Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF

fact, along her entire length—and he seemed suddenly much larger than she had thought him. He shifted, settling himself, then pulled her cloak over them both until she could barely breathe. She opened her mouth to tell him so but shut it when she heard a voice she recognized as the leader’s shouting in outrage. The villains had reached the place where they’d left them tied up, and to have recognized it so surely, they must have found the man she and Michael had left in the alcove.
    Michael shifted slightly, then went still as she mused that their captive might have regained consciousness in time to hear his friends and, although gagged, could have groaned loudly enough for them to hear. He might even have come to his senses in time to overhear some of what she and Michael had said to each other.
    That last thought increased her terror, but she dared not speak. She wondered what he had done with the torch. What if he had left it in the crack or on the floor?
    Scolding herself for indulging in the same useless worries she had disliked so much in him, she decided he would not have been so stupid. Then, normal thought ceased altogether when she heard the voices again, so near that she could make out their words.
    “Ye’re a fool, man!” one said. “How’d ye let one wee slip of a lass get the better o’ ye?”
    “I tell ye, she were free when I got there, and I never saw him. Doubtless, he’d already fled, leaving her behind a-purpose to divert me.”
    Another voice, the leader’s, said harshly, “You’re daft, Fin. Did her pretty face stun you so that you fell flat and hit your head? You’ve a lump on it as big as a pigeon’s egg.”
    “I must ha’ stumbled,” Fin said. “I dinna recall exactly, but seems she did keep a hand behind her back. Mayhap she held a rock in it.”
    One of the others laughed, saying, “Hoots, man, mayhap she cast a spell on ye, too, making ye bend a knee t’ her so she could reach that thick head o’ yours.”
    “Be silent, the lot of you,” the leader snapped. “If one was free, they both were, and you don’t know our man, Fin, if you think he’d have left that lass to face us alone. He’s the one who hit you, so you’re damned lucky the blow didn’t speed you to your Maker. Now, hush your gobs, lads, and set your ears aprick. They’ll not be able to hurry along this passage without making some noise.”
    Michael felt Mistress Macleod stiffen. Although, now that he came to think about it, if her father was a Councilor of the Isles, she was doubtless Lady Something Macleod rather than Mistress Macleod. But the less said of names at this point in the game, the better.
    The lass had no notion of what she had bumbled into, but whatever occurred, she had given him respite from the whip and for that alone he owed her aid and protection. He would have felt obliged to protect her in any event because she was female and he had had it drummed into him from birth that defense of the weaker vessel was one of a knight’s primary duties. A lass as intrepid as this one, however, deserved safeguarding even when she naïvely courted trouble, even when she foolishly flirted, if only for a moment, with the likes of Fin Wylie.
    He smiled at the memory of her fierceness but hoped she would have the good sense to ignore whatever Waldron and the others might say of her.
    With the slightest movement, he touched the back of his near hand to her hip in warning. That she relaxed at once did not surprise him. Except for what one could only describe as her reckless behavior in being out without a proper escort, she seemed practical and sensible, and thus remarkably atypical of her sex.
    He had taken the precaution as soon as he had stretched out beside her of using a finger to poke up a tiny portion at the edge of the cloak that concealed them, so that he could see down into the passageway. The cloak barely covered him from head to knees, but his breeks and boots were dark and well back from the