Mistress of the Storm Read Free

village outside the walls. Several times in the last months he’d noticed her leaving the keep just before dawn, and walking to the south beach.
    With nothing more than curiosity to keep his attention, Duncan would watch as she took off her clothes and flung herself into the water. Her practice was the same each time he’d watched—dipping twice under the surface of the water and scrubbing her skin as she did. Then she would plunge down and remain in the freezing waters until he thought she’d perished. He remembered several times when he began counting how long she stayed under the water, wondering if she would rise from it at all.
    Over the months he’d witnessed her behavior, the changes within him making any tension he felt as he counted out the seconds lessen until he’d watched in complete disinterest, no matter how much he knew he should be concerned.
    Watching the way she tilted her head, he was reminded of the way she looked up at the sun as she walked, sometimes struggling, out of the waves. In the earlier times he’d seen her, he’d thought she might be a selkie or water spirit. But, lately, he observed her actions from an emotional and physical distance—until she lowered her head and gazed at him through her lashes.
    That heat seared him again, letting him feel things he’d not felt in months. Was she a selkie risen from the sea or some otherworldly creature capable of giving him back all he’d lost? His moments of disinterested watchfulness were over, for his body and his soul knew she was more than she appeared, and his mind knew he must discover her secrets and their link to his own. Standing, his feet moved before he could think on what words to say or what he wanted. All he knew was that he wanted . . . her.
    Unable to understand or explain what was between them, Duncan stood in front of her, his gaze never wavering from hers. He did not stop when the entire crowd noticed and quieted. He continued even when she tore her gaze from his for the slightest moment, then met it again. He did not let the fact that every eye in the room fell on their encounter concern him at all.
    “Who are you?” he asked, unable to form his thoughts and the newly-returned needs into anything more complex.
    She looked away, turning her head and her eyes, and he followed the direction of her gaze. The man with whom she’d arrived frowned at her, then looked over at Duncan, assessing him before nodding to her.
    “I am called Isabel, my lord,” she said in a voice that sent chills through his numb body. She bowed her head as she spoke.
    “Isabel,” he whispered, savoring the sound and feel of it on his lips—something not possible just minutes ago.
    “Duncan?”
    Duncan acknowledged Lord Davin with a tilt of his head, but dared not look away from her. Fear had returned as well as sensation and he was afraid all of it would end if he turned from her. “Lord Davin?” he replied in the same manner.
    “Is aught amiss?” Davin asked. “Has she offended you in some way?”
    “Nay, my lord.” From the reactions of those in the room when she’d entered, offended was not the word Duncan would have used to describe her effect. In a moment of clarity, the whole of the situation became clear—her entry, her dress and sensual manner, her position away from others, her early morning departures from the keep, the gazes filled with lust that watched her every move, her habit of looking to the man for permission.
    She was a harlot and the man her whoremaster.
    “The lady intrigues me,” Duncan explained. The bold guffaws from those watching and listening confirmed it. She was no lady.
    Davin leaned in and explained under his breath. “She is only tolerated here because of her father’s worth to me. If she interests you, I will order him to send her to you. No coin need be exchanged for her.”
    The discovery that she made her way from man to man and bed to bed ought to have dampened his interest, but it did not. Harlot