Page 95 of The Laird's Masked Passion

The woman blinked.

“Move, or I shall drag ye, and neither of us will enjoy it.”

That worked. Around them, the meadow became a confusion of smoke, steel, and trampled grass. Breac was everywhere at once, with his sword flashing, and his voice carrying above the panic as he drove men toward the ridge. Murdoch fought near the tables with a hard, grim focus, using a broken trestle as much as his blade to keep attackers from the women. Colin’s soldiersrallied quickly, pouring from the meadow’s lower edge, shields up, forming a rough line between the villagers and the men who had come to slaughter them.

The attackers expected panic to do half their work. They were not expecting villagers to seize knives from feast tables. They were not expecting old men to swing staffs with the fury of insulted kings. They were not expecting women to throw hot stew into the faces of men trying to pass them. They were not expecting Colin MacKenzie’s people to become, in one breath, a wall.

Elspeth pushed children behind the carts. Skye passed one infant to a grandmother and reached for another child crying beneath a table. Smoke stung Elspeth’s eyes. Someone’s blood darkened the grass near her foot. A boy no older than ten stood with a bread knife in his hand, trembling.

Elspeth took it from him. “Behind me.”

“But—”

“Behind me.”

He obeyed. Then, a man burst between two overturned benches, his face half-covered, and his blade drawn. His gaze found Elspeth, and something in it sharpened with recognition.

They were looking forher.

Her breath stopped. The man lunged. Elspeth swung the bread knife with more terror than skill. He caught her wrist, twisted, and pain shot up her arm. The blade fell. His other hand struck her side, then suddenly, cold fire opened along her ribs.

She gasped. Before the man could strike again, Skye came at him from the side with a stool in both hands and brought itdown against his head with a crack that would have impressed a warrior and horrified a carpenter. The man dropped.

Skye stared at him, panting. “I have always disliked that stool.”

Elspeth almost laughed. Then the pain beneath her ribs bloomed hot and wet. She pressed a hand to her side. Her fingers came away red.

Nae too much, she told herself at once.Nae deep.

There was no space for fear, not while a child sobbed into her skirts, not while Colin bled somewhere behind the line of men and not while Robert Munro’s soldiers still came through the smoke.

“Are ye hurt?” Skye demanded.

“Nay.”

“Elspeth—”

“Nay.” Elspeth caught her friend’s wrist, leaving blood upon her skin. “Later.”

Skye’s eyes filled with furious terror, but she nodded. They kept moving. More villagers reached the safety of the lower wall. Men dragged carts into a barrier. The first wild panic began to change into organized resistance. The attackers, pressed from the front by Colin’s soldiers and harried from the sides by villagers armed with whatever the feast had provided, lost their advantage with every passing breath.

Elspeth saw Colin again through a break in the smoke. He was still on his feet. Relief struck so hard her knees nearly failed.

Blood ran down his arm. The arrow remained in his shoulder. His face was set in a terrible calm, but his eyes searched the meadow even while he fought. They found her.

For one impossible second, battle vanished. He saw the blood at her side. The change in him was frightening.

“Elspeth!”

His voice tore across the meadow, not in command of a laird to clan, but something that made her heart answer despite the pain.

A soldier came at him from the left while he was looking at her.

“Colin!” she cried.

He turned in time. The blow glanced off his blade. Breac appeared behind the attacker and ended the danger with a savage stroke. Murdoch shouted an order. Colin’s men surged forward. The villagers roared with anger, grief, and the desperate refusal to be butchered on their own grass.

The attackers began to fall back one by one at first, then in a rush. They retreated toward the trees, dragging wounded men, loosing two final arrows that struck shield and earth. Colin’s soldiers pursued only far enough to drive them beyond the meadow’s edge. No one followed into the woods.