Sarah Gabriel Read Online Free PDF

further. “This is not necessary!”
    “I cannot risk you running off over the hills at night. You might get lost or be injured.”
    “Oh, and you will not injure me, I suppose.”
    “I will not.” His answer was calm, even soothing.
    She could hate him for that mellow voice alone, she thought.
    That deep, true-pitched tone belonged to a king or a bard. It was too good for a rogue like him.
    “Come ahead. We’ve a distance to go yet.”
    “Where are you taking me?”
    He gave the rope a tug and stepped away. Sophie had no choice but to follow or fall to her knees. She stumbled along, glaring at his back. The leash was less than a yard long, but as she moved with him, mist drifted between her and the outlaw.
    “My kinsmen will find me,” she said, “if you have not murdered them all.”
    “I do not do murder,” he snapped.
    “You steal women and drown men. You betray your friends.”
    “I never,” he growled, “betray friends.”
    She was too angry herself to care. “You will have no chance to betray anyone else. Allan!” she calledimpulsively. “Donald! Help me—I’m up here!” Her words rang out.
    The Highlander spun, pressed his hand over her mouth and snatched her close. His comrade hurried toward them, speaking rapid Gaelic. Her captor snapped out an answer, then drew from his sporran the damp cloth that he had earlier used to comfort her. Now he gagged her mouth with it, tying the ends at the back of her head.
    Sophie glared at him in outrage.
    He inclined his head and turned away, holding fast to the rope looped around her wrist.
    The other Highlander, a sinewy older man with a shock of iron-gray hair and scruffy beard to match, spoke sharply, clearly disapproving of the rope. Her own Highlander—she thought of him that way now—snapped a reply that quelled all protest. The men murmured in Gaelic, while Sophie strained to listen.
    She had learned Gaelic in childhood from relatives and servants in the family household at Duncrieff Castle, but she had heard it infrequently during her years on the Continent after her father’s exile from Scotland. Now she could grasp only some of their words, unable to follow their pace, but she was certain that they mentioned a priest once again.
    A cold frisson of alarm slipped through her. Priests and mass were sometimes hidden even in the Highlands, where there was tolerance for the small proportion of Catholics like her own family. A pack of brigands, were they of the Roman faith, would not plan to confess their sins or attend mass in the middle of the night.
    The Highlander meant to marry her that night—or else intended to deliver her to another man who schemed to become her husband. Had Sir Henry Campbell ordered this? Her heart quickened with dread.
    At Kinnoull House earlier she had been so concerned for her brother’s welfare that she dared not reveal how much she hated the idea of marrying Sir Henry, but he might easily have deduced it from her avoidance of his advances. Her clan needed the local magistrate’s cooperation to help their chief, who had been arrested two weeks earlier on charges that remained vague. Espionage, Sir Henry had hinted. Although in her heart Sophie did not doubt it, she kept her suspicions and fears to herself.
    Perhaps the magistrate had sensed her reluctance—and her repulsion—toward the idea of being his wife, and decided to force the marriage on his own terms.
    “Please,” she gasped around the gag. “No priest!”
    The Highlanders stopped to stare at her. Her captor reached out to loosen her gag for a moment. “What?”
    “No priest!” she repeated.
    “You have more Gaelic than I thought,” he said.
    “Then be careful what you say,” she snapped.
    He pulled the gag up again and continued to speak with the other man, their discussion so fast that Sophie could follow only words and phrases here and there.
    She thought again of the magistrate’s cold, fishy hand on hers, of his tight smile and gimlet eyes.