Page 60 of Rebellion's Fire

Adam stood and walked over to the horse, removing the bedroll from the saddle pack. He set it down under the sheltering branches of the tree, close to the fire, and spread it out. “Sleep here.”

With her eye on the growing flames, she said, “You’re the one who wants to sleep.”

“I have this,” he said, sitting at one end of the bedroll and drawing a blanket around his shoulders. “It’s all I need.”

Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She stayed where she was.

He said, “We both need the warmth from the fire. I won’t touch you.”

For some reason, his words embarrassed her into motion. She lifted her chin and walked around to the bedroll.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said coldly and bent, drawing the blankets farther back from the fire.

“I know,” he said. “I was giving you an excuse not to admit your fear of fire.”

Something involuntary escaped her throat with a hiss. It might have been laughter. “My thanks,” she said drily. She knelt in the middle of the bedroll, drawing one of the blankets up and around her shoulders. He shifted back, too, turning his head to watch her. Firelight leapt over his face, warming and shadowing. His position reminded her of that other campfire and unexpectedly delivered her a weapon.

“I suppose you have sympathy with my fear,” she observed, “since you possess something of the same dislike.”

His brows twitched, though his eyes didn’t waver. They didn’t even blink. For no obvious reason, her heartbeat quickened.

She said, “You see things in the flames, don’t you?”

His gaze dropped, turned toward the fire, and then swiftly away again. He nodded once and swallowed, for all the world like a boy admitting he was scared of the dark. His vulnerability struck her like sudden, cold rain, allowing her a glimpse—a possible glimpse—of his life. The son of the great Malcolm MacHeth, Earl of Ross in fact if not in title, had to be a great warrior. Adam had been covering his curse all his life; he must have known everyone recognized his strangeness, and yet he never admitted it. And he’d won. Hewasa great warrior, and strange or not, his men would have followed him through the gates of hell itself. He didn’t even pay them, not as William paid his mercenaries.

“What do you see there?” It came out as little more than a whisper.

His eyes returned to hers, boiling and…warm. “I don’t think you want to know.”

“Is that how you knew where to find Fergus? Did you foresee this?”

He smiled distractedly, shaking his head. “I knew he was up to something because he left early while neither Donald nor I were there to accompany him on the first stage of his journey. I’d only just got home, but I left again. Sigurd did the rest.”

She frowned. That was the other question. How come Sigurd had been there to witness her abduction? It had crossed her mind he’d started the fire…

Adam said, “Don’t you know that he watches your husband for me?”

Then he watched everything: the domestic as well as the military comings and goings from the hall. With the cooperation of the staff, he would know everything and must have passed it all on to Adam.

“No,” she said. “No, I didn’t know that. But I should have.”

She lay down, curling herself into the blanket’s warmth, keeping her feet closest to her companion. After a few moments, he lay down, too.

She stared into the depths of the fire, thinking, wondering.

“If William hadn’t captured your brother,” she said aloud to the flames, “what did you mean to do with me? You said you didn’t intend to give me back, because it would annoy William.”

He didn’t answer at once. He could have been asleep. “I hadn’t made up my mind,” he said at last. “Probably I’d have taken you to the Lady of Ross, my mother.”

For some reason, laughter bubbled up again. “Do you take all your abducted women to your mother?”

There was a pause. “No.” He stirred close to her feet. “But to be fair, I don’t abduct so very many.”

She jerked her head up from the blanket, peering in his direction. It was on the tip of her outraged tongue to demand exactlyhowmany before it came to her that he was teasing. She laid her head back down. “I perceive I should be grateful for the honor. And if I was with your mother, would William have Tirebeck?”

“No.”

The stark word caught at her breath. If William hadn’t captured Donald and forced an exchange, the MacHeths would have fallen on his force and, probably, slaughtered everyone. Perhaps not in one attack, but it would have been done.

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