“Answer the question.”
She studied the man in front of her and the warriors who formed a line blocking her means of exit.
Though they all wore Highland caps, frock coats and kilts, there were subtle differences in the quality of the wool, the wear in the tips of their boots. The man immediately blocking her exit seemed to be the best dressed of the lot and wielded the most authority. Standing before her, he made it abundantly clear with his body that he was not going to allow her to pass. Had he not seen what she’d just been forced to do to the last man thwarting her escape?
She gritted her teeth, trying to push back the tiny niggle of fear at being alone in the courtyard with seven large men who were all armed to the teeth.
The warrior’s blue eyes pierced into hers as though he planned to read every thought that didn’t pass her lips. Lord, but he was trying her patience, and there was something extremely familiar about his voice and the lines of his face. Where did she know him from?
Something tickled the back of her brain like an annoying midge flying about her temples.
Sweat trickled down her spine, but still she kept up the insolence of an adolescent lad despite him already calling her out for the female she actually was. “What business is that of yours?”
“There’s a battle right now,” he said as if she were stupid. “No’ too far from here.”
“Everyone knows that,” she interrupted with a bit too much insolence. “And from the looks of ye, the lot of ye were there. Congratulations on living when so many others didna.”
This time the crack in her voice was real. The men all winced, examining their own minor injuries.
To have seen so many of her beloved countrymen butchered on the field of battle had been the single most devastating thing Fiona had ever witnessed. She’d seen battles before, but none so catastrophic. With Ian having been among the guards who’d swept the prince from the battlefield, she prayed he remained with the prince, well away from danger.
She needed to find General Murray. He’d taken the other surviving Jacobites who’d escaped the fray to Ruthven House, along with Jenny and her men. The prince wanted them to disband. To run and to hide until they were called up for service once more.
Highlanders would be hard pressed to hide… Still, she had a duty to the prince to convey the message. She’d hurried back to Culloden House, only a mile or two from the battlefield, to change into this getup. No need for the postmistress here. Dressed as a lad seemed to be the safest bet with a war going on, as no woman could consider herself safe from men who needed to slake their battle lust on a body willing or not—not that being dressed as a lad had seemed to help her much. She’d been about to set out from Culloden House while the prince and his entourage headed to Invergarry when she’d run into the dragoon staring through the windows.
Poor bastard. If only he’d left her alone.
She’d been told that on the morrow, the prince and his retinue would likely try to make their way to the Hebrides.
Fiona blinked away the rapidly gathering tears. Now was not the time. She had to push the images, the heartbreak away. Focus.
She straightened to her full height, which still only brought her chin to midchest with this mammoth, and she started to skirt around him.
“Where are ye going?” This time when the large warrior spoke, his tone had subtly shifted. Colder somehow. He didn’t need to stop her with his hand, because the tone of his voice was enough.
“Home, as ye pointed out, is the safest place for me.”
“Ye were at the battle.” It was not a question.
“Nay,” she lied. Well, it wasn’t a full lie. She’d been there, watching, though she’d not taken part, though there had been plenty of times she’d wished to interfere.
He grunted, and she found that sound to be so irritating. And again, striking a familiar chord.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to place him, this time actually taking all of him in. He was tall, broad, and wickedly handsome—the latter of which she tried to ignore. His hair, though matted from battle, was dark and full of curls. His skin, beneath the specks and smears of blood, was tan despite having just come out of winter, and his eyes were a shockingly brilliant blue. His jaw was pronounced and covered in a shadow of black whiskers. He’d not shaved today, and perhaps not the day before either. His blue gaze pierced her with the intensity of his stare.
He wore his Jacobite cap at an angle, the white cockade looking defeated. The frock coat he wore fit him in a way that pronounced the broadness of his chest and the trimness of his waist. The muscles of his arms bulged from the fabric, except for where there was a perfect slice and the fabric darkened perhaps with blood. His boots were not new, but neither were they as worn as others, indicating he had some money to his name. But he was not adorned with any jewels or anything else that would mark him as of noble blood. Nothing except the haughty angle of his jaw.
He was not a man she would forget if she’d laid eyes on him before.
“I’ll ask ye one more time, where are ye headed?”
Throat suddenly dry, heart pounding, she worked hard to keep her body from tensing. “What the devil, man?” Fiona said, bringing out her insolent lad. “I told ye I’m going home. My ma will be worried, and I intend to ease her burden.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her face, trying to catch her in a lie, she supposed, since he’d already accused her of being a spy.
She frowned, trying to look as tough as she should feel, as angry as she was for being waylaid. Every moment she wasted with this arrogant Highlander would make it longer before Murray and the rest of the Jacobite army at Ruthven got the message from the prince to disband.
The men were in mortal danger if they remained at Ruthven House, and it would be this man’s fault if she didn’t deliver the message in time.
The prince was on the run now. There was an air among him and his guards that a revival in the cause was hopeless. From what she could tell, the Jacobite mission to restore the prince to the throne seemed to have shifted to an abandonment of ship. But it couldn’t be the end. Fiona didn’t believe that. There had to be hope. She had to keep that hope alive.
“Where does your ma live?”
“With me da,” she answered, specifically avoiding the information he was looking for and trying not to snicker at the flash of annoyance that crossed his face.
“And where is that?”
“In the very cottage I was born.”
“Ye’re avoiding the question.”
Fiona shrugged, working hard to hide her smirk. “I’ve answered ye two times now.”
He came closer, the clomp of his boots on the ground slow and deliberate, and that grunt falling again from his throat. And suddenly she knew who he was. Fiona’s eyes widened slightly, recalling a very similar battle of wills just this morning.