Highland Grace Read Online Free Page A

to happen for quite some time to come.”
    The woman saw her first and settled her hand
on Bao’s shoulder, leaning with intimacy and familiarity into him
as she whispered something to him and tilted her head in Jesslyn’s
direction. The same carnal smile he’d bestowed on Jesslyn so often,
darkened his features as he gazed at his companion. Jealousy,
molten and quick, pounded through her veins. ‘Twas clear that the
lady was much more than a responsibility to him. Was she one of
the ladies who paid him for his services?
    He swung his gaze to Jesslyn. His eyes
flashed with what she believed to be lust, but instantly
disintegrated into a look of bored disinterest. It cleaved her
chest like a sword. He gave her a nod. “Jesslyn.” Mayhap the
friendship they’d managed to salvage last summer was an illusion on
her part. Which told her that he would not be happy about the babe,
and would be better off not knowing he’d fathered it.
    “G’morn,” Jesslyn replied shakily, with a
quick dip of courtesy.
    “Come inside.” Daniel broke from the circle
they’d formed by the hearth and walked over to her, placing her
hand in the crook of his arm as he began escorting her toward the
others.
    “I beg you, don’t say anything about my
condition just yet, will you?” she said sotto voce as she
walked beside him.
    Daniel narrowed a gaze at her, but nodded his
agreement.
    * * *
    Bao stepped to the other side of Lady
MacGhille, in hopes that Daniel would step into the void with
Jesslyn, so that Bao could keep his distance from her.
Unfortunately, Daniel chose to neatly tuck Jesslyn between them.
Almost instantly, the scent of lavender assailed his senses, and
brought forth a visceral memory of the glide of her silken skin
against his abdomen, the cushion of her full breasts against his
chest. Blood of Christ! He had to get a grip on this hunger
for her. They’d parted friends the last they met, but his discovery
of her brother’s perfidy—and her family’s own profit from that
perfidy in specific regard to Bao’s mother—had killed those warm
feelings he’d held for her for good. Now all he needed was for his
body’s desire for her to die a quick death as well. He was here for
only as long as it took to transfer Lady MacGhille to her husband,
and then he would be off again. No Hogmanay festival, no
rekindling of the flame between himself and the widow.
    Derek, Daniel’s lieutenant, came through the
entry at that moment. “Lady MacGhille’s husband has arrived. He
gives his thanks and his regret, but is pressed to take his wife
immediately to their holding, as the King has requested his swift
return to court on urgent business. I am to escort the lady to her
palfrey.”
    Daniel stepped toward him. “I shall come with
you and greet Laird MacGhille.”
    Bao stepped forward. “I’ll come as well.”
    The two men left with Lady MacGhille on
Daniel’s arm.
    * * *
    A half-hour later, all were gathered once
more in the great hall.
    “The meal should be ready to be served in a
few more moments,” Bao’s grandmother said to him. “I’ve requested a
bit heartier of a fare than we usually have at this time of day,
since you’ve been traveling for so many days and are in need of
meat.”
    Bao grinned down into her unusual eyes, one
blue, one green, and put his arm around her waist, giving it a
squeeze. Was she thinner than she’d been a few moons past? She
somehow seemed more fragile to him than she’d been before. And her
hair seemed even more gray than it had been then, as well. But her
cheeks were rosy, and that boded well for her health, surely. “My
thanks to you for that, Grandmother. Oat cakes and ale have been
our main sustenance for most of our journey. I believe I could eat
an entire sheep, were it placed before me now—hooves and all!”
    “Bao, if you ate the hooves, I’d swallow a
toad!” Branwenn said.
    “Alive or dead?” Bao replied, a sinister
gleam in his eye.
    Daniel and Maryn