Her Highness and the Highlander: A Princess Brides Romance by Tracy Anne Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

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     herself accountable.
    Yet nothing had actually happened, had it?
    All she and the major had done was sleep in the same room—and for a few hours, the
     same bed—because she had been frightened.
    Of course, should the facts ever become known, she would be ruined. But she wouldn’t
     worry about such matters now. There was no reason anyone need ever know…she hoped.
    “You’d best eat yer meal afore it grows cold,” the maid said as she turned away from
     the windows. “I’ll be back with yer new clothes in a few ticks and bring a fresh pitcher
     of water so ye can wash.”
    “Thank you. That is most kind.”
    The girl walked to the door.
    “One thing more before you go,” Mercedes said, stopping the young woman on the threshold.
     “Have you seen the major yet this morning? Major MacKinnon? I wish to have a word
     with him.”
    The maid arched a surprised brow. “Well, then ye’d best not tarry, since he’s fixing
     to leave. Called for his horse not ten minutes past.”
    He was leaving without so much as a word? He was abandoning her? How dare he? Under
     ordinary circumstances she would have let him go since he clearly did not wish to
     remain, but nothing about her situation was ordinary. All her life, she’d been safe
     and protected both at the academy and her father’s palace. But now she had no one.
     If the major left, she would be utterly alone and vulnerable. No, galling as it might
     be to lower her pride, she needed someone on whom she could count, and the major was
     her only choice.
    “Where is he?” she demanded.
    The servant’s eyes grew wide. “In his room, I think. Seein’ to the last of his packing.”
    Flinging back the covers, Mercedes sprang out of bed and reached for her robe. She
     was still pushing her arms through the sleeves as she flew out the door and into the
     hallway.
    Daniel crammed a shirt into his travel-worn brown leather valise, trying to arrange
     the contents so the latches and buckles would close.
    It was times like these that he missed the practical efficiency of his batman, Fergus,
     who’d had the uncanny ability to fit any item, no matter how large, into a small,
     manageably compact arrangement. He’d used to joke that Fergus could have found a way
     to pack an elephant in a portmanteau if given the task.
    But at war’s end, he’d had no choice but to relinquish Fergus’s excellent services.
     Not because the other man didn’t wish to continue in his employ, but rather because
     a retired major and dispossessed laird had little need of a full-time valet.
    The Laird MacKinnon.
    To a few old men at home, he might still be known as such, but it was a worthless
     title and had been for more than the whole of his life. The land over which his grandfather
     and his grandfather’s father had once proudly stood guardian was gone, confiscated
     and divided among the English conquerors after the Jacobite massacre at Culloden.
    The grand stone castle that had once been the seat of their power and wealth was no
     more than a ruin now—his family luckier than many to have taken up residence in an
     old crofter’s cottage that they had since turned into a creditable home.
    The one constant in his childhood had been his father’s bitter, unswerving hatred
     for the English. Daniel could hear him even now as he’d railed red-faced against English
     injustice, English atrocities.
    When the time came, Daniel’s decision to purchase a commission in the “damned Sassenach
     Army” had not been an easy one. The fact that he had joined a Scots-only regiment
     had made no difference to his father at all. Highlanders they might be, his father
     had fumed, but they were fighting on the English side, and the English side was always
     the wrong side. No amount of reasoning or persuasion could change his opinion.
    “Traitor!”
his father had shouted at him as he’d left.
“Dishonorable turncoat!”
    As for his mother, she’d stood by in silent misery, her