The Rogue: A Highland Guard Novella (The Highland Guard) by Monica Mccarty Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d gradually relaxed her guard and come to the realization that she had overreacted.
    The threat she’d sensed that had caused her to flee halfway across Scotland to seek refuge with her powerful cousin—what man in his right mind would challenge the Black Douglas?—had never materialized. Sir Stephen Dunbar hadn’t been waiting behind the next tree or shadowy corridor to what…? Capture her? It seemed so silly now. As if she’d heard too many tales of abducted brides.
    But it hadn’t seemed so silly then. Then she’d been terrified of the dashing young knight who at first had swept her off her feet—literally, she recalled, thinking of how he’d insisted on carrying her over every muddy patch of grass on that day they’d walked to the coast—but who had turned into an ogre when she’d learned the truth and refused his offer of marriage.
    When Sir Stephen, who’d fostered with her eldest brother, Alexander, arrived at Bonkyll Castle under the pretense of needing to speak to him, she’d been surprised. He should know that Alexander had been away for months fighting for Bruce under their kinsman and her guardian, Walter Stewart, and wasn’t expected home for a few weeks. She’d believed Sir Stephen when he said he must have misunderstood her brother’s intentions.
    She’d believed him because she wanted to believe him. Because he was handsome and charming and looked at her with a dazed look in his eyes as if he’d been struck by cupid’s arrow the moment he’d seen her. He’d spent two weeks wooing her, making her laugh, and making her feel as if she was the most special woman in the world.
    She was half in love with him by the time he asked her to marry him. She would have accepted, and probably would have run off with him to be married without her cousin Walter’s permission—he held her marriage rights—if her brother hadn’t arrived home early and told her the truth. Sir Stephen had borrowed a great deal of money from him and was having trouble repaying the debt. She—and her tocher—were to be the answer to his troubles.
    If he seems too good to be true, he probably is. Too late, she recalled her mother’s warning.
    She shivered, remembering Sir Stephen’s cold rage when she’d informed him of her decision. There was something hard and calculating in his eyes that had made her think he wasn’t going to accept her refusal. Her brother, too, had been worried enough by what had happened to send her to Jamie and Elizabeth “until things settled down.”
    In other words, until he and Walter could find her a husband. Only marriage would truly protect her from a man of Sir Stephen’s ilk. It was time. As much as she liked her independence, she could not put it off any longer.
    Izzie knew she had been luckier than most to have remained unwed for this long. Women in her position were often promised at a very young age, and certainly betrothed before the “advanced” age of two and twenty. If her father had lived, no doubt she would have been. There had been a few discussions since her mother’s death, but Walter—young himself—had never pressed her.
    But after he’d learned about Sir Stephen’s treachery, the frequency of the topic between them had increased. It seemed to be the first thing he said to her after greeting her. “Hullo, cousin. Any contenders yet?”
    She might have been picking a prized bull at market.
    The thought made her smile as she entered the hospital. The prioress wasn’t ready for her yet, so Izzie decided to look in on Annie, the very sick young girl who’d been so charmed by Randolph the other day.
    Upon entering the second-floor chamber where the most seriously ill patients were housed, Izzie glanced down the line of pallets that seemed to cover every inch of floor space to the one by the window. Her heart stopped. Seeing the empty pallet, she feared the worst. It was Annie’s pallet. She liked to watch the birds who’d made a nest under the roof, and the