The Tempted Read Online Free PDF Page B

her skin, making her catch her breath at the contact. When the water reached her hips, she dove under, remaining beneath until her lungs began to burn.
    When she surfaced, she played in the water for a bit, trying to relax after the day before. It wasn’t just her injuries or the fall, it was the fact she had been on Sinclair land for a long time. As far as she knew, none of the MacKays had seen her, but she also didn’t want to go into the village and find out if she was wrong.
    Morvan gathered sand from the bottom of the loch and began to wash. She was so out of sorts that she’d forgotten her soap at the cottage. When she finished, she walked to the shore and wrung out her hair.
    It wasn’t until she was walking back to her clothes that she had the suspicion someone was watching her, which was ridiculous. No one would want to spy on her.
    She used the blanket to dry off and then hurriedly dressed. Only then did she look around, but she could find no indication that anyone was there.
    “I’m just rattled,” she murmured.
    That had to be the excuse. After the man had come out of nowhere on top of the cliff and she’d fallen, she hadn’t been the same. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It had begun yesterday morning. She still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but everything about the day before had been a little off.
    Morvan gathered the blanket and made her way back to the cottage. She needed to mix some herbs to help with the pain of her ribs, not to mention a poultice to deal with the ugly bruising.
    Once inside, she made the tea and added some herbs for the pain. While she drank the mixture, she combed out her hair, which proved difficult with her ribs. When the tangles were all out, she left her hair free and ventured back into the woods to look for the herbs she would need for the poultice.
    If she had been thinking clearly yesterday after she’d helped the buck, she would have gathered them then. She’d used her last bit on the blacksmith’s horse two days earlier when it had come up with a lame leg.
    Morvan brought some oatcakes with her since she was still hungry from missing two meals the day before. She wasn’t twenty steps from her cottage when she found a hare caught in a trap.
    She looked around because she hadn’t set the trap. Someone else had. Someone else who had been close to her cottage. Morvan bent and touched the frightened hare. The animal instantly stopped fighting and stayed calm as she removed the vine from its hind leg.
    “Off you go,” she said and watched it hop away.
    It wasn’t that she minded someone hunting. Everyone had to eat. What disturbed her was that it had been done so close to her cottage, and she hadn’t even known about it.
    Out of the corner of her eye, Morvan saw movement. She jerked around, but there was nothing but a fern leaf swaying.   Before she could react to whatever was out there, she heard a group of men stomping through the forest. The fact that the sound was coming from the direction of her laird’s castle meant that her clan was probably marching off to war.
    Morvan quickly hid behind a large oak and plastered her back to the bark. The men were getting closer. They were talking in low tones, but the mood was dark and dangerous. She didn’t want them finding her because her clan or not, she wasn’t exactly welcome.
    Men on their way to battle were likely to do all sorts of things to a woman alone. If everything she knew about her clan were true, then it was only the roughest, meanest warriors who remained.
    Suddenly, there was a shout from one of the men. Everything went silent for a heartbeat, and then chaos erupted. There was no clang of swords, yet there was no denying the sounds of battle. The shouts of pain, the bellows of outrage, and the grunts of the dying could clearly be heard.
    Had the Sinclairs ambushed her clan?
    Morvan glanced around the tree and saw her clan. And one man attacking them. She gaped in astonishment that one man