Highland Master Read Free

belt off you, too. But you will have to lift yourself a bit for that. Then, mayhap you can turn over.”
    “Aye, sure,” he said. If she had wanted to kill him, she’d have done it. And she was too small to wield his heavy sword as a weapon.
    She managed without much difficulty to drag the sword from the sling on his back. But when he raised himself so she could reach the strap’s buckle under him, he had to grit his teeth against the pain and dizziness that surged through his head.
    Still, he decided by the time she unbuckled the stout strap and deftly slipped it free of his body that little was wrong with him other than an aching head.
    “Now, if you can turn over,” she said, “I will look and see how bad it is.”
    Exerting himself, he rolled over and looked up to see a pretty face with a smudge on one rosy cheek, and a long mass of unconfined, wild-looking, tawny hair.
    Despite the look of concern on her face, her eyes twinkled.
    Fin could not tell their exact color in the shadow of so many trees and with an overcast sky above, but they seemed to be light brown, rather than blue.
    “Are you a sprite, or some other woodland creature?” he murmured, finding the effort to talk greater now. His eyelids drooped.
    She chuckled low in her throat, a delightful sound and a stimulating one.
    His eyes opened again, and he saw that she had droppedto one knee to bend over him. As he took in the two soft-looking, well-tanned mounds of flesh that peeped over the low-cut bodice so close to him, his head seemed instantly clearer.
    Her lips were moving, and he realized that she was speaking. Having missed the first bit, he listened intently to catch the rest, hoping thereby to reply sensibly.
    “… would laugh to hear anyone mistake me for a sprite,” she said, adding firmly, “Now, lie still, sir, if you please. You must know that I was leery of getting too near until I could be sure that you would not harm me.”
    “Never fear, lass. I would not.”
    “I can see that, but Boreas, my companion here, dislikes letting any stranger near me. Had you moved suddenly or thrashed about as some do when they regain consciousness after an injury, he might have mistaken you for a threat.”
    Having noted how quickly the wolf dog had stepped back after the snapping sound he’d heard—surely a snap of her slim fingers—he doubted that it would attack against her will. But he did not say so. His eyelids drifted shut again.
    “Are you still awake?” No amusement now, only concern.
    “Aye, sure, but fading,” he murmured. “What is your name, lass?”
    “Catriona. What’s yours?”
    He thought about it briefly, then said, “Fin… they call me Fin of the Battles.”
    “What happened to you, Fin of the Battles?” Her voice sounded more distant, as if she were floating away again.
    “I wish I knew,” he said, trying to concentrate. “I waswalking through the forest, listening to a damned impertinent jay that squawked and muttered at me for trespassing. The next thing I knew, your escort was huffing in my ear.”
    He drew a long breath and, without opening his eyes, tried moving his arms more than had been necessary to shift himself. Pain shot through his head again, and he felt more pain from some sort of scrape on his left arm. But both arms seemed obedient to his will. His toes and feet likewise obeyed him.
    A hand touched his right shoulder, startling him. She had come up on his other side, and again he’d not heard her move. He was definitely
not
himself yet.
    “Be still now,” she said, kneeling gracefully beside him. As she bent nearer, he noted the bare softness of her breasts again before a cold, wet cloth touched his forehead and moved soothingly over it to cover his eyes.
    He knew then that she must have gone to the burn that he could hear splashing nearby. He tried to decide if he remembered seeing that burn.
    “That feels good,” he murmured.
    “It won’t in a minute. You have a gash on the left side of your