Stolen Vows Read Online Free PDF Page A

avoided looking at Ian’s face after she said this, but was able to imagine his guilty expression.  For the first time in his life, he didn’t seem to know what to do. 
     
    “Isla, what are ye saying?” he asked gently.
     
    “For God’s Sake, Ian, dinna make her say it!” James barked at his older brother.  “He must have done it this afternoon when he found Isla out by the roadside, and gone back for seconds this evening.  We were lucky Tavish caught him!”
     
    Isla decided to play along with the story.  She offered a small nod. For once she was grateful for the rash nature of her younger sibling.  She didn’t know how she would have answered Ian’s question on her own.  She wasn’t even sure where her own lie had sprung from!  But she knew that she couldn’t let Roan die, and that she would do anything to escape from Tavish. The shadow of a very dangerous plan began to take form in her mind.
     
    “I kenned Uncle Douglas should have let us finish him off then and there!” James raged.
     
    “Nae!” Isla cried again.  Weren’t they listening to her? “I dinna want him dead!”
     
    “Nae?” James blinked in shock.
     
    “What do ye want, Isla?” Ian asked, much more in control of himself than their brother.
     
    “I want -” she took a very deep breath.  “I want to marry him.”
     
    Isla didn’t think that anything else she could have said would have produced such a completely stunned reaction from her two brothers.  They positively gaped at her.
     
    “Yer nae serious?” Ian finally mustered the self-composure to speak.
     
    “Of course she’s nae serious!” James answered for her.  “She’s clearly taken a knock to the head.”  He pointed to her bruises.  “See, obviously nae in her right state of mind.”
     
    Isla glared at James, and waved his hand away.  “I’m completely serious,” she argued.  “I want to marry Roan MacRae!”
     
    ..ooOOoo..
     
    Roan groaned and rubbed his head, squinting in the dim light of the Cameron dungeon.  It was almost pitch black and both of his eyes were so bloody and swollen that he could barely force them open.  He wondered why he was still alive.  He knew the Cameron’s didn’t mean to let him live.  He just wondered how long they would draw out his torture.
     
    You’re innocent you fool! A voice whispered in his head.  Roan didn’t know whether to nurse that flicker of hope or to extinguish it.  He’d thought that Isla would have explained things long ago.  He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but he suspected that it was almost dawn. What had happened? Had she held her tongue? Did they not believe her?  Of course, the Camerons had never really needed a reason to kill a MacRae.
     
    The echo of footsteps in the hall was Roan’s first clue that something was about to change.  The footsteps were followed by low voices and then the groan of a lock and whine of hinges as his cell door was opened.  He winced as the light hit him. He squinted up from his position on the floor and made out the form of Ian Cameron, Isla’s brother.  Was that good or bad , Roan wondered?
     
    If the expression on Ian’s face was anything to judge by, it was definitely bad.
     
    “Isla told me what ye did.”
     
    “Thank God,” Roan sagged with relief.
     
    Ian shot him a strange look and then continued.  “She’s also begged us to spare yer life.”
     
    “All right,” Roan said slowly.  Something about this wasn’t quite right.  If Isla had told her brothers how he’d saved her then why was his life still in danger?
     
    “We took some convincing I can assure ye,” Ian growled.  “And if ye lay so much as a finger on her again I’ll -”
     
    “What do ye mean, ‘ again’ ?” Roan interrupted, his blood suddenly turning to ice his veins.  His thoughts turned slowly in his head.  “What exactly did she say, Cameron?” he asked, but Ian simply scowled, so furiously that Roan braced his broken