Highland Master Read Online Free Page B

traveled alone.
    The fact was that he was in enemy territory. To be sure, a truce had existed since the great clan battle. But truces could evaporate overnight, especially in conflicts over land. And when a feud had gone on for decades, as the Cameron-Mackintosh feud had… Had whoever shot him known he was a Cameron?
    Fin knew that he had kept up his guard. Although he had seen crofts and cottages along the way, he had not wandered near enough to draw undue notice.
    After entering the woods where the lass found him, he had felt safer. But although the forest provided more cover for a traveler than open glens and hillsides did, the unseen archer had shot him. And no man shot without seeing his target.
    Without the lady Catriona’s timely arrival, the villain might have killed him. In return, he was about to accept her hospitality despite his fell intent toward her father.
    She led him downhill at an angle, past the islet, to a granite slope on which a flat-bottomed boat lay beached. As she dragged its oars from nearby shrubbery, Fin said, “Do you expect that wee coble to carry us
and
the dog all the way to yon islet?”
    Turning to face him—chin raised, eyes flashing—she stood her oars on the ground with their blade ends against one shoulder. “I do expect that, aye. Art so cowardly, sir, that you fear I shall
not
get you safely across?”
    Disliking both the word and her tone but determined not to rise to such obvious bait, Fin noted absently thather eyes were not light brown but golden-hazel. When she glared at him again, he said, “I do wonder, Lady Imperious, if you habitually speak so to men. But, frankly, I’d not trust anyone except myself to row such a craft, overladen as it will be. But the dog and I can swim, and a ducking will do you no harm.”
    When her hand shot up in response, he caught her wrist and held it.

    What, Catriona wondered, had come over her to dare such a thing?
    His grip would leave bruises, she knew. She also knew that had she dared to taunt either of her brothers so, let alone tried to slap him, he would have flung her into the icy loch if not right over his knee. Worse, Fin was injured, albeit evidently recovering quickly, and he was about to become a guest of her father’s household.
    Still annoyed that he had doubted her skill but tingling now in a different, more unusual, and intriguing way in response to the stern look in his eyes, she did not fight his grip or answer his question. Nor would she look away until he released her.
    When he did, she put her oars in the boat and began to tug it toward the water. She had not got far before he grabbed the other side to help her.
    If he still suffered from dizziness, the speed at which he had caught her hand belied it, as did the ease with which they dragged the boat to the water. Still silent, she gestured to Boreas, and while she and Fin steadied the boat, the dog stepped gingerly into it, then over the oars and the midthwart to curl up in the stern.
    Fin continued to eye the boat askance. “Mayhap I
should
row,” he said.
    “With you in the middle and Boreas at the stern, the pair of you would likely weigh it under whilst I was still trying to launch it and climb into the bow,” she retorted. “However, you have clearly recovered enough to launch us, and I expect you are agile enough to jump in without getting your feet wet if that concerns you.”
    This time when his gaze met hers, something in the look he gave her shot a sense of warning through her. But he said only, “Get in, lass.”
    Wondering what demon had possessed her to tease him again, she obeyed at once and took her seat. Facing the stern and Boreas, she freed her kilted-up skirts for propriety’s sake and adjusted the arrow at her girdle more comfortably. Then, taking up her oars, she steadied the coble while Fin of the Battles launched it.
    When he swung himself into the bow, water sloshed over the port side, but it was not enough to endanger them. The boat had