The Reluctant Highland Groom Read Online Free PDF Page B

rather than just let ye go. I see now I should have...”
     
    Cara opened one eye and smiled faintly at him.
     
    “ Live, and find yer vengeance,” he said. “For me, if not for Connor. He would not like to see ye this way, and ye know it.”
     
    “ I do know it,” she said softly. “I just...he’s gone ...and he was so angry at me.”
     
    “ Listen to me, lass. I know a bit of brothers, and I know he’d not hold this against ye. He knew who ye were, as I know who my brothers are. A spat between us would never make me love them any less, and I know Connor felt the same way for you.”
     
    He smoothed back her hair, still dismayed by her heated skin. “Rest now, lass. Rest now and sleep, and live to irk me another day.”
     
    Before she fell back asleep, she wrapped a small hand around Alec’s wrist and held tight. Damn, but the lass was beautiful when she slept. The worry temporarily gone from her face, the ease of her breath. Alec resolved in that second to do everything he could to return Cara McHugh to the spirited, strong woman she was before the Gunns’ betrayal.
     
    ***
     
    A sennight later, Sabrina suggested Cara was well enough to take short walks around the keep, and Alec was the first to volunteer.
     
    He could see she loathed having to lean on him, so he permitted her to walk unaided, reaching out a hand only when she had to stop to gather her strength. Cara seemed to appreciate that, sending him a wary smile every so often.
     
    She paused in a particular hallway, but instead chose to lean against the wall, not him. Once Alec assured himself that she was standing upright under her own power, he leaned on the wall opposite her.
     
    She smiled at him. “Do you recall the carnival that came through your family’s lands?”
     
    “ The gypsies? Aye, that I do. Da granted them safe passage and let them rest in the forest every few years.”
     
    “ My parents brought us once, years ago. I don’t think you were about…off rescuing Logan from river thugs, or something like that.”
     
    Alec grinned at the memory. “Poor lad was never quite the same.”
     
    “ I have good memories of that carnival. Mother took me to the fortune teller, and there was a man with a pet monkey, and people from far-off lands…” Cara leaned her head back against the wall. “I told myself one day I’d visit those places.”
     
    Alec held his tongue. He was relatively sure the places in question were from the old gypsy’s imagination, not any map he’d ever seen.
     
    But Cara went on: “When I grew old enough to learn about maps and read, I realized he must have told those stories to a thousand people who would never travel, who would never know he spun them from pure fantasy. But I always hoped at least some of them existed, or once had. That they weren’t entirely untruths.”
     
    “ Why?” he asked, puzzled. “If they entertained you, they did their duty, did they not?”
     
    “ Aye…but it would have meant more, I think, if I could have seen those places one day. I always wanted to travel.” She shrugged, then winced, as if the gesture hurt. “Forgive me, Alec, I fear the fever is still talking.”
     
    “ There is nothing to forgive.”
     
    “ I suppose I won’t be traveling overly much now, will I? I must return home to my lands, tend to those who need tending…” she swallowed hard, and Connor watched the movement of her throat. “I am the McHugh now.”
     
    For all his growing fondness for Cara, Alec could not help but scoff inwardly at that proclamation. “Nonsense, lass,” he said. “A lass cannot be the leader of a clan.”
     
    “ And why not?”
     
    “ Because it’s not done that way.”
     
    “ But why not?” she pressed. “I admit, I’m not as well-learned in the ways of leading people as Connor was, but he learned, and so can I. Why can I not lead them as he did?”
     
    She’d been so reasonable only moments earlier as they reminisced about the carnival. Why,