Page 11 of The Scot Who Loved Her

“Exactly.”

“All right.” She stood and rinsed her hands in the stream, the cool water soothing. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“Certainly, you can, my lady. If I ever shoot a man by accident, I’ll know just the accomplice to help me fish out the bullet.” He spoke in a jovial tone that made light of the situation and eased her panic. “Where is your pistol?”

“I tossed it over there.” Olivia went in the direction of where her pistol had been, but other than disturbed earth, her piece was nowhere in sight. “It’s gone.” Her throat tightened, as she recalled the moment she’d tossed it, and how she could have sworn she’d seen a shrouded figure running through the forest. But when she’d tried to focus, there was no one there.

Daniel frowned, turning around to look around the ground. “It cannot be simply gone.”

“It was right here.” On all fours, Olivia crawled around, smoothing her hand through blades of grass and tufts of rotten leaves. Nothing but sticks and rocks greeted her. “Someone’s taken it.”

“Who?” Daniel patted down the buckskin breeches the Scot wore, though judging from how the leather molded to the sculpted muscles of his thighs, she could have told him there was nothing but skin beneath them. “He’s got no gun.”

“How did he get here? Where’s his horse?” she asked suddenly, sitting back on her heels.

“We saw no horse.”

“Something isn’t right.” Her mind raced back to the shrouded figure, and her heart plummeted once more.

Daniel frowned. “’Haps the horse ran away while he was fighting the boar.”

“Likely...” She turned to stare at the body of the man she’d maimed. “What was he doing here?”

“That’s a question only he can answer.” Daniel was suddenly alert again.

Olivia listened to the hounds howling. They weren’t close, but they weren’t as far as before.

“Come on, my lady. You must get back to the manor. I’ll take care of the rest. The boar and the Scot will not be here when your father’s hunting party arrives. You have my word.”

“Thank you, Daniel.” With one last look at the man, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

4

Malcolm gasped for breath, bolting upright on the forest floor, his fingers sinking into the dampness of the earth.

Pain shot from his shoulder. He glanced down to see that his shirt had been partially cut away and a bandage wrapped around, and that was when everything came back to him. The boar. The lass. The bullet.

He shifted uneasily, searching his surroundings. The only sign of life was the fluttering of a few birds and the scurrying of two squirrels who chased each other up a tree.

Malcolm narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth at the pain. Ballocks, but he felt like shite. Who had tended his injury? Was it the lass?

The same sixth sense that had kept alive on every mission thus far kicked in. The treacherous wench was nowhere in sight now. The boar was gone too. There was no way in hell the lass would have been able to move that beast on her own, which meant she had an accomplice, who was also conveniently absent.

Malcolm wasn’t going to wait around for them to return and finish him off. Though bandaging his wound didn’t make sense if they intended to see him dead. Unless they wanted him to die slowly and in agony. Haltingly, he came to kneel, suffering through the pain with the iron will he’d mastered while serving with the Black Watch.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been shot—well, unless one was separately counting being shot by a woman. In that case, she’d most certainly deflowered him.

If he ever saw her again, he’d have to be sure to thank her for aiming for his shoulder, merely incapacitating him for a moment, rather than killing him, and then he’d return the favor. Well, maybe. He wasn’t really one for shooting women. If he went that route, he’d have to find out who she was and who she worked for.

Malcolm pushed to his feet, noticing the awkward slant of his foot—his boot heel was dislodged.

“Ballocks!” he growled, lifting his boot to see that the secret compartment was out of place. He clicked it open, and just as he suspected, the ship’s manifesto was no longer there.

The bloody wench had stolen it!

Rage filled his chest. He checked his other boot, taking note that his money was still safely tucked away, further proof that she’d not been after robbing him for anything other than the information he carried.

Who knew how long he’d been knocked out? Whoever the wench was, she could have a few hours on him getting to Edinburgh or London. It was now a race against time. He found his discarded jacket some paces away and slung it over his shoulder.

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