The MacKinnon's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

to
simply sit within the solar and sew like other ladies?
    Why couldn’t she be what her father wished
of her?
    Then again, she reflected somewhat bitterly,
the answer to that question might better be known if only she knew
what her father wished of her.
    The truth was that Page couldn’t please
him—never had been able to please him. And what was worse, she
wasn’t certain she wished to try anymore.
    She might not have to after tonight.
    The thought sent a shudder through her.
    What would they do to her once they
discovered her father didn’t want her? The truth was that her
father would no more give up the boy than he would spit in the
king’s eye—not for her, he wouldn’t.
    Well, she told herself, she didn’t care.
    She truly didn’t.
    But her eyes stung with hot, angry
tears.
    Well, she’d soon enough discover what they
would do … if she didn’t manage an escape … so she set her wiles to
that end. Trying not to deliberate on the dire possibilities should
she fail, she regarded her captors.
    To her dismay, the original four had not
come alone as she’d first suspected. Worse, she couldn’t precisely
make out how many there were, for their limbs and bodies merged
together in the darkness—like cadavers huddled together in a common
grave.
    There were a lot of them, she surmised.
    They’d dragged her shrieking like a fishwife
into their camp, and the lascivious looks she’d gotten from the lot
of them had made her resolve never to look at a man full in the
face again.
    Overweening boors!
    The MacKinnon in particular!
    She shuddered, remembering the way he’d
looked at her, the knowing look in his eyes.
    Unreasonably, she found herself wondering
what color his eyes were. Blue? Green? She hadn’t been able to make
them out in the darkness, but she was certain they wouldn’t be so
common as hers. Alas, but there was naught ordinary about the
infuriating man.
    He had yet to return.
    Not that she cared one
whit whether she ever saw his too comely face again, she assured
herself, but—well, damnation, mayhap she did, and frowned at the
admission, her brow furrowing as she contemplated that fact. ’ Twas only natural, she reasoned, that she
wouldn’t wish to be left alone with these men of his. She didn’t
trust them.
    But had she anymore cause to trust the
MacKinnon? a little voice nagged.
    It wasn’t precisely that she trusted him.
Just that she didn’t mistrust him quite so much—although why she
should feel even thus toward him, she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
He was likely no better than the rest.
    Soon after she’d been bound to the tree, he
and the one called Lagan had departed camp. She imagined they were
scouting Balfour’s defenses as a precaution.
    Good for them, because her father was going
to tell them to go to Hell, she was aggrieved to admit. It mattered
not what she’d said, or what she secretly hoped, she wouldn’t
delude herself into thinking otherwise. They were stuck with her,
didn’t they know.
    If she didn’t freeze to death first.
    Or if she didn’t manage to escape.
    She heard their voices long before she spied
them and her stomach lurched as they came from the woods. The
MacKinnon and the one called Lagan—the boor who had shoved the
despicable rag into her mouth. They stood whispering beside the
fire. Something else she could thank them for—setting her so far
from the fire’s heat, as wet as she was, and leaving her to freeze
in the chill night air! Thoughtless, infuriating barbaric
wretches!
    The firelight flickered between them,
casting its copper tint against their bodies and faces, distorting
their images. Caught between the eerie glow of the flame and the
obscurity of shadow, the MacKinnon cut a daunting figure, to be
sure. Dressed in a black woolen tunic and cloaked in his belted
breacan, he stood at least six inches taller than her father in his
thick leather-lined boots. In a leonine display of masculinity, his
dark wavy mane was unbound and fell below