Read Online DARE THE WILD WIND by Kaye Wilson Klem - Free Book Online

reel.
    "Tell me where to be when you leave."
    Cam gave a short laugh.  "My departure could be abrupt."
    Brenna spun back to face him.  "Only say where to meet you, and I'll follow you."
    "No," he said sharply.  "I won't put you at the same risk I did yesterday."
    Sudden panic knifed through Brenna.  She seized on the one argument she knew he couldn't dismiss.  "I'll be at more risk here.  The Earl suspects I lured his men into ambush." 
    It was half true.  The Earl had said he wouldn't hang her, no more.  Brenna saw the flash of regret in Cam's face at putting her in peril.  The tempo of the music quickened, and Cam caught her by the waist.  "Meet me on the watchtower, by the armory."     
    The music of the pipes spiraled to a frenzied crescendo, and he swung her high above his head in the last wild turn of the dance.  Closing her eyes, Brenna abandoned herself to the dizzy spin of their bodies and the strength of the arms that held her.
    Then the dance was over.  Eyes holding hers, he let her slide slowly down until her feet touched the floor.  Bodies pressed intoxicatingly close, they had only a moment, but it was long enough for Brenna to speak.
    "Good hunting," she whispered with a glance toward the old friends waiting to greet him once the music ended. 
    Cam was quickly surrounded by a crowd of welcoming men, half of them boyhood companions, clapping him on the shoulder and the back.  One or two gave him brief bearish hugs, shouting friendly insults to hide their joy that they met again in a ballroom and not on the field of battle.  Just as Cam hoped, their salute all but engulfed him, barring his passage back to the Earl.
    As she turned away, Drake Seton's gaze pinned her.  For a second, Brenna felt a flash of guilt.  The sight of Cam had wiped all thought of last night from her mind.  Now the Earl's look was an unwelcome reminder of their clash in her father's study, and her brief betraying weakness in his arms. 
    Even Morag called Drake Seton handsome as the devil himself.  But his chiseled aristocratic profile was far too arrogant.  She couldn't deny he was powerfully male, but seeing Cam again had swept away all the torments she had suffered in the night.  She had only been away from the feel of Cam's arms and his strong solid body too long.  Seeing Cam again was proof no other man would ever be his equal. 
    The tight twitch of the Earl's jaw told Brenna he wasn't accustomed to being slighted in favor of a noisy reunion between friends.  But there was nothing he could do.  Cam had outmaneuvered him.  By now one of the Earl's aides must have confirmed Cam's men were inside the castle gates in force, and the English soldiers nowhere in evidence at the portcullis or on the parapets above.  Drake Seton had no choice but to wait until the furor of Cam's homecoming subsided, and on Cam's promise he would parley with him before the gathering dispersed.
    Drake Seton was, in practical fact, Cam's prisoner.  But only at the sufferance of the chiefs of the other clans inside the great hall.  Uncomfortably, Brenna realized Cam couldn't be sure how long he might have to draw the other chiefs aside.
    Brenna could see how restraint rankled the Earl.  Half of her longed to taunt him for his conceit.  But silence was wiser if she wanted to escape without arousing the suspicions of her brother or the Earl.  She couldn't vanish in too great a haste, and Brenna joined in the next dance. 
    Lachlan Fraser bowed over her hand, smiling at her glance toward Cam.  "Your betrothed seems detained.  May I offer a little diversion?" 
    Her own smile betrayed the right touch of regret.  "I may be in need of it.  Cam's friends seem to forget I haven't seen him in nearly a year."
    He drew her back into the center of the floor.  "If I had his good fortune, I wouldn't absent myself so long."
    Aware Drake Seton's gaze had moved back from Cam to her, Brenna laughed at her partner's gallantry, and let him