Chapter Four
Georgina and Ewan picked their way through the island toward its center, holding sturdy sticks with hooked ends. They came into a large grassy clearing, where Mal, Andrew, and Lachlan were already waiting, a pile of their own sticks by their feet. Sunlight eased past the clouds in rays, as though even the temperamental Highland weather was smiling on this endeavor, and Georgina felt an unwanted shock at the piercing gold-green of Malcolm’s eyes when the light glanced off them.
Mal spread his arm wide, a born showman. She noticed he held a wooden ball in one hand. “This field is a God-given gift,” he said.
The others nodded sagely.
Georgina couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “For what, exactly?”
“Camanachd. Didn’t I say that?”
She stared at him blankly. She hoped this wasn’t something she should know, considering her fake identity as a Scotswoman. “And what is camanachd?”
“Shinty?” he tried.
That sounded more familiar. She recalled one of her brother’s tenants mentioning the sport once.
Mal pointed at the end of the clearing, where two trees stood fairly close, and then at the other end, where a tree and a shrub stood about an equal distance apart. “Those are natural goals. It’s as though the fates are smiling upon us,” he said in a loud whisper.
“And the field is the perfect size for this number of players,” Ewan pointed out. “My grandda told me about a New Year’s game between our clan and another where hundreds of men played. He said it lasted until midnight.” After a wistful pause, Ewan said, “There aren’t any clans anymore. Not like that.”
A brooding hush fell over the clearing. An acknowledgment, perhaps, of what had been lost.
And then Malcolm slapped Ewan on the back. “There’s us. You’ll be sitting out this first game, though, to let Miss MacPherson have a turn. It’ll be Lachlan and me against Andrew and MacPherson.”
“Miss MacPherson” wasn’t sure that she wanted a turn. “I’ve never played before.”
Malcolm explained the rules—with much enthusiasm and ebullient gesturing. “I warn you, though, we’ll give you no quarter.”
“Perhaps it would be better if Ewan played,” she hedged.
Mal leaned closer to her, so only she could hear his words. “It isna a choice. I made a deal with Lachlan—if you lose, you have to leave.”
For a second, she thought he was jesting, but then she studied his face—serious, pragmatic, and calm—and something in her blanched. Whatever foolish dream she’d had of going home with her mother’s music box wavered before her eyes, as fragile as illusion. “But you said—” she began, and then she stopped, hating the tremulous note in her voice.
“Don’t look at me like that, lass,” he murmured.
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve betrayed you. I’ve put you with Andrew, and he’s the strongest player… As long as you can manage a goal or two, you should be fine. Think of it as…an initiation. Any group of bandits worth their salt has an initiation, aye?”
She managed a shaky smile. “Couldn’t it have been shooting?”
“Then you wouldn’t have to put in any effort at all. You can do this,” he said. “You’re too fierce a lass to give up now.”
He was encouraging her, calming her—he wanted her to stay, she realized, with a little twist in her heart. Guilt sat like a weight on her chest. She wondered, not for the first time, what he would do if he found out what she was really after. She wondered, too, what would happen to them if her brother found her before she found the music box.
She didn’t want to be the reason they were caught—but now that desire wasn’t simply born out of principle—no, she was starting to see them as men, not just outlaws.
It seemed a dangerous distinction.
Mal stepped back from her, and then eyed their ragtag group. “Now, I’d like to point out that you’re all useless to me with broken limbs or bleeding heads, so let’s keep it friendly…” There was a pause as he seemed to contemplate that statement. “Or, if not friendly, not overly vicious.”
Broken limbs and bleeding heads? Whatever calming effect Mal’s earlier words had had on her vanished with a jolt of fear.
They riffled through the pile of sticks, weighing and choosing, then walked out to the middle of the field. Ewan took the wooden ball and rolled it onto the grass.
And then sheer chaos descended.
Later, when Georgina contemplated hundreds of men playing at once, she didn’t know how every game wasn’t a massacre. Even with a measly four players, she feared for her bodily safety. Shinty was certainly no leisurely game of battledore and shuttlecock or billiards, and Mal hadn’t been lying when he said they wouldn’t give her quarter.
She came up to Lachlan’s side, trying to get at the ball, but he bumped her aside with his shoulder as if she were some trifling annoyance. His stick swept the ground in a long, aggressive arc, colliding with her ankle on its path toward the ball.
She gasped and fell back. Each step sent a sharp throb through her foot. But the other two men didn’t bat an eye—and she soon came to realize this kind of casual violence was normal for shinty.
Lachlan broke away from her, surging toward the goal.
She thought of the music box, gripped her own stick tighter, and trudged forward with new determination.
What she didn’t expect was Mal guarding her. Or her reaction to it.
He wasn’t an overly large man, but he was powerful in a way she wasn’t accustomed to, a coiled strength. His presence felt bigger than his body. When he got close to her, she could smell sweat, and underneath, something heady and crisp, like pine and smoke and earth.
