Starry Knight Read Free

the passage beneath the Farne Islands. He shifted into many other animals as he made his way back to Duncansby, eager to return to the bosom of his family.
    What he found when at last he reached Castle Barrogill tore him in two. During the months he’d spent in the Thitherworld, two centuries had passed in the Hitherworld. Scotland was no longer free of English tyranny, his wife and son were dead and gone, and his castle and just about everything else in Caithness now belonged to Clan Sinclair, the sworn enemies of his ancestors.
    Taking refuge in the forest, Callum eased his grief by living as a wolf until the need to mate grew unbearable. Then, one day, he spied Deidre Sinclair, the eldest daughter of the new laird of Barrogill, in a meadow gathering herbs. Resuming his human form, he approached her, putting into play the plan he’d worked out to reclaim what he’d lost.
     

Chapter 1
     
    500 years later
    John o’Groats, Scotland
     
    “Have a look at your adoring fan over there,” Duncan said, leaning in. “I do believe she’s visually undressing you.”
    Callum looked up from the book he’d been signing— Political Astrology Through the Ages , his latest in a series on the subject. The fan in question stood by the refreshment table, clutching the book to her chest. Was she undressing him with her gaze? Och, nay. Judging by the heat of her stare, he was already stark naked in her mind’s eye.
    He’d seen her in the third row, giving him equally heated looks while he delivered his lecture. She seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t seem to place her. With a shameless ogle of his own, he traced the long, smooth contours of flesh and muscle beneath the posh black pantsuit she wore. She was tall and slender with an angular face and a wide, full mouth that stretched into an inviting smile as his gaze met hers with a palpable sizzle. Her eyes shimmered like rare Burmese sapphires. Holding her stare, he dispatched his psychic probes.
    Particles of her life presented themselves—odd bits of a puzzle whose pieces didn’t quite fit together. Smart parties and balls. Environmental protests. Political rallies. Charity affairs. A string of unwelcome suitors.
    Looking deeper, he found an older man whose ambitions mattered more than his family and a woman who cared only about her social standing.
    Her parents.
    Oh, aye. He could feel it, feel everything. She was the quintessential “poor little rich girl,” the black sheep of the blue bloods who’d been given everything money could buy while being deprived of the things she wanted most. Love, affection, and approval, mainly. Consequently, she’d erected barriers to protect herself.
    Not unlike himself.
    Pulling out of her psyche, he sought the pulse in her swanlike neck. The dark hunger awoke with a ferocious roar. His gaze dropped to her breasts, which were large and firm, despite the lack of a brassiere. Given his proclivities, he sincerely hoped she wasn’t disinclined toward undergarments.
    He put her in a satin corset and thigh-high stockings—the sort with seams up the back. A searing bolt of lust ripped through his pelvis. She definitely had the figure for risqué lingerie.
    Shifting in his chair to ease the tightness in his trousers, he turned to Duncan. “Who is she? Do you know?”
    “Only from the papers,” his friend replied. “She’s William Bentley’s daughter—a real rebel with a cause, from what I hear.”
    Callum remembered her now. Lady Vanessa, the one the papers called “Madam Butterfly” because she couldn’t be caught. She looked better in person than in those grainy newsprint photographs. Ten times better.
    Good enough to eat, one might say.
    Licking his lips, Callum shifted his focus to the woman directly in front of him. She was fiftyish, plump, and squat with curly dishwater hair.
    “What was the name again?”
    “Deirdre.”
    “That’s lovely.” He grinned through the qualm inflicted by the name. “I once had a wife