To Bewitch a Highlander (Isle of Mull series) by Lily Baldwin Read Free Book Online

her.
    Ronan.
    She could not wipe his image from her thoughts no matter how hard she tried. Everywhere she looked she saw amber brown eyes. The touch of his full lips pressing into the hollow of her neck lingered. Mother of all, what was wrong with her? She could not have enjoyed looking at him or being touched by him. He was a descendant of King MacAlpin. Then she remembered how his striking features were transformed when she told him she was a MacLean. His lips tightened into a hard sneer and his eyes narrowed, becoming hate-filled slits, and the brute force he applied to her arms demonstrated a cruelty within. Imagine what he would have done if he knew who she really was, if she had stood before him in defiance and revealed her true identity.
    She stopped walking and lengthened her back, adopting a strong stance. With a defiant tilt of her chin, she declared to the rolling moors, “I am neither MacLean nor Mackinnon. I am Shoney, daughter of Brethia, great-great-granddaughter of Tharain, descendant of Oengus, King of the Picts.”
    Shame settled its burdensome weight on her shoulders. She regretted not having the courage to declare her true identity. What would he have done to her? He most likely would have dropped her on the ground in disgust and fled like a coward.
    Then she froze. She heard a rhythmic drumming in the distance growing louder and louder with each passing second. She issued forth no sound or breath as she stood watching, waiting for the source of the recurrent pounding to reveal itself. She did not have to wonder long. A large, white stallion crested over a distant hill, and on its back sat a rider with telling ease. His golden brown hair, which shone in the sunlight, and his broad shoulders were all too familiar to her now.
    “Damn him.”
    Shoney launched into a sprint, looking for a place to hide, but the open moors made no offer of tree or bush for which to conceal herself. Not that it mattered—she would need a fortress to escape him now. He spotted her, and she could hear the horse’s hooves pummeling the earth. She glimpsed behind as she scampered up a slope. Ronan, hunched low in his saddle, charged toward her with full force.
    Did he intend to run her down?
    The horse’s pounding stride shook the ground beneath her feet and made her heart quake with fear. She looked back and gasped as she stared into the horse’s black eyes. She flung her arms in front of her face and screamed as the horse bore down upon her, but instead of hearing her bones crunch and feeling the agony of her limbs being mangled and ripped askew, she was flying.
    His arms wrapped securely around her waist as he lifted her through the air and across his lap.
    “You almost killed me, you bastard”, she shouted. “Let me go, damn you.”
    He slowed his horse and chuckled, apparently enjoying her loss of temper.
    “What are you laughing at?”
    “You, my dear. You are walking in the opposite direction of your kin. Can you not judge the land to distinguish the coast from what lays inshore? I have never known anyone with a worse sense for travel, and you expect to make it beyond Benmore Mountain, which by the way is south of here.”
    Mother of all, he was like a disease for which she could find no cure. All she wanted to do was go home, feed her empty belly, and count the blessings of her simple life. Instead, she was back in his inescapable grip, atop a giant steed, heading somewhere other than the warmth and safety of her stone hut.
    “Where are you taking me? You said before you could not take me to the border just yet.”
    “You will see,” he answered.
    “Why are you are unable to take me…er…home now?”
    “The pending war, of course,” he said, looking down at her like she was thicker than stone, “between the Scots and the Norse.”
    She knew naught of what he spoke and was too tired to pretend. Let him think she was dimwitted. She did not care.
    “’Tis, a shame your clan keeps women so ignorant. These