My Heart's in the Highlands Read Online Free PDF Page B

perfectly.  His face was deeply lined, creased from years of responsibility and solemnity, but his hair was still dark, with less gray than even Ian possessed, though the duke’s hair stood out riotously from his head whereas Ian’s dark hair was shorter and combed back from him face.
    Hero had been raised within the bosom of England’s highest nobility.   Mikah remembered the house she had grown up in, her family.  Besides her father, she remembered her mother, sisters, and brother.
    With every remembrance Mikah embraced, the haziness of the previous day faded and Hero’s memories crystallized.  The only conclusion Mikah had reached from the hours of self-analysis she’d had was that either the accident had left her in an unconscious dream state gone wrong or she truly was trapped in some sort of delusional hallucination.
    Mikah preferred to think of it all as a dream.
    Since she’d always heard about how dreams were some representation of a person’s subconscious desires, it was an easy enough fantasy to believe.  A man like Ian Conagham could only come from a dream, and she’d seen his face in her dreams hundreds of nights in her life, always hazy and distant.  She’d never before gotten to interact with him, never heard his voice but for that one moment two nights before.
    Seeing him in the flesh, so to speak, was literally a dream come true.
    Mikah studied him from beneath her lashes as the carriage rocked beneath the archway of an ancient viaduct that marked Dùn Cuilean’s boundaries and her heart raced once again.  The new marquis’s attention hadn’t strayed far from her over the course of the last several hours’ journey.  He watched her as she watched him.  It was comforting to know that he found her intriguing as well.  Her girlish fascination with him might have been unbearably embarrassing otherwise. 
    Neither Mikah nor Hero had ever met a man, or even imagined a man, so compelling.  He was a man who sent excitement shivering down her spine with every glance.  They shared that, at least. 
    “ Why have we never met before?” she asked, realizing in that moment that her voice was softly cultured and bore a distinct English accent.
    “I suppose there was never an opportunity ,” he answered.  His voice, on the other hand, was a melodic Scottish brogue that was like the finest whiskey.  Smooth with no bite where Robert Conagham’s voice had been much more gruff.  The Scottish brogue was familiar and comfortable to Hero, but to Mikah, as to many American women, that beguiling tone could stand alone as a tool for seduction.  She felt she could listen to him forever.
      “I had, in fact," he continued, "met my cousin only a few times in Edinburgh as a youth while attending St. Andrew’s University.  I joined the army after that, serving in England and abroad, and most recently I was in Crimea to repel the Russian problem there.  That is where I was when I heard of his death.  I certainly never anticipated I would actually be his heir.  Might I add how sorry I am for your loss?” he added as an afterthought, as if just remembering that she had lost a husband in order for him to become a marquis.
    “ Thank you,” she responded automatically, though her mind latched onto something she found familiar.  “You fought in Crimea?”
    “ Balaklava, actually,” he amended.  “We were just being sent out to put a siege on Sevastopol when I was called back.”
    “ You just missed it,” she said.
    “ I wouldn’t have thought a lady such as yourself would be versed on the details of our wars,” Ian’s said, his brows rising in surprise,  “but, aye, I missed the battle at Balaklava by just a week.  Many of my friends and comrades were killed there.”
    Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred. Forward, the Light Brigade! Mikah thought, remembering her history and English literature classes.  “You were lucky.