When the Laird Returns Read Free Page B

badly. Resigned to walking back home, she turned, heading for the land bridge.
    “Why are you on MacRae land?” he asked again.
    Iseabal faced him, answering him finally.
    “It’s no longer MacRae land,” she said, wishing that it were not true. “There haven’t been MacRaes here for years. It’s owned by Magnus Drummond,” she added, before leaving both Gilmuir and the man.

Chapter 2
    T wice she turned and looked back at him, her face flushed and deepening in color as he watched. Her eyes, green and solemn, looked away before returning to him as quickly. Almost, Alisdair thought, as if she could not believe he were real.
    They’d not exchanged names, but they’d touched as intimately as man and wife. He could still feel her pressed tightly against his body in that last second before her feet had touched the ground.
    Her slender figure was framed against the whitish blue of the summer sky, her hair flowing against her back in a delicate fan. She crossed the land bridge keeping the horse at a walk, making him wonder again at the state of her injury.
    Despite her claims, he’d seen pain in her eyes.
    Who was she? A cautious woman, evidenced by thatslight change of expression from curiosity to wariness. A lovely woman, an enigma who spoke troubling words.
    He raised a hand and scratched his beard with his knuckles. Now, that was probably why she’d run from him. But it was a tradition of his not to shave until he had finished his voyage and was home once more.
    What did she mean that this was Drummond’s land?
    He glanced to the side, distracted by a blur of color. An ocean of sheep filled the glen, their lean bodies showing pink through their sparse tan fleece.
    Frowning, he took a few steps forward, only to be called back by a voice.
    “It’s a fine place,” Daniel said. “For all that it’s nearly gone.”
    Turning, Alisdair faced his first mate. Most of the crew had followed him and were now roaming through the ruins. They, like him, were descendants of the people of Gilmuir, and the sights they saw today would be told in a hundred tales back home.
    “The fort’s not there,” Daniel said abruptly, his voice tinged with amazement.
    Alisdair spun around to discover that Daniel was right. He’d been so distracted by the woman that he’d never realized that Fort William had vanished. Built after Culloden, the fort had been an English stronghold for this part of the Highlands.
    “It’s an ugly thing,” his mother had said. “A blight on the landscape.”
    “A fortification built in the style of English forts,” his father had contributed with a smile. “We used the design in our first settlement here.”
    With Daniel at his side, Alisdair walked across the barrenearth that separated the two structures. An outline of bricks marked where the building had once stood, but there were no walls remaining, no doors, only a few wooden supports where he imagined the stable might have been.
    “It looks to have simply disappeared,” Alisdair said, startled to feel a surge of satisfaction.
    Daniel nodded, studying the layout of the fort. “I wonder why they left?”
    “Why stay?” Alisdair asked with a small smile. “They had already accomplished their aim.” His own dislike of the English was due more to their encroachment in Nova Scotia and their paternalistic attitudes in the Orient than to the Crown’s behavior in Scotland. His father was half English, a fact that most of the MacRaes of Cape Gilmuir conveniently ignored.
    “What do you know of the Drummonds?”
    “A thieving bunch, I’ve heard,” his first mate said. “They were forever stealing our horses and our livestock.”
    Alisdair stifled a smile. The MacRaes had claimed this land centuries ago, had fought to keep it, had built from stone a fortress that commanded the surrounding countryside. People with such determination would have been as fierce as the Drummonds and no doubt as guilty of their own reiving.
    Turning, Alisdair walked