two hours.
Careful not to wake the sleeping maid, Abigail climbed from her bed. She could not miss this opportunity to get a glimpse of the Sinclair laird.
She snuck quietly to the cottage window facing the front, but when she pulled back the covering, she saw no horses or men. She hurried across the one-room dwelling and pulled the covering aside on the window facing the chapel.
The nearly full, waxing moon illuminated a large group of warriors. Nine men in all.
Five were on huge warhorses and held themselves with greater confidence than the others. Or perhaps it was simply that they exuded dominance over everything around them. They were all big men, though two were near giants. They all wore a plaid different from the MacDonalds, though the colors were hard to distinguish at this distance in the moonlight.
The Sinclairs. They had to be.
The four remaining men wore the MacDonald plaid. Watching the interplay among them, it was easy to determine who the MacDonald laird was.
The Sinclairs were not so uncomplicated to read. The other four warriors, including the MacDonald laird, deferred to all five of the Sinclairs in subtle but unmistakable ways.
At least they were evident to a woman who had spent as much time deciphering the language of body movement as Abigail.
And while it was clear someone among the Sinclairs had given the order to dismount, she could not tell who had done it. The giant with hair the color of a raven that brushed his shoulders, or the one with light-colored hair that glowed almost silver in the moonlight?
Neither wore a shirt with their plaid, which she had been told was common when a Scottish warrior hunted or fought in battle. At least among the Highlanders. The MacDonalds all wore shirts, even if they still displayed their naked legs with a total lack of civilized modesty. Abigail had spent so much time blushing over that Gaelic wardrobe idiosyncrasy, she was sure her cheeks were tinged a permanent pink.
The raven-haired man had an intricate, dark tattoo circling his left bicep. She had heard there were tribes in the Highlands that practiced the barbaric custom of permanently marking their skin with blue ink, but it had never occurred to her that the Sinclairs might be one of them. The dark swirls moved as the warrior's muscles bunched when he swung down from his horse.
She experienced the most perplexing desire to follow those lines of dark ink with her fingertips. The urge shocked her to her very core. Abigail was far more innocent than her younger sister, Jolenta, who had spent several months every year for the last four at Court. Jolenta had boasted of flirting with numerous men in attendance.
She had told Abigail that she had gone so far as to allow a few of those men to kiss her. When Abigail had expressed dismay at such wanton behavior, Jolenta had merely laughed.
Since her sister was rarely willing to spend time in Abigail's company, she did not plague Jolenta about it further. Only she had wondered if her sister's forward ways had been the reason Jolenta had returned early this year from Court.
Unlike her wayward, if courageous sister, Abigail rarely spoke to the opposite sex.
She had never touched a man or even wanted to. She had been touched for the first time in memory by a male when her stepfather carried her to her chambers after her mother beat her.
The truth was she hardly ever made physical contact with anyone .
To want to reach out and caress someone was a feeling so new and disturbing it benumbed her thoughts as well as her person for several seconds.
As she grappled with this unexpected sensation, the raven-haired man turned so she could see his face. Abigail's breath seized in her chest. A day's growth of beard outlined a strong jaw and firmly set lips on the most handsome face she had ever seen.
And the most frightening.
Because she knew with inexplicable certainty that this was the man she was to marry. Power surrounded him like a mist that
Careful not to wake the sleeping maid, Abigail climbed from her bed. She could not miss this opportunity to get a glimpse of the Sinclair laird.
She snuck quietly to the cottage window facing the front, but when she pulled back the covering, she saw no horses or men. She hurried across the one-room dwelling and pulled the covering aside on the window facing the chapel.
The nearly full, waxing moon illuminated a large group of warriors. Nine men in all.
Five were on huge warhorses and held themselves with greater confidence than the others. Or perhaps it was simply that they exuded dominance over everything around them. They were all big men, though two were near giants. They all wore a plaid different from the MacDonalds, though the colors were hard to distinguish at this distance in the moonlight.
The Sinclairs. They had to be.
The four remaining men wore the MacDonald plaid. Watching the interplay among them, it was easy to determine who the MacDonald laird was.
The Sinclairs were not so uncomplicated to read. The other four warriors, including the MacDonald laird, deferred to all five of the Sinclairs in subtle but unmistakable ways.
At least they were evident to a woman who had spent as much time deciphering the language of body movement as Abigail.
And while it was clear someone among the Sinclairs had given the order to dismount, she could not tell who had done it. The giant with hair the color of a raven that brushed his shoulders, or the one with light-colored hair that glowed almost silver in the moonlight?
Neither wore a shirt with their plaid, which she had been told was common when a Scottish warrior hunted or fought in battle. At least among the Highlanders. The MacDonalds all wore shirts, even if they still displayed their naked legs with a total lack of civilized modesty. Abigail had spent so much time blushing over that Gaelic wardrobe idiosyncrasy, she was sure her cheeks were tinged a permanent pink.
The raven-haired man had an intricate, dark tattoo circling his left bicep. She had heard there were tribes in the Highlands that practiced the barbaric custom of permanently marking their skin with blue ink, but it had never occurred to her that the Sinclairs might be one of them. The dark swirls moved as the warrior's muscles bunched when he swung down from his horse.
She experienced the most perplexing desire to follow those lines of dark ink with her fingertips. The urge shocked her to her very core. Abigail was far more innocent than her younger sister, Jolenta, who had spent several months every year for the last four at Court. Jolenta had boasted of flirting with numerous men in attendance.
She had told Abigail that she had gone so far as to allow a few of those men to kiss her. When Abigail had expressed dismay at such wanton behavior, Jolenta had merely laughed.
Since her sister was rarely willing to spend time in Abigail's company, she did not plague Jolenta about it further. Only she had wondered if her sister's forward ways had been the reason Jolenta had returned early this year from Court.
Unlike her wayward, if courageous sister, Abigail rarely spoke to the opposite sex.
She had never touched a man or even wanted to. She had been touched for the first time in memory by a male when her stepfather carried her to her chambers after her mother beat her.
The truth was she hardly ever made physical contact with anyone .
To want to reach out and caress someone was a feeling so new and disturbing it benumbed her thoughts as well as her person for several seconds.
As she grappled with this unexpected sensation, the raven-haired man turned so she could see his face. Abigail's breath seized in her chest. A day's growth of beard outlined a strong jaw and firmly set lips on the most handsome face she had ever seen.
And the most frightening.
Because she knew with inexplicable certainty that this was the man she was to marry. Power surrounded him like a mist that
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