Page 54 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
If I’m to die, Lord, let it be with a sword in me hand and on me own two feet. Nae trussed up like a chicken ready fer the pot.
“What if I was to tell you that this man did not abduct me?” Charlotte said, speaking with as much authority as a naked woman in front of three strangers could. “That he was simply a local hunter who came across me after I lost my way in the wood by the camp?”
Hirst permitted himself a small smile. “I would say that you must have got awfully lost awfully fast to find yourself all the way out here, Miss Bolton.”
“That as maybe, but do you really think my father would find it necessary for his men to bring this Scot in, if his daughter swore to you that he was no abductor?” Charlotte asked.
Hirst said nothing to this and the silence stretched until Charlotte was forced to look away. It was Sheppard’s deep voice rolling out like treacle that finally filled the void.
“If I may be so presumptuous, Miss,” he said. “I think that, whilst Captain Bolton might agree to let go this man who you say helped you in your hour of need––”
“And was no doubt bringing you back to camp via the bloody scenic route,” Savage quipped.
“Quite,” Sheppard said. “As I said, the Captain might agree to let this hero go, if he had saved your life as you claim. However, it is our belief that your father would likely still take umbrage with a man who has, quite clearly, taken the virginity of his only daughter.”
“Very serious umbrage,” Savage leered.
Hirst passed Charlotte her own cloak and dress from where he had obviously retrieved it from further along the lakeside.
“Get dressed, Miss Bolton,” he said. His tone was polite and level and would not have been out of place in a ballroom. His words, however, would have been. “You may pass this excrescence back his cloak. We would not want him to catch a cold or have any bits of him drop off.”
“That’s right,” Savage said brightly. “Your father will want all his bits intact so that he can see them taken off himself.”
“Mr. Savage!” Hirst said sternly.
“My pardon, miss,” the rebuked Savage said.
“If you cause a scene, Miss Bolton,” Hirst said, still in his polite and quite reasonable voice, “I shall hit you. I shall hit you until you do what we ask. When we get back to camp I will blame whatever injuries you have suffered at my hand on this loathsome creature,” and he gestured disdainfully at Edward.
Charlotte nodded mutely. She was scared senseless. Edward could see that as plainly as the other men could. His heart raged within him at the callous way by which Hirst threatened the woman, but his outward demeanor was unreadable.
Charlotte wrapped herself in her cloak and passed Edward’s cloak back to him.
“Easy, boy,” Savage warned Edward, as he took the knife from his throat so that Edward could drape his cloak over himself.
“May I dress behind the reeds there, please?” Charlotte asked Hirst.
Hirst considered her a moment. “Yes,” he said, after a moment of careful thought. “You may. But Sheppard here will watch you to see that you do not try any ill-advised subterfuge.”
Sheppard smirked at this and gestured to the low screen of reeds that Charlotte had indicated. “Miss Bolton, I solemnly swear that I shall keep my eyes to myself.”
Edward’s teeth ground in his head, as he saw the indecorous sneer that Savage gave his colleague at this comment.
Edward’s hand moved at a glacial pace towards the secret little pocket that was sown into the hem of his cloak.
“Hirst?” Savage whispered, once Charlotte and Sheppard had moved a little way away and Charlotte had started to pull her dress on behind the screen of reeds. “Hirst, are you sure that we can’t, you know, have a little fun with her on the way back to camp?”
Hirst looked at Savage thoughtfully and then turned back to the dressing woman. “We shall have to see about that, Savage, won’t we?”
It was at that moment, as Edward’s fury reached boiling point, that Charlotte gave a little sigh and swayed.
“I don’t––I do not feel well…” she said, and collapsed out of sight behind the bushes.
Hirst started forward, moving towards the screen of reeds at the same time that Sheppard looked back at him, as if for instruction.
Edward, taking advantage of the momentary distraction of the all three men, lashed out at Savage with one meaty fist. His punch smashed into the preoccupied tracker’s windpipe with a horrible crunch. Then, without giving his foe any time to recover––or do anything other than let loose a strangled squawk––Edward buried the little paring knife that had been hidden in the seam of his cloak into the man’s neck.
Savage’s back arched and his mouth opened in a silent O of surprise and pain. Edward shoved the dying man off of him and got as quickly to his feet as he was able.
