The Highlander's Dark Seduction (Secrets of the Darroch Clan) Read Free

auntie’s party probably would have left her to her own devices in that clearing and fled with the carriage horses. The man was pleasing enough to look upon though. Strong features gave his face a rough-hewn appearance with prominent cheekbones and a chiseled jaw. Dark slashes of eyebrows did nothing to soften his expression. Elizabeth felt a pinch of guilt for noting his looks given how much she resented being judged by her own.
    “Well, you have my thanks. And my apologies for the scuffle I caused.” Remembering it, she peered down at her skirts and noticed the tear up one side. Thankfully, an inner layer of her petticoat remained intact beneath her traveling gown. “I’m Elizabeth Harrison, by the way. And I’m still confused about how you know my friend Lily or how you knew to look for me here.”
    She had no idea where “here” was.
    “I’m Magnus Darroch.” He nodded in a way that was just a slight incline of his head. Yet the way he held himself, the straight spine and chin tilted up, made it look like a courtly bow of a bygone era. “And your friend wed my brother a fortnight ago.” He waved her closer. “Can you ride astride in that…er… garb?”
    He studied her dress as if it was a great mystery. In the meantime, she hadn’t heard anything past “your friend wed.”
    “It cannot be.” She shook her head, unable to digest the words. Lillian’s parents were still in New York.
    “Very well.” He nodded. “You can ride in front of me.”
    Once more his broad hands clamped around her waist and he lifted her high onto the back of the monstrous horse.
    She made a small, undignified shriek, but the horse did not even twitch as she landed sideways on the beast’s back. In a trice, Magnus Darroch flung himself beside her without the help of a stirrup or even—goodness—a saddle.
    “We will fall off,” she protested, grabbing a fistful of mane in one hand before the man—Magnus—scooped her up and dropped her across his hard thighs as easily as he might handle a sack of grain. “Oh!”
    “I’ve been riding horses for even longer than I have been dodging
sidhe
,” he proclaimed, wrapping an arm around her waist and clamping her tight to his chest. “There is nae a chance you will fall on my watch.”
    He had no saddle, but he held reins in his hand—a simple bridle around the horse’s head that didn’t seem nearly enough to keep the animal in check, but with the slightest encouragement from Magnus Darroch, the powerful beast responded to a simple nudge of the rider’s knee. A nudge Elizabeth felt all too well since she was seated on his
lap
.
    Heaven help her, the night had been thoroughly shocking from the moment she’d opened her eyes. She had no business making the trip to Invergale while wrapped in a foreign warrior’s arms. She’d be ruined. Fodder for scandal. Completely…
    Unmarriageable?
    The idea suddenly took on a certain appeal, especially since it would discourage the destitute earl she’d refused and others of his shallow ilk….
    But then she came to her senses. She must be even more distressed and out of sorts than she’d realized to entertain such a notion. Her first priority right now should be figuring out what on earth was happening. Had Lily been drawn into the same strangeness that Elizabeth felt right now?
    “I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Her hand rested on the warrior’s forearm that went around her waist. She stared at it, hardly recognizing it as her own. His flesh was so warm. The muscle beneath impossibly strong. Magnus Darroch seemed to be the only stable, solid thing in a world suddenly off-kilter. “I don’t even understand where we are. What was that place?”
    She’d heard the Highlands were remote and forbidding, but nothing had prepared her for what she’d seen tonight. Nothing had prepared her for Magnus Darroch, either. His plaid smelled of pine needles, his skin of musky male. Her body was pressed to his with an intimacy