Captured Heart by Heather McCollum Read Free Book Online

watched Meg twist in her saddle for the twentieth time. She most definitely fled someone, someone she expected to follow. A brother? A father or guardian? Perhaps a husband or a lover? His jaw tensed and he rubbed a hand over the scruff that had grown there over the week he’d been away from Druim Keep.
    Fortune’s irony had landed Meg in his lap. There had been no need to steal her away, and now no worry about her running from them. She didn’t cry or complain or beseech him for her freedom. In fact she was grateful for his escort, making this mission much easier.
    Caden raked his hand through his hair, letting the guilt fall flat inside, as if it didn’t matter. Because it didn’t. The lass would play her part in their plan, a plan that must work or many in the protection of the Macbains would die this winter. The feud with the Munros was an old one, but it remained vicious with raiding attacks. The bastards had even gone so far as to burn the Macbains’ fields, even though Alec Munro denied it. Without food stores for the coming winter, many would starve—mostly the elderly and the children. The threat of starvation had prompted Caden to bring the idea of using a hostage to the council. Someone the Munros cared about.
    He watched his captive sway gently in her saddle. She laughed at something Ewan said as he rode next to her. The spirit in the lilting cadence licked along the row of men like wildfire racing across a dry heath. Soon every man within earshot grinned like a foolish arse.
    Everyone except Caden.
    With each pleasant exchange, the lass would hate them more once she knew that she was merely a pawn in a war.
    “It must be done,” he said on a low exhale and his horse’s ears twitched. The faces of the children born under the Macbains’ protection moved behind his eyes. The responsibility of their lives weighed on his shoulders. He wore the cloak of The Macbain, the cloak he had donned the day his father died. He’d do what no other chief had been able to do. And he would do it by kidnapping and using an innocent woman.
    Caden sat up taller in his seat and tapped his mount forward to ride in front of the line, up where the lass’s sweet laughter could not reach him.
    …
    They made camp as the moon rose in a small meadow that sloped toward a pond. Meg washed as best she could and sat by the fire waiting for the rabbit to roast. Even though they’d crossed into Scotland, the mood in the camp was tense. She sat silently, watching the flames as they licked up the large hare on the spit.
    The glow of the fire made reading possible, so Meg dug out her mother’s journal. After hours of contemplation during the day’s ride, she was certain that her mother wanted her to run to Scotland. She flipped to the garlic entry. Garlic grew in many places, but her mother wrote that she should find it in the north. And her mother wanted her to learn Gaelic. Uncle Harold had told her many times that her mother had always loved the rugged Highlands where their sister had settled and that she’d wanted Meg to learn its ancient language.
    She ran her finger down her mother’s lightly slanted script to the last line of the garlic entry. “ Lorg an lus seo ann an uamh, an fuar uamh le moran na frith-rathaidean agus an blath cridhe anns am meadhon ,” she pronounced with a slow cadence.
    “‘Find this plant in a cave, a cold cave with many paths and a warm heart in the middle,’” Caden said from where he stood behind her.
    Meg’s heart jumped, partly because he’d startled her and partly because, well, if she’d admit it, because it was Caden Macbain.
    “A cold cave with a warm heart?”
    Caden sat down on the log and turned the spit over the low flames. “What does that mean, lass?”
    Meg huffed out a long breath. “I don’t really know. I suppose there is a cave up north where I need to go to find…” Perhaps if she didn’t stare at the amazingly large, ruggedly handsome warrior sitting so close in the