Page 42 of Sins of the Highlander

Near Rob.

The deerhound nuzzled her hand and circled around it so she stroked him nose to tail.

Elspeth felt a tug in her heart toward the man at the boat’s tiller, but she resisted. He’d already shown her how susceptible she was to his enticements, and how little her surrender meant to him.

“What should I do, Fingal?” She fingered the dog’s wiry-haired ears.

The deerhound turned and walked toward the stern of the small vessel as if he understood her question. He plopped his bottom down near enough to Rob that the man could tousle his great shaggy head. Elspeth heard Fingal’s tale thumping on the hull.

“That’s what ye get when ye ask a dog for advice,” she muttered. The furry beast would take affection from anyone. A failing she didn’t intend to repeat.

Rob probably hadn’t eaten, so she gathered up the badger-skin pouch and the skin of deplorable wine and headed toward the stern. Her priest had always admonished her that treating an enemy with kindness would “heap fiery coals on his head.”

She intended to set Rob MacLaren ablaze.

Chapter 14

All the muscles in Rob’s body stiffened as Elspeth headed toward him. She stepped lightly around the cabin and past the mast. Her meek expression didn’t fool him a bit. If he’d been a dog, his ruff would’ve been standing on end in wariness. Fingal, however, stood and wagged his entire body in joy over her approach.

When he devised this plan, he wished he’d considered that Drummond’s bride was a living, breathing person. She’d been only a means to an end to him.

No matter what that succubus in his dream had said, perhaps he was mad. His friend Hamish had tried to tell him abducting the Stewart lass was a bad idea, but he wouldn’t listen.

“’Tis no’ like reiving a herd of cattle, ye ken,” Hamish had told him when Rob first came to him with the plan. “A cow is the most biddable creature on God’s earth. It’ll go wherever it’s driven. A woman doesna drive worth a damn.”

Truer words were ne’er spoke.

“Have ye eaten?” she asked as she pulled a bannock from the pouch. She offered it to him with a forced smile.

So might a spider smile at a fly.

But it seemed like days since he filched that sarnie from Angus’s skillet. His stomach was knocking against his backbone so hard, he couldn’t keep his hand from reaching for the crusty bun.

“I thank ye,” he said between bites.

If she’d found a way to poison it, he almost didn’t care. He wolfed down a couple sausages, giving Fingal a few bites. Surely she wouldn’t chance poisoning the dog who’d taken such an obvious liking to her. He upended the wineskin for a deep draught.

“Ugh! This wine’s nearly turned.” He swiped his mouth with his sleeve, but it didn’t help the sour aftertaste.

She seemed to swallow a laugh. “I said as much to Angus, but he seems to be the thrifty sort. Nothing usable must be thrown out.”

“Might as well sop this with a sponge and offer it to me on a stick.”

“Dinna mock the way Our Lord was offered a drink on the cross,” she said with a frown. “Ye’re flirting with blasphemy, Rob MacLaren.”

If she only knew the half of it. “Blasphemy is but one on the long list of my sins.”

“Aye, but it’s one the Lord is loath to forgive.”

“And not the only one, it seems,” he muttered, spitting into the loch to purge his mouth of the vinegary taste. “Ye might have warned me.”

“Ye might have warned me as well,” she said, her gaze never wavering from his.

They were no longer talking about the wine. The subject had veered into deep water without the slightest hint that an abrupt turn was coming.

How did women do that?

Irritation crept up his neck like a rash.