Return of the Highlander Read Free Page A

here, and she’s the only one who can answer.”
    Logan’s eyes lifted and grew dark with unease. “There may be others.”
    “Aye.” Darach considered that. Then he stood up and looked around. All was quiet.
    He surveyed the grade of the slope. “She can’t weigh much. I’ll carry her up over my shoulder. You go ahead and gather as many weapons as you can from the dead. Check the saddle bags and pockets of every horse and soldier. We need information.”
    Logan nodded and climbed back up to the road while Darach gazed down at the unconscious beauty at his feet.
    She had spirit, to be sure, but who was she? And what part had she played in the ambush?
    Wasting no more time thinking about the hows and whys, he squatted down, slipped his hands beneath her small, fragile frame, and hoisted her up over his shoulder like a loose sack of grain.
    A short while later he was grunting and sweating, nearly to the top of the woody slope, when Logan appeared above him. “Maybe I ought to wait for you to reach the top before I tell you this,” he said.
    Darach wrapped a hand around the trunk of a small tree and paused a moment to catch his breath. He hugged the lassie’s lush little bottom against his cheek. “Spit it out, Logan.”
    His brother hesitated. “The woman you’re hauling up the hill is a Campbell.”
    A Campbell?
    Darach froze, then shifted her awkwardly on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me she’s from Leathan Castle.”
    Logan made a face. “Sorry brother. Looks like that’s where they were headed. But it gets worse.”
    “How?” Darach asked, still pausing at the crest of the rise.
    “She’s the chief’s daughter.”
    Every muscle in Darach’s body strained hotly under the added weight of the woman draped over his shoulder, and he couldn’t help but wonder about the dream he’d had that morning. Maybe it had been a premonition after all…
    But Lord in heaven, he didn’t want anything to do with what that implied.
    “She’s the daughter of Fitzroy Campbell?”
    Darach felt a stab of disillusionment as he recalled how he’d been struck dumb by her beauty moments ago and aroused by her fighting spirit when she rose up to brain him with the stone. Then she’d fought valiantly against his hold, bucking and wiggling beneath him. He was twice her size and possessed at least three times her strength, yet she had been fearless and undaunted.
    A small shudder traveled down his spine, for she was a Campbell.
    Worse…she was Fitzroy’s daughter.
    Young and tantalizingly pleasing to the eye.
    Ach…Bloody hell.
    Glancing over his shoulder at the creek bottom below, Darach wondered if he and Logan would be better off if he simply dropped her and never mentioned a thing about this to anyone.

Chapter Five

    Many hours later, Larena woke from a murky pool of darkness to the sensation of a cool cloth dabbing at her forehead. Her head pounded mercilessly, ringing like a heavy mallet on an iron anvil. Confusion flooded her mind, and she had no notion of where she was or even what day it might be.
    She fought to lift her heavy eyelids. It took immense effort for them to respond. At last they fluttered open, and she found herself gazing up at a man.
    He was a Scot, dressed in tartan, with compassionate green eyes and long, golden hair tied back with a leather cord.
    Larena tried to speak, to ask where she was, but she couldn’t seem to form words. Everything seemed hazy in her mind, as if her brain were full of cotton.
    “There, now.” The Scot spoke softly in the flickering glow of the candlelight. “You’ll be all right now, lass.”
    But where am I ?
    The Highlander dipped the cloth into a porcelain basin by the bed and squeezed it out. She listened feebly to the sound of water dripping out of it. Then he gently stroked her cheek and dabbed at her parched, cracked lips. Larena continued to blink up at him, helpless and perplexed.
    A loud clang of metal jolted her into a sharper state of awareness, and the