Page 15 of Heart of the Hunter (Band of Bastards #3)

A nora had little experience with men, but her gut told her that Hunter had just admitted to something uncharacteristically significant for such a stoic man.

He suddenly looked pained, perhaps even ill.

The color drained from his face, and he looked away from her to focus his attention on his hands.

“Yet, you continue to avoid me whenever you are under my father’s roof.” She said the words gently, as though trying not to scare him away.

He nodded slowly.

“Why, Hunter?” A crackle of awareness buzzed in her head. Perhaps all those times she’d told herself she was overthinking a look he’d directed her way or caught him watching her from the corner of his eyes, she’d actually been right and his attention to her was of a more intimate nature.

He stubbornly refused to look at her as he pressed his lips together, and a muscle in his jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth. “It is of no consequence.”

“Am I a distraction?” She wanted to hear him admit it, wanted to know that he was as preoccupied with thoughts of her as she had been with him.

He turned his face toward her, and Anora could see that it had changed.

She’d thought she’d broken through the thick wall he shielded himself behind, but it was back in place.

His expression was stoic, his gaze was steady, and the hard set of his mouth was evidence that he’d fortified himself against revealing anything more about himself. “Distractions are dangerous to a man.”

“But not to a woman?” She was bored of men who thought women’s lives easy and inconsequential.

“There are other dangers for women.”

“Is that so?” She eyed him with curious anticipation. Hunter was unusual, which is why he intrigued her. She would be gravely disappointed if he proved to be less than what she had built him up to be in her mind. “What would those be?”

“Men.”

Of course, men were a danger—they were a danger to all living beings—but it was not the answer she’d expected. Nor did she expect the bitter bite to his tone. “Are not men just as much of a danger to other men as they are to women?”

“Not in the same way. They don’t target men just because they are men.

” The light of the flames reflecting in his eyes added intensity to the look he leveled at her.

She detected something more behind his eyes than just a warning, something sad and haunted.

He looked away and rose to grab another log from under the sideboard and add it to the fire, then stood watching the flames.

“A woman does not need to give reason to become the target of a man. Existing is enough.”

Now they were having a conversation! Just the two of them, face to face, and he could not ignore her here. She pushed to her feet and stood across from him as she held her hands out to warm them by the fire. “And do you believe a woman existing is offense enough?”

He shook his head. “But what I believe does not matter and will not keep you or any other woman from the dangers of men.”

“What will?” She was genuinely curious. Her future depended on finding an answer to that question.

If she could not find a way to defend against the dangers of men who would take her business from her or force her into becoming a mistress in return for protection, then she what was left for her?

Marriage did not suit her ambitions, and the thought of it made her want to bare her teeth like a caged animal.

“The very thing that is the most dangerous to you is also what will protect you.”

“A man,” she said, her tone flat. She was not willing to admit defeat as of yet, but the answer was always the same: find a husband.

But every man who expressed interest in her had no care for what she wanted and viewed the union only from the standpoint of what she would bring to them.

Not one had ever asked her what she wanted from a husband.

“Aye, a man. And having enough sense to stay out of places you don’t belong.”

She dramatically pressed her lips together, tipped her head to the side, and squinted her eyes at him as though considering what he said. Then, with as much sarcasm as she could muster, she replied, “I am not interested in the former and I am not very good at the latter.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes. “That is obvious. Is there not a baker or butcher in the village with his eye on you?” He looked away after he asked the question as though he didn’t truly want to hear the answer, and she wondered if it was because he feared her anger at the presumptiveness of the inquiry.

Or if he didn’t want to hear her admit to having a suitor.

“No suitors.” It wasn’t a complete lie. The men in the village had given up on pursuing her some time ago. And the baron’s offer was no longer an honorable one of a suitor, but rather something sordid and unsavory.

He braced his legs apart and crossed his arms over his chest as he stared down at the flames. After a long moment he asked, “Why are you not married?”

