Read Online Sarah Gabriel by Highland Groom - Free Book Online Page A

MacCarran, not mine. What goes on in this glen is no game. Sometimes the revenue officers are less trustworthy than the rogues they’re after.” He took her arm again, and she sensed earnestness in him, and intensity. “My kinsmen and tenants will not harm you, but other rascals do come through these hills, and it is good to be wary. If word gets about that your kinsman is an excise man, it could go ill for you, and your brother. I believe it is not in your best interests to stay in this glen, after all.”
    “Mr. MacGregor, I have been here but a day, and have been hauled about in a most uncommon fashion, threatened with pistols, and exposed to danger—and now you, the laird of the glen himself, want me to leave? Reverend MacIan invited me here through arrangement with the Edinburgh Ladies’ Society for the Education and Betterment of the Gaels. And I have agreed—”
    “The what?”
    She repeated the name. “I have also agreed to teach for several weeks. School begins in a few days. I cannot leave.” She drew a breath. “Too much depends on—” She stopped.
    He rested a hand on her shoulder, slid his hand down her arm. Fiona caught her breath, feeling the same warm magic that had taken her earlier, capable of melting reason and resistance. He bent his head close to hers, and for an instant she thought he might kiss her again, so that she tilted her head back.
    “It is best that you go,” he said. “I will speak to the reverend myself. In the morning I will send a gig and driver to take you to Auchnashee. If there are expenses for your return to Edinburgh, I will cover them myself. You may keep the rocks,” he added.
    “You have neither right nor cause to dismiss me.”
    “As I have said, it is for your own welfare.”
    “I believe only Mr. MacIan can excuse me. And I intend to stay.” She stepped past him, angry, even panicked—she could not leave the glen. She felt drawn to the place, and now strangely to its laird. And she had to fulfill at least some of the conditions of her grandmother’s will, her stay in this glen being the best opportunity for that. “If you wish to protect your smuggling interests, certainly I am no threat to those. Do as you please.” She spun away to walk toward the house.
    “Fiona, wait.” In that deep, mellow voice, hername sounded different to her, beautiful and warm, in a way she had never quite heard it before. She turned, lured somehow by his voice, his use of her name. MacGregor reached her in one step and took her by the shoulder.
    In the misty twilight, as he loomed over her, all else seemed to fade. Wildly, impulsively, she felt as if she were caught in the fairy realm, transfixed by one of the mysterious Sidhe . “Listen to me,” he said. “This is not the time for you to be here. That is all I can say.”
    “I will not say a word about this evening. We need not even bargain for it.” She stared up at him. Feeling his fingers flex on her shoulder, she leaned forward, could not help it. “That should satisfy your doubt.”
    “Nothing could satisfy—” He bent toward her. “Damn,” he muttered, and pulled back as a woman’s voice cut through the darkness and fog.
    “Is that you, Miss MacCarran? Who is with you?” Mary MacIan’s voice broke the spell that had held Fiona standing in place. She turned to see the elderly woman, once again silhouetted in the door of the cottage, with the firelight behind her.
    “It is Fiona, Mrs. MacIan,” she returned in Gaelic. “I will be there in a moment.”
    “It’s Kinloch out here as well, Cousin Mary,” MacGregor called. “I met your guest while out in the hills, and escorted her back.”
    “Cousin!” Fiona began walking, and he strode beside her.
    “Certainly,” he murmured. “We all know each other, and many are related, in the glen.”
    “Kinloch, you rascal! Come in, both of you,” Mrs. MacIan gestured toward them. “Did you bring me a cask? Lovely lad! Is it the fairy sort this