Highlander Unchained by Monica McCarty Read Free Book Online Page A

damn well better believe it.
    “But…” Her voice dropped off.
    He could tell by her expression what she was thinking. That he wasn’t refined enough and had none of the courtly graces of a laird. Damn right. He was too damn busy fighting her brother. Too damn busy protecting his clan from years of floods and famine. And war. What learning he’d had was forged on the battlefield.
    “Why have you brought me here?” she asked.
    “You’ll find out soon enough.”
    “I’ll never marry you.”
    The certainty in her voice infuriated him. “I don’t recall asking,” he said coldly.
    “A man like you wouldn’t ask. He’d take.”
    He took a step closer to her. She didn’t know when to stop. By God, she would learn. “And what kind of man am I?” he asked in a dangerous tone.
    She lifted her chin and met him square in the eye, refusing to cower before his intimidation. “The kind who abducts a lady with no care for the plans he’s upset and forcibly brings her to his keep.”
    “You would have been miserable with him.”
    “He was my choice.”
    He didn’t understand her. She didn’t deny that her marriage would have been a mistake, but she was still angry that he’d interrupted her elopement. There wasn’t enough time in the day to decipher the mind of a lass.
    She gave him a sidelong look from under her long lashes. “So you do not intend to force me to marry you?”
    “No,” he answered truthfully.
    Her nose wrinkled, as if she weren’t sure whether to believe him. “Then it’s my brother Hector. You intend to use me to get to him.”
    It hadn’t taken her long to figure it out. Part of it, anyway. The lass did not have just a sharp tongue and beauty, she had wits as well. He gave her a long appraising glance. He would have to be careful. If she learned what he was about, it could make his task difficult.
    She had a smug expression on her face. “Well, you are in for a disappointment if you think to use me to bargain with Hector. I barely know him.”
    “But I do.”
    Too well. Lachlan and Hector had been at each other’s throats for years, since the day of Lachlan’s father’s funeral, when Lachlan was not yet ten and Hector had used the burial as an opportunity to take over Coll. Lachlan’s uncle Neil Mor had thwarted the brash invasion, cutting off the heads of the Duart Macleans and tossing them into the stream now known as Struthan nan Ceann , the Stream of Heads.
    Hector had never forgotten—or forgiven—his defeat, and Lachlan had been fighting for what was his ever since.
    Tensions had run high between the two branches of the clan for years, but the feuding resumed not long ago when Lachlan refused to bow to Hector as the superior branch of the clan. It was a bit of posturing by Hector to answer for his invasion of Lachlan’s lands in Morvern. Hector claimed that his actions were justified by Lachlan’s refusal to take his part in his blood feud with the MacDonalds—a duty that was owed to a chief. The kinship between the two branches of Macleans, descended long ago from brothers, was all but forgotten. As a feudal baron, Lachlan didn’t owe fealty to anyone, except perhaps the king. And with King James’s recent maneuverings, even that was debatable.
    “Hector has something of mine. Now I have something of his.”
    “What does he have? Your favorite dog?”
    “No,” he said flatly. “My favorite castle.”
    Her eyes widened appreciably. “Breacachadh, on the Isle of Coll?”
    “Yes.” His fists clenched. With Hector’s ancestral seat, Duart Castle, sequestered and seized by the king’s commissioners for his treasonous dealings with Queen Elizabeth, he’d turned his sights to Lachlan’s.
    “But how?”
    “I was away.” While Lachlan was gone, Hector had led a force to Coll and, using trickery, captured the castle. But Hector would pay for his treachery.
    “Why did you not appeal to the king?”
    His jaw clenched. “I did.” He’d tried to follow the rules,