Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) by Sara Mackenzie Read Free Book Online

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    Hope blossomed. She had seen him. He could work on that. If she had seen him once, she could see him again. He’d make her see him again!
    “Lass?”
    She did not look up from her book. A little frown wrinkled her brow.
    “I know I can make you hear me,” he muttered, moving closer. He stood, looking down at her. The gloss of her dark hair shone in the light that dangled from the ceiling like an overripe pear and hurt his eyes if he looked directly at it. So he didn’t, and looked at her instead. Her robe gaped open at her throat, giving him a fine view of her plump breasts, her skin was pale as snow.
    The sight of the woman stirred something in him. It was true she had the looks and body that he admired in a lassie, but it was not just lust. This was another emotion, something he had not felt in a very long time. It was the same feeling he had when he saw her crying, a softening inside him, an ache that had no name. He pushed it back, smothered it, denied it. Just as he had been doing all his life. He was a warrior, his father’s son, and women were just another possession to be owned. As valuable as his livestock, but not worth as much to him as his broadsword. They served their purpose and beyond that they were invisible.
    And he saw nothing ironic in the thought.
    Maclean took another step closer, his kilt brushing her elbow. She continued to read, the food on her plate forgotten. He reached out a hand and touched her hair, lightly, attempting to feel the texture of it. His fingers slipped through it, touching nothing but air.
    He swore.
    She turned a page.
    “You will know I am here,” he said hoarsely, staring at her so intently he was certain she must feel his presence. “I promise you that, woman.”
    She glanced up as if something had attracted her attention. Her face had a blurred, distant look, her thoughts still with the book.
    “I’m here, my pretty lassie,” he said. “And aye, you’re a bonny one, all right. If I were a man again, I’d see you dressed in silk skirts like the fine ladies of Edinburgh, and enjoy taking them off you.”
    She cleared her throat.
    He held his breath.
    She turned back to her book. “Strange,” she murmured. “I thought I heard an insect buzzing….” And she flipped over the page and kept reading. “‘The Macleans of Loch Fasail are unrelated to the southern clan of the same name who reside near Loch Linnhe. They are a branch who settled in Fasail around 1270, gaining their lands from the powerful Mackenzies, and ruling from their residence of Castle Drumaird. They lived a relatively peaceful life, apart from a continuing feud with their nearest neighbors, the Macleods of Mhairi.’”
    Maclean rolled his eyes.
    “Hmm, let’s see, what’s this? ‘An Eyewitness Account of a Traveler in the Highlands, 1742.’ He says here:
    “I came upon a bridge in Fasail, a wondrous structure truly remarkable for the wild place in which it stood. The story I was told is as follows:After a particularly bad winter when the stream that runs into the loch broke its banks and swept away livestock and several folk, the Black Maclean, Chief of the Macleans of Fasail, ordered that a bridge be built across it. But this was no feeble structure, cobbled together to get them through the next season or two. This bridge was built to last for generations, the piles driven deep into the rocky soil, and with hand railings for the older people to grip so they did not fall in, and a lower railing so that children did not slip through.”
    As he listened to the sweet rise and fall of her voice, he began to remember the bridge. The winter had been the worst he had known, so cold many had not survived it, and when the snow and ice had melted from the moors and mountains, the loch had brimmed its banks and the stream had raged like a wild thing. Maclean remembered searching for the body of a young woman, but she had been drowned too deep to be found. He had ordered his carpenters to build the