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their faces painted with macabre blue designs and wearing a plaid of dark blue, green and pale yellow came out of the forest. They were riding the biggest horses she'd ever seen… bareback.

Chapter 3
    Emily thought she had been prepared for anything in this Highland country, but she hadn't been ready for this. If someone had told her the day before that there were warriors more intimidating than the Sinclairs, she would have laughed in the person's face. She wasn't laughing now.
    Nay. She was too busy praying.
    The giant men rode toward her and Cait, their fierce scowls made even more menacing by the blue war paint. It was not so much that they were bigger than the Sinclair warriors as that they carried themselves as if they owned the world and all that was in it. Considering they were on another clan's territory, that said something. She'd never seen such arrogance and she'd been raised by one ox England's most ruthless barons and was now betrothed to the formidable Sinclair laird.
    The sound of Cait's frightened intake of breath reminded Emily she was not alone in facing the menace. Relief turned to chagrin in the space of a second. Emily didn't want her friend hurt… or frightened. She turned to Cait, whose face had drained of color. She was looking with terror at the warriors on horseback.
    Emily tried to smile reassuringly. "Don't be frightened, Cait. It's only some friends of your brother, I'm thinking."
    They looked mean enough to be friends to the Sinclair laird.
    Cait shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving the approaching warriors. "Friends? Nay, Emily. These are Balmoral soldiers and they have already killed Everett," she said, speaking of the boy sent to guard Emily, "or they would not be here."
    Emily turned eyes filled with fury to the warrior closest to her. "Surely, not. You did not kill that boy. For it would be a sin for a grown man to kill a child… even here in the Highlands."
    The warrior she addressed, a redheaded demon with eyes the color of grass, raised his brows but did not answer. He watched her silently, causing her to nervously twist and untwist the folds of her dress. She felt goaded into speaking again.
    "Do you not know it is impolite to ignore a lady when she is speaking to you?" She'd been using Gaelic the whole time, so she knew the heathen monsters had to understand her.
    A warrior from her left spoke. He could have been the first one's twin but for his brown eyes. "We did not kill the boy."
    Emily turned back to her friend. "There now. Do you see? These are merciful men. I'm sure we have nothing to fear."
    She prayed God would forgive her for the lie, but she hated the look of dread in Cait's eyes.
    Cait's snort of disbelief turned into a scream as the green-eyed warrior swiftly rode forward and swung her onto his horse. He disarmed her in a move too quick for Emily to see, but she saw the small knife fall to the ground. Forgetting anything resembling ladylike decorum, she dove for it.
    Grasping it in her hand, she scrambled to her feet and went for the warrior's unprotected calf.
    The horse backed up and the knife swished uselessly through air. She lurched forward to try again, but was caught from behind by an arm as big as a pine tree. At least that was how it felt ramming into her stomach and knocking out her breath as she was lifted off her feet and dropped into a totally indecent position in front of one of the Balmorals.
    She couldn't even scream, but she could bite and that's what she did, turning and sinking her teeth into the shoulder not covered by the warrior's plaid.
    He grunted.
    She bit down harder and tried to stab him in the thigh with the knife. Suddenly, instead of the arm being around her waist, it was wrapped around both her arms, holding them tight to her sides. The thumb from his free hand pressed against her wrist and her hand released the knife of its own volition.
    The horse beneath them started moving and the warrior growled in her ear. "Stop trying to