“I’m sitting as I always dae.” He adjusted the reins with a fluid roll of his shoulders that brought her even closer. “It’s you that’s flailing about like a hen who’s lost her head.”
Her indignation burned hotter than the embarrassment prickling her skin. She tried to lean forward, away from him, but the horse jolted suddenly, and she nearly pitched sideways.
Kenneth tightened his hold at once, his forearm banding across her middle, drawing her securely back against him.
“Ye see?” His breath brushed her ear. “Ye’d be on the ground if I let ye go.”
“That is not…this is not…” Words tangled hopelessly on her tongue, partly from indignation, partly from the awareness of his hard body pressed along the length of hers. No man had ever held her so closely.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
“Ye ken the name I am called,” he said simply. Not boastful. Not ashamed. Simply stating a truth.
“I believe many in Scotland know you as the Brute of Sleat,” she replied, lifting her chin. “Mayhap even some in England. You’re feared.”
“Is that so?” he murmured, unreadable.
“Yes,” Her voice trembled with cold and something else she could not name. Not fear. Excitement? Anticipation? “And now I… I… find myself tied to you, wearing scarcely more than my shift, on a horse, in the middle of nowhere.”
“Ye forgotsoaking wet and half frozen,” he added. “That’s an important part of the story.”
She glared at him. But save for a tiny flicker at the corner of his wide mouth – which could have been amusement – there was no response. He was impervious to her ire.
He faced forward, guiding the horse with the ease of a man born to command beast and land alike. The plaid around her tightened slightly as he adjusted it, protecting her from the icy wind.
“We ride fer Duntulm.” He urged the horse forward and their pace increased. “Once there, ye and I will speak together and ye will tell me exactly who ye are, where ye’ve come from, and just what business ye had on a ship with no colors sailing in me waters.”
Selene swallowed hard, raising her tethered hands to clutch her mother’s necklace at her throat. By some miracle it had survived her near murder and near drowning and was still in its place. A comfort, always.
But nothing could still her awareness of the steadiness, the strength, the unsettling calm of the powerful man holding her. And nothing could still the undeniable crackle of tension that flickered between them like the remnants of lightning after a storm.
Indeed. He was her enemy.
They were enemies who had been pressed entirely too close together.
And, despite every grain of commonsense in Selene’s body telling her to beware, she was forced to acknowledge that between them was the faintest spark of something else. Something she’d never felt before, something she did not understand.
CHAPTER THREE
The wind came sweeping across the ridge in long, icy gusts tossing Selene’s hair across her eyes and stealing her breath with every inhale. Kenneth’s great warhorse climbed steadily up the narrow path, its hooves crunching over rain-slick stones, while she sat rigid against the laird’s chest. The leather straps binding her hands tugged with each jolt of the horse’s gait, abrading her wrists and reminding her at every heartbeat that she was not his guest, but his prisoner.
The ridge curved, and through the swirling mist she caught her first glimpse of Duntulm Castle. It did not merely sit upon the headland – itcommandedit. Its jagged silhouette rose from the cliff as though carved from the very stones of the peninsula. The sea churned below in frothing arcs of grey and white, the waves sending up sprays that rode the wind to kiss her cheeks with cold salt.
As they approached, the castle’s dark walls loomed ever larger, their ancient stones scorched by storms and centuries of fierce northern weather.
Selene swallowed hard.
It looked nothing like the elegant, hospitable manors of Hertfordshire where she’d been raised. This was a fortress for warriors – and she was being taken against her will straight into the very heart of it.
Kenneth’s voice rumbled behind her, low and steady.
“Hold yerself firm,” he said. “The last stretch can be treacherous.”
She stiffened. “My hands are bound, Laird MacDonald. I’m hardly in danger of falling when I cannot move at all.”
His only response was the tightening of the arm that encircled her waist, steadying her as the horse picked its careful way up the final, steep incline. Wind roared in their ears, tearing at cloaks and sending grit against their faces. Bracing herself, Selene held fast to what little dignity she could muster, determined not to huddle closer to the brute’s broad chest.
Past the gatehouse arch, the wind softened into a low moan. The courtyard burst around them with sudden noise and movement: stable lads running forward, men calling out welcomes, women carrying baskets stopping to stare.
