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Continue reading on to a preview of The Lass Abducted the Laird
PREVIEW OF THE LASS ABDUCTED THE LAIRD
The Highlands, 1813
Moira Darroch hid behind a tree by the dusty road, heart thrashing so frantic in her ribcage that the fast air she gulped did not satisfy her lungs.
She was about to commit a crime.
A smirk came to her full lips as she looked down at the rifle in her hands. She was already committing a crime. Scots were forbidden to carry guns, a prohibition put down by the English after Culloden.
She was about to commit her second crime then.
Considering both would happen in the same breath, her outlaw status would be quick to draw.
The second one would be triple serious because it involved a McKendrick, one of the most powerful clans in Scotland. But what choice did she have? Alright, so everyone had a choice. Her other choice was to let her clan fall into a usurper’s hand.
As choices went, she did not think the latter worth contemplating.
A late April’s cool breeze blew one riotous chocolate curl, and she wiped it from her brow impatient. The movement reminded her of her brother, who used to tease her calling her Lamb because of her curls.
Her poor, deceased brother, Malcom, she grieved at his memory. He had been gone for a year, the certainty that he had been poisoned, murdered engraved in her chest.
Moira must do this. Found no other solution to the predicament Clan Darroch faced at this moment. Her uncle—uncle by marriage—manoeuvred to take over the clan’s leadership. She must not allow it to happen.
Which meant she needed a husband, one from a clan important enough to tilt the scales, and strengthen her position to thwart Hamish’s ambitions.
The only candidate she could think of being Lachlan McKendrick, the very useless and very womaniser youngest brother of the four siblings in the family. That was how she regarded him, at least. Granted, he might not be that useless since…
A movement in the distance made her freeze. Inhaling insufficient air, she turned to peek through the foliage. Two hundred yards ahead, a horseman appeared. Lachlan McKendrick used to ride by this road in Darroch lands to reach one of his favourite lochs for fishing. How she knew it? Not that she would confess to any soul dead or alive, but she would steal a glance at him when he rode by, the path cutting right below the study window where she learned to update the ledgers in the last year.
She strived to learn and do so many duties in this time. It felt as if she lived ten years in one. And matured decades by her twenty-fifth birthday.
Her delicate, petite frame swivelled back into hiding, in wait for the exact moment to act. Though she looked del
icate, she discovered she was anything but. In these last months, she summoned a strength she never imagined she possessed. Facing up to the odds of her people regarding her as the leader, dodging her uncle’s malice, struggling to keep her clan’s welfare on a daily basis. It had been like killing a lion a day.
Now she would have to kill another. Or marry one, in this case.
Marriage to a womaniser sounded like a lousy bargain to waste her life on, by the way. For her clan she would do anything though.
Her hazel eyes turned back to the road. A hundred yards. Wait a moment more, she told herself. She took the time to try to even her breath and her heart rate. To no avail.
Check again. Twenty yards. Her hands firmed on the rifle as she turned and posted herself in the middle of the road, aiming it.
“Stop right there, McKendrick,” she issued in what she hoped to be an assertive tone, tightening her fingers on the cold metal to stop their trembling.
“Darroch?” he said in that smooth voice of his as he halted his horse. He used to call her by her clan’s name when they chanced on each other.
And then she must lift her gaze to him.
The man had always been a weapon in himself. In mere seconds, the sight of him sent every nerve ending to a meltdown. He was perfect, just perfect, there was not another word for it. At about six feet four, the view of him reminded her of the statue of Apollo Belvedere she saw once reproduced in a book. The face, that is, because the rest of him she did not even want to contemplate, lest she display a ninny swooning she utterly despised.
“You’re trespassing Darroch’s lands.” She blurted to cover up her reaction.
With nowhere else to look, she absorbed him. The locks of dark brown hair, the straight brows, the deep-set brown eyes fringed by sooty lashes. Then she studied his fine, straight nose, those lips designed to induce unlawful thoughts, the square jaw including a cleft on his male chin. The strong, masculine body suggested by his green, black and white tartan clamoured for exploring hands.
