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“In the middle of a bush?” she demanded, raising her eyebrows in sarcastic disbelief. “Forgive me if I find that hard to credit. Why should I not just shoot you where you stand? I am only a weak little woman, and you are a very big man. Nobody would blame me for defending myself.”
Murdoch drew himself up to his full height and looked down his nose at her, hoping his size would intimidate her, but Keira did not back down or indeed show any fear at all. She kept the bow trained on him, watching his every move minutely.
“Are you really going to use that?” he asked, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.
He felt ashamed of being intimidated by a woman, but she was skillful, the arrow pointing at him was very real, and so was his fear. As well as that, he could see that Keira was not in a very rational frame of mind.
“I was walking through the woods, and I heard your arrow hitting the tree. I was curious, so I came to have a look. I have no motive to spy on you or harm you.” He spoke as calmly as he could. “I am sure that I have done many things in my life to deserve being shot by an arrow through the heart, but I do not believe you are a murderer, Mistress McTavish.”
She was still glaring at him from behind the bow, but he saw a flicker of something in the depths of her eyes. Was it uncertainty? Whatever it was, it had no effect on her because the bow remained steadfastly pointed at him.
Keira’s arms were aching. Any moment now they would start to tremble and she would give herself away as the weak little woman she really was. Damn. Why was she doing this anyway? She knew that Murdoch Holmes was a good man, a steady man, who did strange things to her body that no other man she had ever met had done. Moreover, he carried with him an air of solidity, dependability, and trustworthiness.
Keira studied him. He was taller than any other man of her acquaintance, and his shoulders were wider. His calves, the only part of his legs she could see, were magnificently muscled. His hair, now tousled with the wind, was the color of ripe wheat, and it gleamed gold in the dappled sunshine. He was standing stock-still as he looked at the arrow, waiting for Keira to make a decision.
Eventually, however, the decision was made for her since her arms could not take the strain of holding the bow any longer, and she slowly lowered it, giving an angry sigh as she did so. She dropped to the ground and sat motionless for a while. Looking at the size of Murdoch’s feet and calves, she realized that whatever she had tried to do would never have been enough, unless she had shot him in the heart.
She was only a small woman, but he was a huge man, and she knew within herself that her heart was too tender to have killed him.
Damn him! Why did she have to be so weak-willed?
