Read Online The Highlander's Sin by Eliza Knight - Free Book Online Page A

going?” he asked.
    This time his touch didn’t send frissons of desire running through her, she was all too consumed with the need to purge.
    “Let go of me!” she screeched, writhing in his hold. “I have to—“ But before she could finish, it was already coming out. Soaked oatcake and jerky splattered inches from the only pair of shoes she had.
    “Better?” he asked.
    Oh, how she wanted to scream, to scratch his eyes out. No one had ever seen her upend herself before, and here he was asking how it felt. He had deliberately delayed her escape to somewhere private. Forget not hating him. She despised him with every fiber of her being.
    “Ye’re a bastard, whor eson,” she growled, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
    Duncan stiffened behind her. “ Ye’ve a nasty little mouth, my lady. Where did ye learn to speak like that? ’Haps I ought to issue ye a penance for speaking to a man of the cloth in such a way.”
    “Ye’re no— ” His coarse hand covered her mouth, stifling her words.
    He tugged her back tight to his chest and leaned close to her ear. “That’ll be a warning to ye. Next time ye speak to me like that, issue me names, I’ll bend ye over my knee and whip your pretty little arse.”
    Heather gasped. No words came out of her. She was too shocked. No one had ever spoken to her that way before. No one. Literally. Not her parents before they’d died. Not her older brothers and sisters. Nor her aunts, uncles, and cousins. And never her own family chaplain. But this man. This priest… He took the fight right out of her, for she desperately did not want to be laid over his lap, her naked behind bared to his eyes while he whipped her. That would have been the ultimate in mortification. And she didn’t doubt for second that he would do it.
    “Shall I let go of ye? Think ye can behave, princess?”
    Heather nodded, tears burning her eyes.
    Duncan slowly removed his hand from her mouth and then his arm from around her waist. He back ed away from her inch by inch, and as she felt his presence retreat, she stiffened upward, but couldn’t turn around. The tears that had brimmed she couldn’t hold back and now they slid in large rivulets down her cheeks. She was too embarrassed to swipe them away, or to face him, and so she stood there, facing the way out. Her escape.
    Duncan didn’t say anything to her, perhaps sensing somehow that he’d wounded her pride. No orders to return to her seat. She heard him moving around behind her. Her throat was tight , and her shoulders shook a little with the held-in tears. A quarter hour passed like that in silence, and she was well aware with the amount of time passing, that Duncan knew she’d cried. That he’d given her space, allowing her some semblance of privacy, the kindness of the gesture only made her wish she could hate him more.
    “I’ll nay be lighting a fire. W ould draw attention, but with a plaid to cover ye, ye shouldna be too cold in here tonight.”
    Heather swallowed hard, discreetly swiped at her remaining teardrops and nodded. With a shuddering sigh, she composed herself.
    “Come and l ie down.” It was not a request, but he said it softly, so that it felt like one.
    Still unable to speak, afraid her voice would sound garbled from her cry, Heather bowed her head and turned, seeing that Duncan had spread a plaid wide on the ground and then another over top. Big enough for two. He’d made them a bed. Not her. Them . For a pillow, he’d rolled up his robe. There was nothing in her spot.
    “Since ye’ve got on at least four gowns, I thought ye might spare one for a pillow.”
    Heather was stunned still—staring at the black robes carefully rolled up. She didn’t dare look at him. He’d said before that he was naked beneath his robes. Was he now standing naked a few feet away and intend ing to sleep beside her in such a state.
    “ Here.” He handed her a stick. “Chewing this will get the taste of your stomach out of your