A loud horn sounded from one of the Scots—the call for the battle to begin. The sound was chilling, and goose flesh rose on her bones; her heart, finally figuring out how to beat, thundered behind her ribs.
“I don’t know if I can watch,” she said.
“Turn around,” Douglass said. “If you go down the stairs, you’ll only come up again.”
Rhiannon nodded, but her feet stilled even as she started to turn. The men raised their swords and targes in the air. The English raised their weapons, and battle cries sounded from both, reverberating back against the stones and vibrating in her ears.
For a second, Rhiannon closed her eyes. Let the sounds fade. Pretended she was back on the road with Ian. That nothing was happening. Just the two of them smiling, laughing.
Goosie took that moment to appear, winding her way around Rhiannon’s legs. Rhiannon lifted her cat, pressing her face into Goosie’s neck, and felt some semblance of peace. She faced the deafening battle, the clash of swords and bellows, knowing that it wouldn’t last long, and soon Ian would return to her.
16
Ian loved a challenge.
He was always the first to step up when a challenge was laid out before him. And nothing about that had changed.
Except this time, facing the enemy on a field of battle felt different. He was different.
Only an invisible line separated him from his foe. The usual rush of fire buzzed through his veins—battle lust—but tucked into that rush was something else. Something deeper. A need to protect what was his. The woman he loved. The life they’d only recently discovered they were meant to live—together.
Ian didn’t turn around.
Because if he took one look at his wife up on the battlements—his wife—he might go berserk and annihilate every damned one of the Sassenachs jeering before him.
And a warrior was no good to anyone in that kind of state. He might as well sign his own death warrant if he did that. Battle was not a place one should lose control.
And so, he braced himself, ground his teeth, and flexed his fingers against the hilt of his sword and the strap of his horse’s reins. The targe on his arm was a welcome weight.
“The battle is yours to call,” Noah said, “But do ye want to try to negotiate first?”
Bloody hell nay, Ian wanted to shout. He wanted to cut these men down where they stood. It was only because he respected his wife that he wouldn’t kill her brother for bringing danger to them all.
As much as he wanted to wreak havoc on the bastards, he also knew it would be better to have at least tried negotiating before any blood was drawn. That way, he could look his wife in the eyes when he told her he’d vanquished the men who sought to take her, and she could look back at him with respect.
“I’ll go with ye.” Noah sheathed his sword and gave Ian a look that said, “Sheath your damn sword, brother.”
Begrudgingly, Ian followed Noah’s lead and put his sword away, feeling the emptiness in his hand as if he’d removed an appendage.
“Ready?”
“Nay.” Ian drew in a breath, trying to quell the rage that threatened to take hold of him. “But I will be.”
Noah nodded, and the two of them dismounted and walked steadily forward, approaching the blasted Sassenachs who sat on their horses and stared down their noses at them as if they owned this land and would take what they wanted from it. The same attitude that had been going on for decades.
“Get off your horse and negotiate,” Ian shouted up at the man in the middle. He instinctively knew this was Rhiannon’s brother. It wasn’t so much that he looked like her, but something about the shape of the nose and the mouth was familiar. Though where her expression was often teasing, Adam’s was arrogant.
“You deign to tell me what to do?” the man sneered down at him, then spit on the ground.
Ian bristled, and it took everything inside him not to wrench the bloody foking arse off his horse and pummel him into the ground.
“I dinna deign to do anything but kick your arse, but I’m trying to be a gentleman about it,” Ian spoke through gritted teeth, his hands flexing at his sides and itching to wipe this blight from the earth. “For Lady Rhiannon’s sake.”
“You, a gentleman?” Adam scoffed. “You stole my sister from my lands. You abducted her like the bloody heathen you are. Likely ravaged her, and now you’re holding her carcass for ransom.”
What the hell? Adam was insane. Rude, mad and an idiot.
Ian scowled up at his brother-by-marriage—even thinking of him in those terms turned his stomach. “Your sister is on the battlements watching ye right now, alive and well, no’ a carcass. And I didna need to steal her from your lands, for she asked me to take her. And a real man does no’ need to rape his woman.”
