Highlander Taken. Juliette Miller

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      CHAPTER TWO

      SHAKEN AS MUCH by the stranger’s sudden departure as I had been by all that had taken place before it, I walked unsteadily back to the courtyard. Ann, Agnes and Bonnie were there, and they rushed up to me as soon as I stepped into the light.

      “Stella!” Ann exclaimed. “What’s happened? We’ve been calling you. Where have you been?”

      I smoothed my hair with my hands, hoping I didn’t look as wild and wanton as I felt. “’Twas nothing,” I said lightly, laughing it off. “I went for a stroll in the gardens.”

      The three of them stared at me, knowing full well we weren’t allowed such larkish pursuits, especially alone and in the dark of night. I watched their eyes register my flushed cheeks, my curled and windblown hair, my wide eyes. I was fervently thankful they couldn’t detect the more profound changes in me, or at least I hoped it.

      “Whatever for?” asked Agnes.

      “I needed some air,” I said. “I wandered too far and the wind blew out the candles. It took me some time to find my way back, is all. I’m fine.”

      “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” commented Bonnie, leading me back inside, where the noise and light was very nearly overwhelming.

      Not a ghost, nay. A phantom.

      A phantom, I only now realized, who knew me. He’d called me by my name. This detail felt significant. Had he known who I was, even before my sisters called out to me? He’d said he wanted to see me, to find me—nay, to taste me—once again. I hoped desperately that he would succeed in his pursuit.

      But even now, in my sisters’ familiar company, surrounded by people’s chatter and full-on brightness, my encounter with the hidden stranger felt unreal. Had he merely been a figment of my ever-hopeful romantic mind? Maybe I’d dreamed him in response to the heartbreak of recent days. I could justify my revelation as such, even if I could still taste him on my tongue and feel the effects of his touch to my very core. I knew, too, that this memory—real or not—had nothing to do with Caleb. The phantom lover had been too different, in every way. Already, Caleb’s face had faded by the slightest degree. More forcefully, the phantom’s looming outline dominated all thoughts. His tamed strength, his intoxicating scent: these details alone were enough to inspire a lush craving deep within me that very nearly made me moan aloud.

      What was happening to me? Had I finally had enough of being put down and held back by my overbearing father, and was reacting with bold, bizarre belligerence? Already, I yearned for more of the stranger, as I had known I would. I felt like running back outside to the secluded garden and calling him back to me.

      Instead, I took a deep breath and attempted to calm myself. Passionate, temperamental behavior was punished in our family. The only exceptions to this rule were specific indiscretions that might succeed in landing one of us a wealthy and well-bred husband. Aside from that one allowance, obedience, compliance and reserve were the order of the day. And I had carried out my role with suitable deference, for the most part. My life was predictable and comfortable enough, as these things went. I acted as I was expected to act—as I was forced to act—even if my heart questioned the orders. Why I felt the urge to wander, to run, to shout and to kiss mysterious strangers now, I didn’t know. The steady ground of my world, of late, seemed to be taking on a new inconsistency that possessed all the solidity of quicksand.

      With effort, I took my place in my sisters’ circle as we reentered the grand hall. I sipped a cool drink of water and felt better for it. Still, I felt removed somehow. My eyes restlessly surveyed the crowd, measuring, hoping. Was he here in this room? Quite possibly. I studied one man, then the next. But none of them seemed the perfect fit. And, disappointingly, I noticed that almost every single man in attendance wore a belt with a knife strapped to it. These men were warriors. Knives and swords weren’t just their tools; they were their fashion accessories. They were their comfort, their necessity and their way of life. If I was to find my phantom, I would need more helpful clues than a belt with a knife, and a physique that was tall and broad-shouldered. So I was not to get off so lightly.

      Still, my eyes roved.

      I was distracted then by Maisie as she returned to our group, accompanied by Wilkie, her pale arm weaved decisively through his brown, brawny one. I had not met Wilkie before. And although I didn’t know much about him, I could detect that he seemed tense. His expression appeared agitated, as if his concentration was elsewhere. Maisie’s insistent attention did little to engage him, but Maisie was nothing if not persistent. Admirably so, I thought. She fawned and flirted, softly touching his hair and his face until he relented somewhat, an exhibition I found mildly fascinating. In fact, I was so immersed in watching the exchange that I didn’t immediately notice that someone was speaking to me. I very nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw who it was.

      “Are you enjoying your evening, Miss Morrison?” Kade Mackenzie’s voice was deep and inflected with raw, dark energy. Of course I couldn’t help considering the shape and height of him, to compare it against the fresh memory of my hidden stranger. But he was too tall, I thought. And something about his movements seemed too quick.

      He couldn’t be the one, I felt certain. The scent wasn’t quite right, mingled and subdued by the pressing crowd. And he hadn’t used my first name. He probably had no idea which Morrison I was.

      Instead of the enveloping calm I’d experienced in the stranger’s embrace, and despite the relaxed, festive mood of the scene, the air between us felt charged, as though laced with a barely restrained warning. I could sense even more strongly at this close proximity that Kade was a man with an unpredictable nature. The glint in his eyes seemed to confirm my estimations while also suggesting he was having no difficulty reading every nuance of my tangled unease. Again I thought about fleeing somewhere, anywhere, as quickly as I could. But it was this almost-teasing edge to his manner that held me in place. I felt mildly irked by the nudging humor in him, as though the obvious fact that he was making me nervous was entertaining to him.

      He had asked me a question, and was waiting for my reply. I had to concentrate for a moment to recall it. A simple, meaningless pleasantry. Are you enjoying your evening, Miss Morrison? The polite thing to do would have been to lie, especially considering it was his family that was hosting the event. Instead, I heard myself saying, “Not particularly.”

      It was then that Kade Mackenzie smiled, just slightly, at my response. And it occurred to me at that moment that, while Wilkie was the famously good-looking brother, Kade was equally striking but somehow too complicated in expression to be conventionally handsome. His looks were dominated by reckless layers of the unknown. “She has a seraphic face,” he commented, “a body that could reduce a grown man to tears, a corralled feistiness that shines through nonetheless, lightning-quick reflexes—if what is heard is to be believed—yet her manners leave something to be desired. How very interesting. I’ll admit, you’re not quite what I was expecting.”

      Despite my layered reservations, I almost smiled, simultaneously miffed and flattered by his offhand description. I couldn’t help asking it: “And what were you expecting?” The admission that he had been expecting anything at all seemed to confirm that Kade Mackenzie had gone out of his way to approach me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. Apprehensive, certainly. The thought of being conquered by this specimen of virile ferocity was more than I could grasp in my current state.

      He took a СКАЧАТЬ