The Legend Mackinnon by Donna Kauffman Read Free Book Online Page B

in her eyes and he knew not if he was strong enough to deny her the knowledge she sought. Nor was he certain he could deny himself the comfort her presence and her conversation were affording him.
    “Is that it then? You’re stuck in purgatory for all eternity because They say so?”
    “Until I learn the lessons They deem necessary, aye, that is the way of it.”
    “What lessons?”
    Duncan rubbed a hand over his face. “I do not wish to discuss this wi’ you.”
    “I didn’t wish to have you invade my cabin or my life either, but you’re here and I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter. You say your past is mixed up with one of my ancestors. Doesn’t that give me some right to understand why you’re here?”
    “Read the journals. Perhaps Lachlan explains it.”
    “Maybe he does. But if so, that will likely be the perspective of my side of the family. Mairi’s not wandering thehillsides of North Carolina as a ghost.
You
are. I’d like to hear it from you.”
    “And I’d like to be left alone.”
    She stepped closer to him. “Then you should have left me alone. But you didn’t. So it’s too late—you involved me. So deal with it.”
    “Don’ step too close to me, Maggie,” he warned softly. “Or we’ll be involved, as you say, in every way a man and woman can be. I gave ye a warnin’ as much for yer own good as fer mine. I ask you to leave me be before we both take steps better not taken.”
    “Speak for yourself,” she said.
    “Now who’s bein’ stubborn and unwise?” he asked, tamping down the sudden urge to smile. Bluidy hell, but she riled him up in ways he did not understand.
    She looked up at him then, her eyes no longer filled with anger and righteousness. There was doubt and fear behind all that soft blue. He wanted to think her a pretender as her ancestors had been, using their arsenal of feminine wiles to urge a man to do as they bid.
    He was having a hard time ascribing that character to Maggie. He released a short sigh. Perhaps he’d learnt more over the centuries than he’d been aware of if this chit could simply walk in here and move him in these strange ways. Whatever the cause, he could not have looked away from her at this moment even had someone swung a claymore at his head. Daft he was. Daft and soft.
    “My life as I know it is gone,” she said quietly. “I had to leave my job, my home, and all my possessions. Everything I worked for is gone. I can’t call or write to anyone. I’m a virtual prisoner here. Very much like you. You have lessons to learn here. So do I. I have to learn how to survive. I have to learn how to get myself out of this mess I’m in. I have to find a way to keep the man I once thought I loved from killing me.”
    A thread of steel entered her expression and she straighteneda bit. “You’re right. I guess I was too eager to find a diversion from my very real problems. The last thing I need to do is get caught up with you.” She tried a smile and a laugh, but both wobbled on a sudden gulp of air. “I mean, I don’t even believe in ghosts.”
    He realized that bit of steel he’d spied in her was more thin shield than the thick walls protecting a fortress. He also realized that his own shield was thinning where she was concerned. He wanted to rail at the deities for finally conjuring so perfect a teacher. He could not tear his eyes away from hers. More proof of his quick descent after three hundred years of solid resistance.
    What demon was this They had sent him? Bluidy hell. The deities be damned, but reach out he did. He held her chin with the tips of two fingers, his attention drawn by the sight of his scarred hands so near to something as perfect and soft as her skin.
    “I’ll make you a compromise,” he said. “The first a MacKinnon has ever willingly made with a Claren.”
    Her expression turned wary. He smiled. “Tell me yer story and I’ll see what I can do to help ye leave this place.”
And me
, he thought, not liking