The Wicked Ways of Alexander Kidd (The MacGregors: Highland Heirs) Read Free Page A

the solar and out of the manor house. She would figure something out, think of a way to convince them that she would be safe away from Skye. She had to, or she would go mad.
    Sometime later, she stood on the rocky shore of Loch nan Leachd and set her gaze over the water toward Loch Scavaig in the distance. Beneath the late setting sun her eyes matched the tumultuous blue depths swelling and breaking before her. The song of the waves crashing against sheer walls of rock played like a hypnotizing symphony to her ears. She closed her eyes and slowed her breath to rein in her riotous heart. It wouldn’t do to begin her night aching for something indefinable and unrealistic.
    It wasn’t the water that pulled her in but what lay beyond it. Directions. So many of them, it made her head spin thinking of the different paths her life could take. Oh, she couldn’t marry Hugh, or anyone else for that matter. She sought adventure, felt curiosity burning through her veins. She wanted to meet new people, learn new customs, live vicariously without the net of home to guard her. But her father would never let her leave.
    No one left Camlochlin. Not for good. Nor would she. It was home, a mother’s love, a promise of safety in a treacherous world. Caitrina loved it as much as anyone else. But she wanted more. She might even want a little danger.
    “Dinna’ smile at the water lest ye tempt jealous sirens to swim ashore and kill ye.”
    She opened her eyes and sighed at her cousin, who wasn’t there a moment ago. “Kyle, ye really must learn to announce yerself. Ye’re too quiet.”
    “I thought ye might have heard Goliath and Sage barkingup the slope,” he answered. When she shook her head and looked over her shoulder at the giant mixed wolfhounds racing up the side of Sgurr na Stri, he offered her a knowing look. “Ye lose yerself too deeply to yer thoughts, Trina.”
    “Kyle,” she said, ignoring his warning, “did ye hear aboot my betrothal to Hugh MacDonald?”
    “Aye,” he said softly, not pushing her as to whether or not she would go along with it. He knew her, perhaps better than anyone else did.
    “Do ye think my faither will allow me to travel to France if I agree to wed Hugh upon my return?” One adventure. Was that asking too much? “To see our grandparents,” she added after he began shaking his head.
    “What’s in France, Trina? And dinna’ say our grandparents. Ye’ll be seeing them in a month.”
    She shrugged, turning toward the loch. No sense in lying to Kyle. He could see right through deceit. Besides, she loved him too much to lie to him. “The same thing that’s in England, I suppose. Stuffy nobles and feigned smiles. But I dinna’ want to spend my last free summer before I’m forced to be someone’s wife hunting deer and rabbits, or embroidering, or even reading!”
    They looked at each other, Trina expecting the scandalous arch of Kyle’s brow. Most of her cousins adored books as much as swords. Not her, unless the books were about adventure—or archery. She loved arrows; the height and the distance they reached on the wind. The precision achieved by dedicated practice.
    She quirked her mouth at him. “Come now, Kyle, ye know how I feel aboot living nestled away in the mountains while the world—which I learned aboot from books—goes on withoot me? And now I’m to be saddled doun with babes…”
    A veil of mist passed across his cerulean gaze, briefly transforming him into the cool, calculating performer who could sniff out the truth better than a hound on the trail of its prey. “Ye’re trouble fer some poor sot oot there, Caitrina Grant, and I dinna’ believe ’twill be Hugh MacDonald. Ye’ll go to France and not return fer a year or two.” He wouldn’t tell her parents her plans. Kyle would never betray her. Even as children he had protected her, though she had brothers who were more than happy to do so. Kyle had kept all her secrets, even when she practiced swordplay with the