Wishing For a Highlander by Jessi Gage Read Free Book Online Page B

and take her away. Escort her to her home. I’ll tell Steafan ye’ve gone searching for your run-away bride, and I’ll talk to him about Edmund. When ye return alone, Steafan will have to admit that ye’d make a terrible laird if you couldna even keep a wee wife in line. He’ll accept Edmund.” He scoffed, “It doesna matter anyway, since Ginnie is sure to have a bairn sooner or later. Steafan worries over naught.”
    Aodhan made it all seem so easy. He could be wed tonight. To Malina. But then he’d have to help his wife leave him. ’Twas too terrible to consider. “I canna leave my mill,” he protested.
    “Edmund can handle it for a time, and I’ll look in on him. The place willna fall apart without you.”
    Darcy studied the war chieftain. He’d rarely conversed with the man outside of trading tawdry jests or discussing swordplay tactics on the practice field. “What are you up to, man?” he wondered out loud.
    The ice melted from Aodhand’s eyes. “I dinna like to see ye suffer needlessly, lad,” he said and stalked away.

    Chapter 4
     

    Melanie’s feet were killing her. She was used to being on them since she often performed docent duties at the museum, but she wasn’t used to marching for upward of an hour over rock-strewn trails cut through darkened forests. On top of burning soles and aching muscles, it also felt like her stomach was trying to eat itself. According to her internal clock, dinner time had come and gone with nary a glimpse of anything edible. If she’d been back in Charleston, she’d have probably eaten two meals that would qualify as dinner by now.
    Just when she thought about asking, “Are we there yet?” the forest gave way to an immense, wide open clearing that could have been anything from a swath of farmland to a peat field. Beyond the clearing was a gentle rise dotted with crofter cottages and capped by a utilitarian, three-story rectangle of a castle with glowing windows.
    “Ackergill?” she asked, her spirit lifting with the prospect of food and rest. It was the first she’d spoken to Darcy since he’d promised to help her return home. Ever since the hushed talk in Gaelic he’d had with Aodhan, he’d seemed tense, and she hadn’t needed any more tension in her life just then, so she’d chosen to ignore him as they walked.
    He nodded without meeting her eyes.
    Scanning the village, her eyes were drawn far to the right of the castle where three tower-shaped silhouettes with four sails each stood against the night like pieces on a chessboard. “Ooh, are those windmills?” She’d had a thing for windmills ever since reading Don Quixote in her 4th-year Spanish class in high school.
    “Aye.” Darcy’s voice brightened with pride as he followed her gaze and said, “’Tis my mill and my da’s and grandsire’s before me. My home overlooks the sea. There.” He paused in pulling the wagon to point to the left of the windmills where a two-story house stood dark and alone at the crest of the rise. Now that he mentioned the sea, she detected a trace of salt in the air past the musk of two dozen male bodies in dire need of bathing.
    She sighed with longing as the briny scent reminded her of childhood trips to the Georgia coast with her parents. She would see them again, she promised herself. Box or no box, she would find a way.
    “It’s lovely,” she said, cheered with hope and determination.
    Darcy fixed her with an intense gaze, picked up the handles and continued on.
    “Do you have a large family?” she asked to cover how his gaze unsettled her. The history loving part of her also craved connection with this warrior from the past. She wanted to learn from him while she had the chance. Her grandmother had been from the northern Highlands. And now, here she was, face to face with the very land to which she attributed a quarter of her blood. What an amazing opportunity!
    Darcy shook his head. “My mother died long ago, and my da died four years back. My