Page 8 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
She blinked at last, her slender throat bobbing as she craned her neck to hold his gaze. “Youare the… Hawk? The one from…”
“From?” he prompted.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure it matters.” Those impossibly red lips pressed together for a moment. “You’re him, though? The Hawk?”
“Laird Lochlann,” he corrected coolly. “I daenae appreciate childish nicknames made by weak men who’d rather call me anythin’ but what I am. Makes ‘em feel better when I cut ‘em down.”
The lass rubbed the back of her neck and puffed out a breath. “Right, well, I don’t know which part of my subconscious you’ve sprung from, but I can’t say I mind the cliché.” She gave anawkward laugh that deepened his frown. “Good thing I wasn’t at the clown museum when I got knocked out, or Lord knows what… all ofthiswould be like.”
What on earth is she talkin’ about?
Her accent, whatever it was, was entirely unknown to him. It didn’t sound like anything local, nor did it sound like anything he’d heard from various traders and merchants who came to the region from time to time. Not Scottish, not any sort of English he’d ever heard, and not Irish either.
In truth, he couldn’t be certain he was understanding half of what she was saying. He was just guessing at the words and trying to make sense of them.
“She’s pretendin’ to be mad, me Laird,” one of the guards said.
A second nodded. “We spotted her lyin’ over there by the trees, and were about to send someone out when she got up and walked to the gates. Demanded to ken what was going on and where the tapestry was. Somethin’ about kids, too.”
“Ye’ve lost them?” Hunter asked.
He let his gaze wander over the rest of her… and immediately understood why Jack had summoned him.
“Lost what?” she replied. “My marbles? Absolutely.”
He ignored her as her peculiarity finally registered.
She wore a strange pair of blue trews that fit her like a glove, leaving nothing to the imagination or to modesty. He could see the exact shape of her strong thighs, the curve of her calves, the swell of her hips, and even a glimpse of her ankles before they disappeared into the oddest shoes he’d ever seen: maroon red, with thick, flat white soles and some kind of crest on the side.
On top, she left a little more to the imagination, wearing a short gray tunic that stopped at the waistline of her strange trousers and a long-sleeved doublet made entirely of black leather. A curious metal mechanism replaced buttons, resembling two straight lines of tiny teeth. And off her shoulder hung a bag made of that same black leather.
Who isthis lass?
Or perhaps he ought to be asking himselfwhatshe was. This part of the Highlands wasn’t without its myths and legends, and in recent years, they’d done plenty to anger the restless spirits that had been here far longer than they had and would be here long after everyone was gone.
“Are ye English?” he asked, frowning.
“She said she was French!” one of the guards sneered.
At that, the lass rolled her eyes. “I never said I was French. No one was responding to me, so I figured I must be speaking a foreign language.” She drew in a breath. “I’m American.”
“American?” Hunter paused, the word as unknown to him as the rest of her. “Ye mean, ye’re from the Americas?”
As far as he was aware, the people who’d sailed to that far-off land were just British by any other name, still ruled over by whoever sat on the English throne. Americans were the people who had already been there when the English landed and claimed it as their own, as the English had a nasty tendency of doing. The Scots knew about that intimately.
But she wouldnae be speakin’ English if she was American, would she?
“Sure, I’m from the Americas,” she replied.
He nodded, slowly sheathing his sword. “Ye got here by ship?”
It was a fair walk from the coast, but not impossible. If her ship had wrecked, she wouldn’t have had much choice but to walk inland and pray she found civilization. Otherwise, she’d have probably died out there.
She looked him in the eye, her chest rising and falling in a heavy sigh as she whispered, “I wish I knew.”
There definitely hadn’t been a ship involved; Nancy knew that much. But therewassomething fishy going on, and she couldn’t even begin to figure it out.
It has to be my head. Or I’m in a hospital bed, in the throes of a coma.
