Seducing a Scottish Bride Read Free

or simply a quick scratch
     behind the ears. Even Loch Duich lay silent, with nary a whisper of lapping water coming from the other side of the isle-girt
     castle’s stout walling.
    The water in the scrying bowl glimmered, its silvery surface beckoning, restoring Gelis’s faith as she knelt to peer into
     its depths.
    “See? There is nothing there,” Arabella announced, dropping down beside her. “No future husbands’ faces and not even a ripple
     from the wind,” she added, poking a finger into the bowl and stirring the surface.
    “No-o-o!” Gelis swatted at her sister’s hand. “We mustn’t touch the water!” she cried, horror washing over her. “Doing so
     will spoil the magic.”
    “There wasn’t any magic,” Arabella scoffed, drying her fingers on a fold of her skirts. “You saw yourself that the bowl showed
     nothing.”
    “It was glowing silver,” Gelis insisted, frustration beating through her. “ ’Twas the light of the full moon, caught there
     and waiting for us.”
    Arabella pushed to her feet. “The only thing waiting for us is the stitchery work Mother wishes us to do this morn.”
    “The embroidery she wishes
you
to help her with,” Gelis snipped, tipping the moon-infused water onto the cobbles. “I ply my needle with clumsier fingers
     than Mother, as well she knows.”
    “She will be expecting you all the same.”
    Gelis clutched the empty scrying bowl to her breast, holding fast as if it still shimmered with magic. The face of her one
     true love, a man she just knew would be as much a legend as her father.
    Bold, hot-eyed, and passionate.
    Arrogant and proud.
    And above all, he’d be hers and no one else’s.
    “Let us be gone,” Arabella prodded. “We mustn’t keep Mother waiting.”
    Gelis splayed her fingers across the bottom of the bowl. It felt warm to the touch. “You go. She won’t miss me. Nor would
     she want me ruining her pillow coverings,” she said, distracted. Faith, she could almost feel her gallant’s presence. A need
     and yearning that matched her own. “I’ll help her with some other task. Later.”
    Arabella narrowed her eyes on the bowl. “If you persist in meddling with such foolery, she will be very annoyed.”
    “Mother is never annoyed.” Gelis pinned the older girl’s back with a peeved stare as she left Gelis to stride purposefully
     across the cobbles, making for the keep and hours of stitching drudgery.
    “Nor will I be meddling in anything,” she added, blinking against the heat pricking her eyes when the bowl went cold and slipped
     from her fingers. “The magic is gone.”
    But the day was still bright, the light of the sun and the sweetness of the air too inviting for her to give in to the constriction
     in her throat. Across the loch, the wooded folds of Kintail’s great hills burned red with bracken, their fiery beauty quickening
     her pulse and soothing her.
    She loved those ancient hills with their immense stands of Caledonian pine, rolling moors, and dark, weathered rocks. Even
     if she wouldn’t venture that far, preferring to remain on Eilean Creag’s castle island, she could still slip through the postern
     gate and walk along the shore.
    And if her eyes misted with unshed tears, the wind off the loch would dry them. Not that she’d let any spill to begin with.
     O-o-oh, no. She was, after all, a MacKenzie, and would be until her last breath. No matter whom she married.
    And she
would
marry.
    Even if the notion put a sour taste in her father’s mouth.
    Swallowing against the persistent heat in her own throat, she glanced over her shoulder, assured that no one was watching,
     then let herself out the gate.
    It was colder on the lochside of the curtain walls, the wind stronger than she’d realized. Indeed, she’d gone but a few paces
     before the gusts tore her hair from its pins and whipped long, curling strands of it across her face. Wild, unruly strands
     as fiery red as the bracken dressing her beloved hills, and