not want to strangle it, for that hinders your arm’s flexibility and strength.”
She did as he said, though it felt awkward. She stumbled as she concentrated on keeping her body turned and her grip relaxed.