They scrabbled over the ball at one point, and she felt the touch of warm breath against her lips. Her stomach tightened. She hadn’t known this sort of thing could feel so intimate.
No, she thought, strangely panicked. No. That wouldn’t do at all.
“Mr. Stewart, you are standing in my way,” she said, more breathlessly than she would have liked. Their sticks had hooked together while they both tried to get at the ball.
“That’s how the game is played, Miss MacPherson.”
She looked up, into hazel eyes that were so close to her own. Too close. She could see every individual fleck of gold, warm and shining in the light. He must’ve been a little taken aback by their proximity, too, because he hesitated.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But if you could just…” Ah, there—she’d freed her stick.
“If I could just—”
She screwed up her courage. Hardened her resolve. And then, while he was still speaking, she leaned forward and shoved into Mal’s stomach with her shoulder.
Good Lord, it was painful. Mal’s stomach, unfortunately, didn’t have one ounce of softness to it. It felt like she’d just collided with a rock. But the action did take him by surprise. He stepped back with a low, startled oomph. She used that split second to sweep the ball away.
“Pardon me,” she called over her shoulder, biting back a satisfied smile when she heard a curse ring out behind her.
The field was open. So she ran.
Lachlan came up to her side to cut her off, but Andrew was already waiting. She swung the stick hard. A satisfying clack rang out. The ball sailed toward her teammate, and he drove it straight through the goal.
If Georgina had underestimated the casual violence of the sport, she’d also underestimated its opposite. Andrew, who hadn’t spoken more than two words to her, ran back, grinning with the brilliance of sunlight, a row of endearingly crooked teeth on display. She hadn’t even known the taciturn man was capable of smiling like that. She blinked, dazed, and was jolted back to life when he slapped her shoulder and nearly sent her careening into the ground.
“Now that’s the way it’s done, Cat!” he said.
Taken aback by his enthusiasm, and the radiance of his smile, and being called “Cat,” she blinked again.
He reached out with his stick. She realized he was waiting for her to knock her stick into his, in some kind of odd celebratory ritual, so she did. He smiled again, and she laughed, a foreign warmth seeping into her chest.
Mal caught her eye on the walk back toward the middle of the field. “You have a taste for ginger?”
She stared at him. “What?”
“You’re blushing.” He moved closer to her. His hand rose like he might touch her cheek. Like he wanted to feel the heat of her skin for himself. He seemed to rethink the gesture and let it fall back to his side.
“Oh.” She stared at him, heart beating too fast. The question had been playful, but there was something searching in his gaze that caught her off guard. He couldn’t possibly care if she did…could he? “He is rather handsome.” It was an understatement. Andrew was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen, with those high cheekbones and dark-lashed eyes and sunset-red hair.
A woman could be forgiven for being a tiny bit flustered, couldn’t she?
And if she was much more conscious of Mal, walking close to her, Mal, nearly touching her cheek, than she was of Andrew’s good looks…well, no one had to know but her.
Mal’s eyebrows lifted. “I thought I was the handsome one.”
“Wishful thinking doesna make something true.”
“Now you’re starting to hurt my feelings, lass.” His voice was low and gentle and teasing, and it slid across Georgina’s skin like silk.
She lifted her chin. “I doubt your emotions are quite as fragile as that,” she said primly.
They were interrupted by Ewan coming back onto the field to start the next round, and Georgina drew a relieved breath. She kept her eyes on the ball, but her exchange with Mal left her feeling overly warm. She wished she could blame it on physical exertion, but she knew that wasn’t the case. She’d been aware of Mal since the moment they’d met, unwillingly fascinated by the way he moved, by the sharp intelligence in his hazel eyes—she hadn’t thought the feeling might be reciprocated.
“You don’t belong here.”
Her head jerked up to meet Lachlan’s scowling face. This time around, he was sticking to her like flies to a carcass, more determined and more aggressive than he’d been the last round.
His words cut, more deeply than she wanted them to.
“That’s not for you to decide,” she reminded him.
Lachlan’s lip curled. “You haven’t won yet.”
Andrew shot the ball past them and they both took off after it. They were side by side until Lachlan hooked the back of her legs and she went down hard.
For a second, she lay there, stunned, winded. A searing pain radiated from a point between her shoulder blades, and she wondered if she’d landed on a rock.
But she pushed herself up. If Lachlan wanted to play dirty, oh, she could play dirty. She gritted her teeth against the pain and ran to catch up with him. Whatever he saw in her face gave him pause. In his haste to make the goal, he shot too forcefully and the ball ricocheted off a tree trunk.
The ball was rolling toward them. She was a step behind Lachlan, then in line with him, then she was past him—she’d given his leg a good thwack and he hobbled off balance. She took a swing, striking the ball, watching with wide eyes as it went airborne…and soared straight through the goalposts.
She heard Andrew whoop. And when she turned around, triumph surging through her veins like wildfire, the first thing she saw was Mal’s brilliant smile.