Laird of the Mist Read Free Page B

who were exiting her home.
    “Argyll isna inside,” one of them called out. “We found only a few servants, nae old men among them.”
    “They must be there.” Kate fought the MacGregor’s hold on her and then swooned as red-hot agony tore through her arm.
    “Yer brew,” the chieftain commanded to another one of his men, and then caught something in his hand. “Drink this.” He held the nozzle of a small hide skin sack to her lips. “It’ll dull the pain.”
    She glared at him with tears misting her eyes. “Did you kill Amish and John?”
    He stared at her, unaffected by her sorrow. “I dinna kill old men. They are no’ here. Now drink the brew.” The intensity of his piercing gaze compelled her to obey.
    She covered his hand with hers and took a long guzzle. Then she began to choke. Mother Mary! She had never tasted anything so foul! It was like drinking liquid fire. Her skin tinged green, and she shivered so violently her teeth rattled. She brought her hand to her mouth to stop herself from crying out . . . or from throwing up.
    “It’ll pass.” Her captor moved slightly away and commanded her to look at him. When she did, his eyes fastened onto hers, and something in their ardent depths told her he did not expect to see weakness in her. She inhaled deeply. He would not find it.
    “It’s poison,” she finally coughed.
    “’Tis only whiskey.” A smile lurked at the edges of his mouth, but that was the only evidence of softness in his striking features. An instant later, even that was gone. “Where is yer uncle?”
    “For the last time, I don’t know.” Kate closed her eyes to stop herself from weeping all over her enemy. Amish and John had been like foster fathers to her and Robert. Dear God, where were they? Where was her uncle? “He was here earlier. We were to leave for Inverary tomorrow. He must have fled when he saw the McColls.”
    “True to his cowardly Campbell nature.”
    Kate looked up at him. Cowardly was killing old men, or slicing open her father’s spine as one of this vermin’s kin had done. “Take your filthy hands off me, MacGregor.”
    For a terrifying moment, Kate thought she might be looking at the Devil MacGregor himself. For his eyes were the color of fire: blue-gold embers that singed her flesh as they regarded her beneath the sable fringe of his lashes. Then his mouth crooked into a ruthless smirk as he opened his arms and released her.
    Kate grasped his forearm to keep herself from slipping from his lap and crashing to the ground. She gritted her teeth as a fresh assault of withering pain ripped through her. “Damnation,” she swore, narrowing her eyes on him through a haze of tears. “You bastard.”
    Her insult earned her a look of cool indifference. “Though ye look like ye could use some coddlin’, I dinna have the heart fer it.”
    “I expected no less from a MacGregor,” she countered, then stiffened and grimaced when his arm snapped around her again.
    The pain was beginning to dull, along with her senses. Dear God, she’d never been wounded so. Damn the McColls. Raiding her cattle was one thing. Trying to kill her was another. They had never done the like before. But today, because her uncle’s guardsmen had joined in the melee, the McColls had fought to kill. When two of the Highlanders swung at her, she’d had no choice but to unsheathe her blade and fight back. After over a quarter of an hour, her strength had been drained and she knew she could not hold them off much longer. She’d thought she was going to die. Though she had spent many years learning to wield a sword, no straw opponent could have prepared her for true fighting. She had been frightened many times in her life—three years ago, when the crop had failed and she’d thought her small family was going to starve. When her nursemaid Helen grew ill with the fever and did not recover. And after that, when Robert left and the wind howled and battered against her door at night, like a