Highlander Taken. Juliette Miller

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as he spoke. Oddly, there was a comforting edge to the rough, quiet timbre of it that was not dissimilar, I couldn’t help but consider, to the hushed murmur of my hidden stranger. Let me take you. “What I was expecting was a quaint, moderately pleasing heiress with a penchant for insolence. The insolence is true enough. Heiress, aye, although the wealth on offer is somewhat overstated, we have reason to believe. As for the other details of the expectation, trust me when I assure you they were entirely inaccurate. Absurdly so.”

      I could only stare at him, agog at his confessions. I thought he might have just given me a very solicitous compliment even as he also might have insulted me, but, in fact, I couldn’t be entirely sure either way. Whatever his meaning, it was clear enough that he was taking pleasure in his attempt to confuse me. And he was coming quite close to succeeding. But I was already riled enough by the recent difficulties of the life I was being forced to lead. So I decided not to give him the satisfaction. “If you find me quaint and insolent, then perhaps you should seek out the conversation of someone more pleasing to you.”

      At this, he smiled widely, his white teeth gleaming against the bronze glow of his face and his hair. He folded his arms across his broad chest and leaned a shoulder against the stone wall in a languid, insouciant movement that brought to light his sparked arrogance and his easy confidence. He possessed an odd combination of wicked appeal and pronounced, daring impulsiveness that infused me with an unusual anxious thrill. His eyes never left me. “On the contrary, I find insolence in women very intriguing—it happens to be an affliction that I’m able to cure almost entirely under the right circumstances. And if you’d been paying attention, you would understand that I find you quite the opposite of quaint. I can think of several other words I might use to describe you, aye, but even those seem lacking. Give me a minute to think of something more precise.”

      I wanted to ask him what those words were, of course, but I could see that he was playing with me, and expecting my curiosity to get the better of me, so I waited, watching him study my face. Disconcertingly, the effects of his comments and his smile burrowed into me, touching the shadowy, sensual effects of my encounter with the garden stranger. I tried desperately to distract myself, to tone down or ignore the light swell and the heat of my most private vulnerabilities, but my body had other ideas. I felt my cheeks flush and my breath quicken, and I looked away from him. I was surely going mad. I took a deep breath, willing myself not to burn under the heat of his blazing attentions.

      “Am I making you nervous?” he asked softly, his lingering smile irritatingly perceptive.

      “Nay,” I said somewhat indignantly, albeit breathless, although he clearly was.

      I met his eyes with cautious curiosity. I wanted to disengage myself from his arresting countenance but could not. Inexplicably, he was devastating me with a tumult of crashing, unknowable regrets and empty wishes. The search of his focus seemed to illuminate everything I had ever aspired to but had never, either through circumstance or from fear, been able to attain. Freedom. Choice. Love. Real happiness. I could not explain how this rugged stranger was able to expose such deep, suppressed feelings in me, as though he held the key to hidden recesses of my psyche that even I had not explored. Kade Mackenzie frightened me, aye, but there was more to it than that; his effect on me was acute, as though his own reckless tendencies were impacting me, and guiding me. Under the animated weight of his attentions, I felt I was losing control.

      “Or am I affecting you in some other way?” he said, leaning closer. “Some wholly unexpected, visceral inclination that has you, in this very moment, questioning all your powers of resistance?”

      How did he know that?

      It wasn’t him I felt the need to resist, I assured myself. I was overcome by my encounter in the secluded garden. I was suffering under the effects of the ale perhaps, or I was flushed and disoriented from the night air.

      Kade continued, his voice low, his words meant exclusively for me. I watched his enigmatic, seraphic face as he spoke, with undue absorption. “And that’s not the extent of it, I’m guessing. There’s more to it, is there not? A wandering, restless hunger newly inspired, as it just so happens, here and now. As soon as you saw me, it would appear.”

      “You flatter yourself,” I said quickly, hoping to break this connection in any way I could. Through rudeness, or any other means—it didn’t matter, as long as I could somehow contain my composure and stop myself from doing something entirely inappropriate, like taking his hand and leading him into a quiet alcove. To let his influence arrest me and free me in any way it would. But I would only have been trying to recreate my illicit encounter with the garden phantom, I knew. Either way, I clasped my hands together behind me and made a point of neither reaching for nor even appreciating the invitingly thick locks of his richly colored dark hair that hung almost to his shoulders in shiny disarray.

      He was toying with me, overflowing with charm, assured as he was of his own allure. An allure, to be sure, I wanted nothing to do with.

      Kade’s flashing eyes, as though reading my thoughts and finding reason to believe he was responsible for them, gave the impression that he was similarly affected, as though he might strike out at any moment, or indulge a wicked temper or start a fight. Each prospect, to me, was more daunting than the last. And even if I had seen a glimmer of amusement in him that I might not have expected and was undeniably drawn to, I couldn’t shake the desire to distance myself from him, and quickly. He was too intense, too fiery, too confident, too masculine, too everything.

      Fortunately, a commotion caused our circle to disperse. It was Wilkie who was causing a scene. He had, at some point during my distraction, removed himself from Maisie’s grasp. Now he was some distance away, and holding the arm of Angus Munro in a viselike grip, pure fury written on his face. And Wilkie’s other arm was slung possessively around a young woman I did not recognize. She had white-blond hair and eyes that were green even from a distance, attributes that made it clear that she hailed neither from the Mackenzie clan nor Munro. Her look was decidedly foreign, exotic even, and she was—it had to be said—devastatingly beautiful. I couldn’t help but marvel at the shimmery fair colors of her, emphasized further not only by the pastel-pink shades of her dress, but also by Wilkie’s black-haired and stormy-eyed counterpoint. Her slender body was pushed up scandalously close to Wilkie’s, and her face, as she gazed up at him, clearly shone with a complete and unwavering adoration.

      Angus was released and dismissed by Wilkie, and took his leave, retreating to the buffet table, still rubbing his wrist. And any questions the crowd might have had about the fair-haired girl were written most painfully across Maisie’s face. Who was she? And why was Wilkie embracing her in this way and with a look on his face as though he was not only enraged and somehow anguished, but also utterly love-struck?

      Before any such questions could even be asked and without so much as a backward glance, Wilkie disappeared with his willing captive up the grand staircase of the Mackenzie manor.

      Maisie wasn’t the only one who was distraught at this unexpected turn of events. The gravity of Wilkie’s connection to the mysterious young woman had been apparent to all of us. And, while none of us knew quite what to make of the scene we had just witnessed, I had a distinct feeling that the consequences of that scene would extend beyond Wilkie, beyond Maisie and somehow to me. As though to confirm my anxious suspicion, Kade Mackenzie’s narrowed and unyielding stare speared me with its thoughtful, wicked intensity, and I could read there my worst fears.

      CHAPTER THREE

      I WAS DREAMING. I knew this even as I drifted willingly into the sweet, comforting fantasy. Caleb’s cool hand reached for mine, the touch light and welcoming. He helped me from the carriage, taking me close to his slim, warm body, ushering me into a back-alley stables. Sounds of the city filled the rain-soaked night—men’s voices, СКАЧАТЬ