Seduced by the Highlander Read Online Free PDF Page B

I?”
    She regarded him with uncertainty.
    Lachlan stopped struggling and worked the situation through in his mind. There had to be a way out of this.
    “When you first kissed me in the stone circle,” Raonaid said, “I thought we were old lovers.”
    He turned his head to look at her, and scoffed. “Hardly.”
    “Then why did you kiss me like that?”
    He fumbled for an explanation when he didn’t even understand it himself. “I was desperate. I would have done anything to make you lift the curse.”
    “And you thought that I would be so overcome by lust for you that I would simply swoon, and beg you to take me?”
    He shrugged, for that was usually the effect he had on women. Or it used to be, at any rate.
    “Aye.”
    “Well, you were off to a very good start, Highlander, until I asked your name.”
    Lachlan darted a surprised look at her, just as the earl returned to the tack room.
    “Whisky’s on the way,” Drumloch said. “And the magistrate should be here at any moment.”
    “Wonderful.” Lachlan winced at the pain in his shoulder, which he had forgotten about while the earl was gone.
    “You still haven’t told us your name, savage.”
    Lachlan gritted his teeth. “No, I haven’t, and I’m not telling you anything.”
    “The magistrate will wish to know it. He might even ask you to spell it, in which case you might have a problem. Can you even read? Ever seen a pen before?”
    Lachlan gazed up at the rafters. “It’ll be the magistrate’s problem, not mine, because he’ll have to beat the information out of me—and if it comes to that, someone might get hurt.”
    A footman entered the tack room just then with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. The earl swiped the bottle off the silver tray, uncorked it, tipped it back, and took a swig.
    Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “This isn’t my finest, but I could hardly waste the good stuff on the likes of you.”
    Raonaid strode forward. “Hand me the bottle, John.” She took it from him and poured a drink. “Can you lift your head?” she asked Lachlan.
    He shot her a frosty look. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you untied me?”
    “I don’t think that would be wise.”
    “Certainly not!” Drumloch agreed.
    She ignored her cousin. Cupping the back of Lachlan’s head, she held the glass to his lips. He gulped it down in one swallow. She poured another, and he gulped that down, too. Then a third. With any luck, it would dull his senses enough to forget what had happened between him and Raonaid in the stone circle.
    “You certainly can drink, Highlander,” she said with a hint of amusement as she stepped away from him.
    “So can you, Catherine. ” He spoke her name with sardonic bite.
    “Is that a fact?”
    “Aye.”
    Without the slightest hesitation, she tipped the bottle back and guzzled.
    Lachlan grinned with satisfaction. Now there was the Raonaid he knew—wild and uninhibited, exposing herself at last.
    “Catherine, what in God’s name are you doing?” The earl stalked forward and snatched the bottle out of her hands. “Don’t let him manipulate you! He just wants to undermine your good judgment!”
    She choked and rasped on the potent spirit, and sucked in a few tight breaths. “He says I know how to drink. I want to see if it’s true.”
    “Nothing he says is true,” the earl argued. “He cannot be trusted.”
    “How do you know?”
    Drumloch lowered his voice. “Because he called you a witch.”
    A horse whinnied somewhere nearby.
    Raonaid was silent for a moment. “How do you know I’m not?”
    The earl had no answer. He merely stared at her in bemused silence.
    Lachlan rather enjoyed watching them quarrel. Again, it was a hint of the old Raonaid coming out of her snake hole, and the earl seemed quite taken aback.
    “Because you are Lady Catherine Montgomery!” he finally replied.
    “Indeed!” she shouted. “A woman who has been missing for five years, and has returned as a ruined lunatic