A Highlander for Christmas Read Free

beauty beamed.
    Leslie noted Finn’s grin deepening and guessed he’d enlisted Davina’s aid to help keep Leslie here. The thought of him hiring help made her kneecaps go soft. He might possess the same fairy magic as Davina when it came to stopping others’ hearts with their beauty and welcoming demeanor, but Leslie had stopped his. This divine man was hers. Finn loved her. Oh, he loved her! Thank God he did. It would save her years of misery living without him. For she loved him, as well.
    “That’s more than gracious of you, my lady. I would love to.”
    “Come, Leslie.” Her brother yanked her arm. “We’ve duty to see to.”
    He pulled her, gently but rather rudely, away from the others and in the direction of the Great Hall. She turned, unable to help herself, and smiled at Finn over her shoulder. She would meet him later and say yes to him if he asked her to marry him. She would remain here with him and live in one of the cottages that dotted Camlochlin’s great vale. She would wear thick woolen plaids in the winter and listen to him sing to her at night. She would grow heavy with his children and she would cherish no other but God over him.
    She entered the Great Hall, her smile remaining intact as her gaze spread over Camlochlin’s inhabitants. What fool wouldn’t want to remain here in the company of men who were built as solid as the mountains outside these doors, taken into the fold by the kind, gracious women whom they cherished? Sarah was staying here with her husband, George. Andrew’s wife, Margaret, wanted to stay, and even Elizabeth, Alan’s wife, seemed happier here. Leslie saw no reason she too couldn’t stay if she chose to. Let her brothers run. She wanted to lie in Finn’s arms at the end of each night, until the end of her life.
    Let trouble come. She wasn’t afraid to die. She’d grown up with death and the imminent possibility of it. She watched her father and hundreds of others die during Presbyterian field masses deemed treasonous by a Catholic king. She understood what it meant to grow up branded as the king’s enemy. She wasn’t afraid to live among the Catholic MacGregors now that England had a Protestant king.
    She’d never known what kind of life she wanted. From what she’d seen, husbands died or fled at the whims of other men. Either way, why would she want to marry just to await another tragedy? At least, that’s what she used to think before she came here. Before she met men whose glares could stop an army, but one look at their wives all but turned them to butter.
    Before she met… him .
    She watched Finn enter the Great Hall with Lady Davina on one arm and his aunt Maggie on the other. The great hearth and the many candle stands provided ample light in the Hall, but his own source of light…and heat illuminated him. Leslie felt it burn someplace deep in her heart when their gazes met across the crowded room. She smiled, grateful that he’d chosen her from among the other women who would have accepted anything he offered. She hadn’t revealed to him yet just how much of her heart she’d given him.
    Tonight she would tell him. She would let him kiss her and more, and she would show him. She couldn’t wait.
    “Ah, here’s Leslie now.” Andrew, her eldest brother, took her hand from Alan and drew her to him before turning back to his host. “Gratitude for your patience, MacGregor.”
    Leslie looked at the chief draped in fur rising from his seat at the head of the table nearest the hearth. Robert MacGregor would have appeared more dangerous without the four small children dangling from his shoulders and squealing with delight as he rose to his full height of…well, she didn’t know how to calculate the height of a man, but he was a big one.
    “Silence!” His voice boomed through the hall, reaching every nook and corner. When he had everyone’s ear, he covered Andrew’s shoulder with his palm. “Give attention to Andrew Harrison, who has something to