Seducing the Spy by Sandra Madden Read Free Book Online Page B

copper curls be unlucky? The top of her head reached his chin. Could he provide the knowledge she needed for protection from a regiment of Englishmen? Could he teach her what was necessary to save herself from a lone Englishman aroused by her soft, feminine curves? The fragility of her willowy figure brought out the protector in Cameron. Despite her protestations, Meggie was a woman who needed to be defended by a man.
    Her hand trembled beneath his. She lifted her chin a notch and inhaled in a stuttering fashion, as if his closeness called upon her to make extra effort simply to breathe.
    Her small frame tucked into his in a snug, titillating fit. Cameron’s senses buzzed to high alert, and his pain was forgotten in the comfort of her womanly body. With his body melded to hers, he felt as if he had come out of a harsh storm to the warmth of a winter hearth. And Cameron knew to feel so was to court disaster.
    “Well?” she prompted.
    Cameron dropped his arms and stepped back away from her. She turned, surprise written in her expression.
    “I think ye should take up a weapon more suitable to a woman’s strength,” he said by way of explanation.
    “What would that be? A dagger?”
    “Aye, a dagger.”
    Daggers, indeed. They glinted in her eyes. The menacing light served to quell anything else Cameron might add.
    “A dagger would not frighten away a wolf,” she declared.
    “Your dogs will do that.”
    “Not my wolfhounds.”
    “Are they not at your heel to protect you?”
    “Bernadette and Seamus are cowards. Even now they cower on the other side of the hawthorn. The sound of the musket frightens them. They have been known to run upon hearing a wolf howl.”
    Cameron was dumbfounded. She had no protection, and she lived miles from civilization with just her witless grandfather and the old men who tended the castle and the fields alongside the women. The young, strong Irishmen who might offer protection were away fighting the English with men like Barra.
    “You must have new hounds to protect you, Meggie.”
    “Nay. I would not insult Seamus and Bernadette when I am able to protect myself.”
    Stubborn woman.
    “Dogs cannot be insulted,” he said.
    She raised a brow and shot him a knowing glance. “Unless they are merely a form taken by the wee people.”
    No ready answer to her reasoning came to Cameron’s mind.
    Meggie sighed through a wistful smile. “Besides, by the time I learned my hounds were cowards, it was too late. I’d already grown attached.”
    He could understand such ties. One of his sisters held a tabby in great affection. But there was something else he did not comprehend. “Why is it that you call your dogs by names normally reserved for people?”
    “Because I have not much family,” she explained. “My mother and sister were lost at sea when I was a wee girl of only six years. The ship they traveled upon was caught in a storm crossing the Irish Sea. Since then it’s been only father, grandfather, and me. And my father has been away fighting ever since I can remember.
    “Seamus and Bernadette are the brother and sister I ne’er had as a girl and sorely missed.” Her eyes twinkled as she raised them to his. “Handsome siblings, don’t ye think?”
    Cameron understood then. He knew too well the empty spot within, the need to fill the hollow pit in one’s soul. While he had grown up surrounded by family, they were not his family. His mother and father had given him away, much as one would give an apple from the orchard to a passing stranger. In his heart, he dwelled alone in the world in much the same manner as Meggie. When Cameron didn’t respond immediately, Meggie’s chin inched up to a defiant angle. “I jest,” she said with the haughtiness of a ... duchess.
    The Duchess of Dochas. Indeed, the title fit. Cameron allowed himself a wry smile as he regarded her. As if daring him to say another critical word about her hounds, she held her head high, with her lips slightly