The Legend Mackinnon Read Online Free PDF

honor.”
    “It’s about pride, you mean. And stupid male ego. Could she have refused you and not run away? Could someone else have taken her place? I know that arranged marriages were common back in your time, but certainly it’s understandable even to you that a woman might choose to marry for love. What difference did it make which Claren woman you married? Certainly there had to be at least one who—” She paused. His expression turned murderous. “Oh, is that it?
No one
would have you?”
    “
She
was the chosen one!” He clenched the poker next to his thigh, when she knew he’d wanted to swing it. “She should have done what she was born to do. Her da was Laird. Her duty was to him, and to her clan.” He stepped closer. “And as my betrothed, to me.”
    Maggie crossed the room. “She didn’t love you. She didn’t want you. Committing herself to a lifetime with you would have been a lie and she knew it. What good is that? You would build your truce on a lie? On a false union between two people who hated each other? How could you build a harmonious future for your people on a platform of anger and hatred and lies? Just because you two marry doesn’t mean your people will stop hating her people. You’re a hypocrite if you think otherwise and so was her
da.
”
    Maggie tossed up her hands and turned away from him, not sure why she was so angry on behalf of an ancient ancestor, but it felt good to vent over someone’s injustice. Especially good since she couldn’t rail over her own. She whirled and poked a finger in the air. “You know what I think? I think she was courageous to do what she did. It took guts to walk away from a bunch of strutting men who could find no better way to solve an argument than to bind some innocent woman into unholy matrimony with the enemy. That’s what I think.”
    Only when Maggie was done with her tirade did she question the intelligence of giving into it in the first place.Duncan looked as if he was going to pop several main arteries, some of them hers. His face was a very unhealthy dark red, and his chest was heaving as if there suddenly wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to fill the massive thing.
    She wondered where she’d put her pepper spray and if it worked on ghosts. She took a step backward, trying to appear humble and harmless. “But then, what’s my opinion worth anyway?” she said, smiling weakly. “I’m one of those headstrong nineties women and you know what a pain in the ass we can be.” Her attempt at a chuckle sounded more like a death wheeze.
    Duncan stared at her a moment longer, then suddenly swung the poker high over his head. He might be dead, but that poker was terrifyingly real. Maggie skirted the table and ran for the door. A war cry filled the air and rattled the walls. Her heart pounded its way up into her throat and her stomach wrenched violently. The floor began to shake with his thundering footsteps and the damn door wouldn’t unstick!
    Well, if she was really meant to die, she was not going with a poker in her back. If the bastard was going to kill her, he was going to have to look her in the eyes and do it. She whirled and plastered herself to the door, eyes wide in terror as he bore down on her, iron rod raised above his head like a lance.
    Duncan clearly hadn’t expected the turnabout and could not pull up his charge in time. At the last second Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. So, maybe she was a teensy bit of a coward. But at least she hadn’t run. There had to be some honor in that.
    There was a bone-shaking crash as the poker buried itself into the old oak door a foot above her head. She only had a second to savor the sweet relief that it wasn’t buried in her as she braced herself for the slamming weight of his body. There was a rush of cold air; then nothing.
    Maggie squinted one eye open. He was gone.
    Adrenaline, fear, and a second near death experience combined to make her temper rise. She yanked the door open so hard it