There was no accusation in the question, and she decided to answer honestly. “There have been offers, but I have not fancied any of them. I have yet to find a man who does not want to change me.”

He lifted his gaze from the fire to look at her. “What changes do they expect?”

“They expect me to give up goldsmithing, to do their bidding, and be contented as the assistant to their vocation—whatever that may be. I have no desire to bake, or farm, or sheer wool, or pluck poultry. The last suitor was a goldsmith from a village in the north, but he dismissed my skills and didn’t believe me when I showed him the pieces I crafted.

He commended me on the fine job of polishing my father’s work.

” She decided not to mention that Baron Whyte had been one of the men to offer for her hand.

Multiple times. In the beginning, she assumed it was out of some sense of obligation due to his father and her father having a history, but then she turned into a fixation for him. A prize to be won.

“You’ve had many proposals.” He said it as though there was something distasteful in his mouth.

She copied his stance, legs braced apart, and arms crossed over her chest and met his gaze. “You think me not worthy?”

“I think you to be very worthy,” he said in an appreciative drawl that sent a little shiver down Anora’s spine. “I’m merely surprised you have had so many offers but not found one man to your liking.”

She shrugged. “I can provide for myself with my skills and that is what I want to do. Is that so different from you or anyone else to want to have a say in one’s own future? To not have to constantly rely on others to take care of you?”

“Do you plan to be alone for the rest of your life?”

“If I ever find a man like my father, who holds me in the same regard as he did my mother, I may consider taking him as husband.” Their locked gazes suddenly felt very intimate, and she felt the heat rise up her neck and into her cheeks at the fleeting thought that Hunter might be that man.

He was the only man to set all of her senses on alert whenever he was near.

It was true that he piqued her ire more than anyone else, but only because she was already unsettled and on edge in his presence in a way that never happened with any other man.

Hunter was the first to look away. He rubbed the back of his neck and blew out a heavy breath. “Frode may be a good man, but that won’t stop him from whipping my hide when I return his daughter to him in the wee hours of the morning after spending the night alone in a hut.”

“He will believe me if I tell him you behaved with the utmost of decorum.” Even as she said the words the thought crossed her mind that she would prefer that he not behave with decorum. “Which is what I will tell him…no matter what happens tonight.”

His head snapped in her direction as she said the last, his eyes narrowed in warning. “Nothing will happen.”

She really shouldn’t get so much satisfaction from riling him up, but she did.

There was something about seeing Hunter—the quiet, stoic man who was always in control—lose his tenuous grasp on his composure.

She moved to the bench to sit. “If you insist on being chivalrous, then at least entertain me with stories. Tell me something I don’t know about you. ”

She saw the corner of his mouth quirk as he lowered himself onto a stool by the fire. “There is not much to know.”

That she did not believe. There had to be a reason for the fortress of stone he’d built around himself.

Hunter had secrets, she could see it in his eyes, and she wanted to know what had made him so cautious around people.

“Let’s give it a try. Tell me just a little bit about yourself, like…

do you only perform your duties for Lord Hawk, or are you a sword for hire? ”

Sir Erik “Hawk” Grogan was Lord of Hawkspur Castle, commander of an elite force of knights and warriors, and a man to make women’s hearts skip a beat anytime his name was mentioned.

He’d fallen in love with the Lady of Hawkspur Castle when he was sent there to find a traitor, protected her when it was discovered her brother was the culprit, supported her when she became lady and commander of the castle—a rare position for a lady and even more rare for a man not to try to take it from her—and endured a flogging from the king for putting the love of a woman before duty.

Hawk was the type of man every woman dreamed would fall in love with her, but Anora was even more intrigued by Lady Alyce.

She’d proven herself worthy of commanding a fortress and had done it alone before she married Hawk.

Her friend Galiena knew her and said she was every bit as awe inspiring in person as she was in the stories about her, and Anora longed to meet the lady.