Kate Wingo - Highland Mist 01 Read Online Free PDF

reasoning with the man. To him, she and the Earl of Lyndhurst were one and the same, cut from the same bolt of cloth. When Iain MacKinnon gazed upon her face, he could only see her father’s visage.
    Resigned to the fact that she was to be given no privacy, Yvette hitched her mantle and ski rts to her waist and squatted. Utterly mortified that she’d been reduced to such shameful straits, she silently damned the chieftain of Clan MacKinnon. And all his forbears. And all of his descendents.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that while Iain put no distance between them, he did turn his back on her.
    T hank the heavenly host for small courtesies, she mused sarcastically as she straightened to her full height and gingerly stepped away from the tell-tale puddle.
    Trying to reclaim as much of her lost dignity as possible, Yvette straightened her shoulders and began to walk back to the village, refusing to spare Iain so much as a sideways glance.
    “Where do you think ye’re going?” he demanded to know, manacling a hand around her elbow as he stopped her in mid-stride.
    “I am returning to the hovel in which I am to be housed before it b egins to—”
    ‘Rain.’
    As if to make mock of her, the storm clouds overhead chose that very moment to capriciously shower them with a heavy downpour.
    “Damn ye, woman! Now look what ye’ve gone and done!” Iain bellowed as he charged through the rain toward the village, his hand still lashed around her elbow.
    “Twice now you have consigned me to eternal damnation,” Yvette managed to say between ragged breaths, hastening to keep up with Iain’s longer stride lest she find herself face-down in the mud. “Your condemnation grows tiresome.”
    Dragging her through the entryway of the hovel, Iain retorted, “As do yer complaints.”
    Given that h er mantle and dress were soaked through, Yvette was actually glad to be out of the foul elements. Even if it meant being confined to a musty-smelling hut with no company save for an odious Highlander.
    “Take off yer clothes.”
    Certain she’d misheard him, Yvette said, “I beg your pardon?”
    “I said take off yer clothes,” Iain growled, gesturing to the woolen mantle plastered against her limbs and torso. “Ye’re soaked through and if you don’t disrobe, ye’ll catch yer death of cold.”
    “While I’m touched by your solicitude, if I fall victim to the ague that is my concern, not yours.”
    “Everything ye do is now my concern,” Iain rebutted as he stepped toward her, intimidating Yvette with his superior height. “Yer worth has been set at two thousand pounds; gold I canna collect if ye die on me. Now take off yer bloody gown or I’ll do it for ye.”
    Sufficiently cowed into submission , Yvette sidled past Iain and stepped over to the only piece of furniture in the hovel, a rickety three-legged stool. Her heart erratically pounding against her breastbone, she seated herself upon it.
    Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, she bent over and proceeded to unbutton her right boot, her fingers awkwardly fumbling with the closure. After sliding the wet boot off of her foot, she set it on the floor.
    To her surprise, Iain promptly plucked the boot from the ground, holding it aloft as he examined the extravagant piece of footwear. Not only was the ankle boot lined with sable and banded with green velvet, it was ornately embroidered with gold thread.
    “No’ very practical, is it?” he casually remarked before setting her boot back down.
    “When I left Castle Airlie this morning, I did not anticipate having to trudge through the mud and the rain.”
    Nor having to ride on the back of a horse, my arms wrapped around a bare-legged savage.
    Trying to ignore the soaking wet behemoth standing over top of her, Yvette reached under her chemise and untied her stockings, hurriedly rolling them down her calves. With a snap of the wrist, she unfurled both of them before laying them across her boots. That done, she unclasped her