Across a Dark Highland Shore (Hot Highlands Romance Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

their heads beneath the blankets, their breath created a warm and moist atmosphere around them.
    They continued on, and though it was well past midnight now, they did not stop to sleep. Occasionally Isobel got a glimpse of the full moon, but it was soon again covered with snow cloud.
    She kept her head low, watching the sturdy, dark legs of the horse beneath her swish rhythmically through the snow. They traveled over moors, through forests, and then across a snow-covered beach, and finally up hillsides, until she knew they climbed ever higher. 
    Isobel was exhausted by the time the horses picked their way up a last, rock-scattered hill along the Sound of Mull and Loch Linnhe. It was near dawn, and a great keep rose up before her, strong and commanding atop the headland, much like the men who had built the thick walls of stone. It was one of main fortresses of clan Maclean, its stone turrets reaching high to the heavens.
    The keep was well placed. On two sides, it was naturally protected by rocky cliffs, which fell into the roiling sea beneath it. The rock the castle stood on was, in fact, sometimes called the “Dubh-Aird”, or the Black Height.
    The fortress of her enemy.
    In truth, her own clan had turned on her viciously and become her enemy. She had no one she could claim as family or friend now, no one to trust.
    The wind was as harsh and stinging as her thoughts and Isobel soon tired of wondering why the Maclean, enemy to the MacKinnon clan, had snatched her from a fiery death. Why had he brought her here? Had he a worse fate in store for her? The clans had been feuding and battling, Maclean arrows falling like flakes of snow and finding their marks year after year, banners rising and sinking, the grounds covered in gore. There’d been shreds of pennons, soiled with blood and clay. The Maclean men were proud warriors that put fear into the breast of every man who had to face them on the battlefield.
    Isobel knew some of the history between her clan MacKinnon and the Macleans. A hundred years or so had passed since Lachlan Maclean had obtained an ascendant influence at the court of the Lordship of the Isles, a powerful land owner advised by a council. Subordinate chiefs were granted charters for their possessions, and in return were dedicated to the Lordship of the Isles, who had an attitude of aloofness, at best, toward the Scottish crown.
    In the case of Lachlan Maclean, a conspiracy was soon afoot. A MacKinnon chief plotted to kill Lachlan and his brother Hector at a stag hunt. They failed, and Lachlan and Hector killed the MacKinnon chief for his treachery. The Lordship of the Isles, sailing in his galley toward his Castle Ardtorinsh in Morven, was captured and taken to Icolumb-kill, where he was obliged, sitting on the sacred black rock of Iona, to swear that he would bestow in marriage upon Lachlan his daughter Margaret, granddaughter by her mother’s side of Robert the Second, King of Scotland. And with her was a fat dowry, to give the island of Eriska with all its isles to the Lord of Duart. The dowry consisted of a towering black rock, commanding an extensive view of the islands by which it was surrounded. A black rock that was now commanded by a warrior they called the Black Wolf.
    To calm herself, Isobel thought of what this island must be like in the summer, for she had heard travelers talk of its white cockleshell sand, its vivid green slopes marbled with rust red granite, and its cascading waterfalls. Sprays of orchids, pink thrift, and yellow irises would joyfully splash across the glens. In warmer months, there would be seals in the rock covers and herons in the rock pools, stretching their elegant, white necks. The woods would be full of game, there would be vast fields of purple heather, and the startling blue lochs would mirror the sky. Now all was a swirling mass of treacherous white.
    They climbed the steep-sided gorge to the keep and Isobel clutched the horse’s mane for dear life, much to the