Pleasured Read Online Free PDF Page B

headstrong and wayward. ’Tis said they never marry. Certainly her mother did not. They live all alone at the Spaewife’s Cottage.”
    “Spaewife?” Damon repeated blankly.
    “Aye, sir, it’s a word for a woman who has the sight. They say that one of the Munro women was a spaewife—well, more than one. The Munros roam about, plucking up leaves and roots and who knows what to make their godless potions. It was no surprise to me that some of them were burned at the stake in years past—though, of course, I cannot hold with that. It’s a matter for God himself to judge, I say.”
    “People think Miss Munro is a witch?”
    His skepticism must have come through in his tone, for Mrs. Ferguson straightened and drew her mouth into a prim line. “Nae, not a witch. But to hear the folks around here tell it, it’s her that cures those who are sick, not the grace of God. It’s why few condemn their licentious behavior. For generations they have been, well, the sort of woman that I cannot bring myself to name.” She gave him a significant look. “They have always had a ‘special relationship’ with the lairds of Baillannan.”
    “The lairds of Baillannan? That gray-stone manor house?”
    “Aye, my lord. Sir Andrew and before him Sir John. Meg’s mother, Janet, was Sir Andrew’s nurse when he was a babe, and Janet was uncommon close to Sir John. I would not like to think there was anything to the rumor, but given the circumstances . . .” Mrs. Ferguson’s voice trailed off. “Well,you can see that she is not the sort whom I would allow to work at Duncally. Why, she would have the men all in an uproar, a lass like that. Our servants are of the highest character, I assure you.”
    “I have no doubt of that, Mrs. Ferguson.”
    Damon dismissed her and stood there for a moment longer, a faint smile on his lips. So Red Meg Munro was a mysterious, wild woman of the woods, gathering plants and making potions and doing as she pleased. All his housekeeper’s remarks concerning Miss Munro’s lack of suitability had made her more appealing to him by the moment. Clearly she was no blushing virgin, but a woman of experience.
    He was beginning to think that this trip to the Highlands might just turn out to be quite entertaining.

    Meg hardly noticed the woods around her as she walked back to her cottage, nor did she stop even once to take in the view of the loch or Baillannan, for she was far too busy arguing with herself. Why had she tossed that parting comment over her shoulder at the earl? She had meant the remark to be needling, but somehow it had come out almost flirtatious. She was not above a little harmless flirtation; but that had been with Gregory Rose, or the shopkeeper’s son—men who knew her, men who understood that it was a pleasant little game and nothing more.
    Mardoun was another matter altogether. He was a stranger and, worse, an aristocrat. Accustomed as he was tobeing pampered, flattered, and pursued by eager women, he would doubtless assume she had been throwing out lures to him.
    Which she most assuredly had not . Meg Munro did not pursue any man—least of all someone like the Earl of Mardoun. Titles and wealth did not fill her eyes with stars. She had, she would admit, felt a quiver of attraction when she saw him. But that did not mean that she liked him. Anyone would feel a little jolt upon seeing so handsome a man.
    Meg thought of his eyes, dark and unknowable, like bottomless pools. She remembered the quirk of his mouth and the tiny scar just above his upper lip that made her imagine pressing her lips to it. The square set of his jaw and the jet-black hair. His voice, deep and rich, which had seemed to vibrate in her. She remembered the way he had looked at her and the way he had smiled.
    Glancing up, she saw her cottage at the end of the path in front of her, and she realized that she had been so deep in thought she had forgotten to check her beehive on her way back as she had intended. She let