Highland Rogue Read Online Free

sorely. Perhaps he should make a few discreet inquiries about Brancasters, after all.
    * * *
    I left my home ten years ago.
    Ewan Geddes’s words, and the glint of outrage beneath his facade of casual charm, made Claire’s stomach constrict and her breath catch, as if strong hands had suddenly pulled the stays of her corset even tighter.
    She’d come tonight expecting to do battle with a simple fortune hunter, like Major Hamilton-Smythe. Instead, she’d found an old adversary who might have far darker motives and a far greater capacity for mischief. One who might wish to harm the only two things in the world she cared about—her sister and Brancasters.
    As the orchestra struck up a new tune, Claire turned to Obadiah Hutt. Behind the cover of her gloved hand, she whispered, “Ask her to dance.”
    When he seemed not to hear, or perhaps not to understand, she hissed, “My sister! Invite her to dance.”
    “Miss Tessa?” Mr. Hutt extended his arm, as Claire had bidden him. “May I have the honor?”
    When Tessa cast a doubtful glance at Ewan Geddes, Claire urged, “Go ahead, dearest. There’s apt to be less talk if you’re seen dancing with a number of different gentlemen while Spencer is out of town.”
    “Very well, then.” Tessa shot her sister a look as she took to the floor with Mr. Hutt—half warning, half pleading with Claire not to make a scene.
    Claire and Ewan stood for a moment in awkward silence, watching Tessa and Mr. Hutt ease their way into the swirl of dancers.
    “Well?” she challenged, when it became obvious he meant to ignore the opportunity. “Aren’t you going to invite
me
to dance?”
    She quashed a foolish flicker of eagerness to feel his arms about her once again. Hadn’t ten years and a succession of men like Max Hamilton-Smythe taught her anything?
    The Scotsman raised his dark, emphatic brows and thrust out his lower lip in a doubtful expression. “Ye wouldn’t think it too forward—a former servant taking liberties with the laird’s daughter?”
    Claire skewered him with an icy glare, but she kept her tone and smile impeccably polite. “That would not be a first for you, would it?”
    That wasn’t fair, her conscience protested. Ten years ago, she’d craved every liberty Ewan Geddes had been prepared to take with her. The trouble was, he’d only ever wanted to take them with her beautiful, vivacious younger sister.
    For a moment, his gray eyes darkened like thunderheads over Ben Blane. Then, just as quickly, they cleared like the morning mist off Loch Liath. Both stirred something in Claire that she did not wish to have stirred. Heaven help her if she let this man gain any of his old power over her heart, or, worse yet, guess that he had.
    He made a bow, so deep and sweeping it verged on mockery. “In that case, Miss Talbot, as my folks say, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Will ye do me the honor of a dance?”
    No one had ever roused her usually temperate emotions the way he did. Claire struggled to subdue them.
    “Did your people steal a great many sheep?” she inquired with arch civility, as she took Ewan’s arm and let him lead her to the floor.
    “Only as many as they needed to keep from starving after they were driven from their land.” He spoke in a tone of cheerful banter quite at odds with his words. But when he took Claire’s hand in his and slipped his arm around her waist, she could feel the taut clench of his muscles.
    Perhaps she provoked a more intense reaction in him than he had ever permitted her to see. The possibility restored a bit of her self-respect.
    Remembering the reason she had lured him to the dance floor in the first place, she ignored his bait about starving Highlanders. “You look very prosperous now. You’ve done well for yourself in America?”
    Not so well, surely, that the Brancaster fortune would fail to tempt him?
    “Well enough.” His reply confirmed Claire’s suspicion. “There’s no limit, in the New