Page 13 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
She realized that the two of them were staring at each other. Her arm was still in his grasp. His fingers moving unthinkingly over the knot that he had tied in the makeshift bandage.
The strong fingers paused in their movements and the slight light of shrewdness kindled in the Highlander’s eyes.
One who enjoys making things––if those snares of his were anything to go by––and yet is capable of fighting when called upon.
“Will ye stay and eat wi’ me, Miss Bolton?” he asked suddenly, his voice low and gravelly.
Charlotte blinked. “I, uh, eat with you, you say?”
“Aye,” Edward said. “I ken that we’re sittin’ out under the stars like, and there’s naught in the way of shelter apart from that there cave, but I can still offer to feed ye.” He nodded at the rabbits.
Charlotte thought about this. The very fact that she gave the proposition any thought at all juxtaposed greatly with everything she thought she believed about the Scots. She had to give her head a little shake.
“Um, no,” she said. “No. I’m afraid not.” She looked up at the sky, suddenly realizing fully what the inky sky above her meant.
“Oh,goodness,” she said, getting to her feet and looking about for her discarded foraging basket. “How long have I been here? I should have been back at camp at sunset!”
The thought of her father’s reaction if he was obliged to send a patrol out to look for her sent a thrill of distress through her. He would not see it as a precautionary measure to make sure that his only child was safe, he would see it as an inconvenience and, worse than that––far worse––he would see it as an embarrassment.
Charlotte was well aware as to what her father was prone to do when he was embarrassed. She gulped at the very thought.
Please, no. Please let him be engaged with military matters this evening.
“I must go,” she said, seizing the basket and looking wildly about, as if there might be a signpost for the English encampment.
Edward got slowly to his feet, unfolding to his full and impressive height.
“Do not fear, lass,” he said. “I shall take ye to yer faither’s camp.”
A knot of tension, that Charlotte had not realized had been growing in her stomach suddenly relaxed at the Highlander’s words. She comprehended that a tiny part of her had entertained the idea that this man might not take her back to camp.
“You will?” she asked.
“Aye, o’ course,” he said.
Charlotte smiled shyly and clutched him briefly by the hand.
“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Do not worry about getting through the perimeter guard, I have a secret way––a gap where no sentries patrol.”
She turned away and began to hurry up the incline towards the gap in the blackthorn. In her haste, she did not see the vaguely unsettling astute look pass over Edward’s face.
From behind her, she heard him say, “That’s good, Miss Bolton. That’s very good.”
* * *
Edward led the way from his hidden encampment, plunging into the thick mist that swirled amongst the boles of the trees, cutting a straight line to the River Rede. He strode along easily, his eyes skinned and his ears pricked for the slightest sign of movement. The fog hung around calf-height and its tendrils clutched at the knees of the two walkers as they padded through the forest.
“How long have you been in here?” Charlotte asked, as Edward held aside the whippy branch of an alder to let her past. As she brushed past him, Edward caught the faint and delectably unique perfume of her that he had smelled when they had fallen down the slope and ended up in each other’s arms.
“A few days,” he said evasively. He was unwilling to tell her how long he had been in the neighborhood of the English camp, watching for any sign of her father. He felt, in his bones, that she was a trustworthy woman, but she was still English, and so he was not about to stake his life on it.
“Now hush, lass,” he told her. “If yer faither has sent men out to look fer ye, I do not want them spittin’ either one of us by mistake––especially nae me.”
“How very gentlemanly of you,” Charlotte said mildly, as she waited for him to start leading again.
They moved west, following the riverbank. The mist was so thick in places that the only way they knew that there was a river there at all was by the Rede’s ceaseless chatter, as the water rushed over the stony shoals on the far bank.
At one point there was a rushing sound above them and Charlotte gasped. Edward’s initial thought when he heard the sound was that it was an arrow in flight. His hand went to the basket-hilted broadsword that hung from his hip, but then he perceived that it was only an owl alighting on a branch above their heads.
