Highland Master by Hannah Howell Page A

to buy us all fine linen gowns and bonnie slippers and all. Things we ne’er said we wanted, nay once. I am just a wee bit concerned that we have heard naught from them since the day they rode away.”
    Triona was not sure why, but a chill of suspicion ran through her veins. No matter how foolish she told herself it was to think it, she could not stop wondering if Sir John was somehow responsible for the loss of all her fighting men. The fact that those men included the ones skilled in hunting, woodworking, thatching, and nearly every other skill a village desperately needed to survive, would only make such trickery a greater success for Sir John. Yet, she wondered, if the men of Banuilt were not really fighting in France, where were they? It was the question she asked herself whenever the thought of treachery slipped through her mind, and the reason she had so often shrugged aside the suspicion. She simply could not believe Sir John’s people would stand silent as he slaughtered thirty men, nor would they have helped him do it.
    She tried to tell herself that she was being foolish, that she had just never heard the whole tale of how the men had decided to go to France because of the confusion and deaths caused by the fever and was seeing more in it than there was. How could Sir John lure away so many men and the men never guess at his game? They had to be in France. All reasonable questions, but this time her suspicion was not being so easily dismissed.
    “Weel, isnae he a bold bastard to come ariding right into the midst of the people he torments.”
    Joan’s muttered words drew Triona out of her confused thoughts. She looked in the direction of Joan’s scowl and nearly cursed. Sir John was riding toward them, six armed men riding guard, and he was looking around her village as if admiring all the signs of the results of his trickery. The man knew she had no firm proof that her troubles were his fault, just as she knew that without such proof she could not demand that he stay off her lands. His friends were far more powerful than the few Boyd had had and would not look kindly upon her if she was seen to have insulted Sir John in any way.
    As he rode up to her, she had to admit that he was a fine-looking man. Not tall, but strongly built, and with a face most women would find attractive. His hair was the deep brown of a chestnut and his eyes were an interesting hazel color. He also dressed very elegantly, yet all she could think when looking at his finery was to wonder just how much it had cost him. Everything about him would suit many women, and probably had. Yet, not once had he made her heart flutter.
    His nature, however, was one that she utterly despised. He was cocksure, so arrogant that it made her teeth hurt from clenching them against all the words she wanted to say to him. The man also made his opinion all too clear, in his every look and word, that women were far beneath him. Whenever his words stirred her anger, making her ache to spit out that fury at him, she simply reminded herself that, without a woman, he would not even be alive to strut around as he did. It always gave her the strength to let his words just flow around her, never touching her.
    “My laird,” she said, and curtsied, ignoring the fact that his returning her curtsy with little more than a slight nod of his head was an insult. “Why have ye come to Banuilt?”
    “I but ride through on my way to dine with our liege laird,” he answered, and smiled.
    A smile meant to keep her keenly aware that their liege laird, the man they all vowed allegiance to, had never once asked her to dine with him. She and Sir John were but small septs within the larger clan, minor landholders with only a few men to spare for any battle and no vast riches to draw a covetous eye. Boyd had gone to dutifully pledge himself to the laird, even occasionally sending some of Banuilt’s men to increase the size of the laird’s forces, but she had been mostly ignored.