Ewan considered everything that had happened to them since he had awakened to find her standing over his bed.
“Don’t be,” he said loudly as he sat back down to rest. “All in all, it’s been rather interesting, hasn’t it? Besides you said you were always up for an adventure.”
“True,” she said from the other side of the trees, “But I never meant for this to happen.”
“I’m sure your father didn’t either.”
“My father?”
“Aye, Catarina told me that he paid the gypsies to put us together.”
Total silence rang for several heartbeats.
“Nora?” he asked worriedly. “Are you still there?”
She ignored his question. “Just what do you mean my father paid the gypsies?”
Ewan explained it to her in between his attempts to loosen the ropes on his hands with his teeth.
“So my father wanted me to marry you?” she asked as she rejoined him.
He looked up to see her less-than-pleased visage. “Apparently so.”
She appeared flabbergasted as she stood there with her hands on her hips. “Oh, I am a fool.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I should have known something was up. My father telling me that I had no choice but to marry Ryan, then my maid telling me that the only hope I had would be to get to England. ‘You’ll be needing an escort, my lady,’ Tara said. ‘And I’m thinking there be no better man than Ewan MacAllister. He’ll see you to England fast enough and you won’t have to worry about him. All the MacAllisters are good men...’”
She paused in her tirade to curl her lips. “Oh, they are evil. I should have known when Tara brought the guard as escort. Why didn’t I see it?”
“Because you were scared.”
Nora sighed disgustedly. She felt ten kinds of foolishness. How could she have let her father manipulate her so? The man was the devil, no doubt about it and when she got home again, she fully intended to let him know exactly what she thought of his machinations.
While she silently condemned her father, she heard Ewan’s stomach rumble. “We need to eat, don’t we?”
He let out a tired breath. “I’m afraid I’m not quite up to catching anything other than a cold in my current condition and even if I could, we dare not start a fire while I’m outnumbered, wounded, weaponless and bound.”
She patted him on the arm. “I can gather greens and make a salad for us. It won’t be the best, but it’ll keep our strength up.”
Against her protests, Ewan got up to go with her.
He refused to let her out of his sight while he followed her. Even though it perturbed her, there was a small part of her that reveled in his care.
He might not have said it, but she rather fancied that he did love her. Surely there was no other reason for him to be so concerned?
After she gathered the greens, she went to the small stream for fresh water to wash them.
Ewan knelt down on the bank and bent over with a grunt to drink. Because of the way his hands were tied, he couldn’t do anything more than suck the water from his fingertips.
“Here,” Nora said, setting the greens aside. “Let me help.” She cupped her hands and helped him drink.
He smiled gratefully, then dipped his head down to kiss her lips.
Nora sighed at the tenderness of his lips on hers. After everything that had happened, she found his kiss strangely fortifying.
“Do you think they can find us tonight?” Nora asked after he had drank his fill of both her lips and the water.
