The Fraser Bride Read Free

gently turned the body over. “Bloody hell, brother, ‘tis little wonder Agnes showed you no interest. You’re slow as a skewered turnip.”
    “What’s amiss?” Ramsay asked.
    Gilmour glanced up at his elder brother with a grin. “Either I am mistaken, and I never am, or …
he
is a
she.”
    Ramsay was afoot in a second, beside his brothers in an instant.
    “Nay. He’s—” Lachlan argued and swiped aside the plaid tam that covered the victim’s head. A tangle of flaxen curls tumbled across his brother’s arm. “A lassie!” he hissed.
    “Aye,” Gilmour said and ran his fingers gently across a smudged cheekbone. “And as bonny as the sunrise.”
    “A
lassie,”
Lachlan repeated.
    “With a warrior on her trail,” Gilmour said.
    “The warrior!” Lachlan rose slowly to his feet, shoulders bunched forward like an angry bull. “He did this to her.”
    “But why?” Gilmour rose beside him to peer into the woods.
    “And where is he now?”
    “Gone. And we’d best be, too.”
    “Aye.” Lachlan tightened his fists and gazed down at the unconscious form. “Fetch me mount, Mour, and hand her to me when I am astride.”
    “You?” Gilmour scoffed. “Were she a side of mutton, I would consider allowing you to take her home. But she’s a lassie, and I am undoubtedly the man for the job.”
    “You jest,” Lachlan said.
    “You mistook her for a lad, brother.”
    “Which has naught to do with me ability to carry her.”
    “What if you mistake her for a stone or a twig or a … an apple core and discard her along the way?”
    “You’ll be keeping your wayward hands to yourself, Gilmour, or by the saints, I’ll—”
    “Sweet Almighty!” Ramsay said, and pushing his brothers impatiently aside, lifted the girl into his arms, and strode for his horse.

Chapter Two
    “The warrior, was he a Munro?” Flanna asked.
    The brothers were closeted in the solar with their parents, the notorious laird and lady of Dun Ard.
    “I know not,” Lachlan answered. “We gave chase without delay.” Ramsay watched him pace across the woven carpet and onto rough timber. “But he eluded us.”
    “Eluded how?” ‘Twas their father who spoke, christened Roderic but generally called the Rogue by those who knew him well.
    Lachlan shrugged, giving a single lift to his heavy shoulders. He had inherited their grandfather’s bulk, while Ramsay had inherited … what? His mother’s cautious skepticism, perhaps. He glanced at her and almost smiled. She was known as the Flame of the MacGowans—and the only woman able to keep the Rogue on a leash.
    “I know not,” Lachlan was saying. “One moment he was there, and the next …” He blew out a sharp exhalation. “Gone.”
    “Gone?” said the laird and lady in unison.
    “I know you think our Lachlan has lost his wits,” Gilmour said, one hip cocked against a tall leather trunk. “And in the light of the news that he could not tell that yonder sleeping beauty was a lassie, well …” He shook his head, candlelight shining off his wheat toned hair. “I can understand your feelings, but truly the warrior did seem to vanish into—”
    “Were it not for me, you would never have left Dun Ard at the outset and the lassie would still be lying out there alone and unsheltered,” Lachlan said.
    “And were it not for me, you would be calling her Angus and challenging her to a wrestling—”
    “We’d best learn where she belongs soon,” Flanna interrupted. “Before ‘tis too late.”
    The room went silent with her unsaid words.
    “She’ll come to,” Lachlan said. “Surely she will.”
    “I pray you are right,” Flanna said. “But until then, we would be well advised to inform her clansmen of her whereabouts.”
    “How do we find her kin?”
    “Surely someone has missed her,” Roderic said. “She is a bonny lass, and …” His words faded to a halt as he glanced toward the Flame. “So I am told.”
    His bride of near thirty years raised a single brow at him.