Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 02] Read Online Free Page B

still on the Continent. Weyland would already have sent for his best gunman to protect his precious daughter.
    Good. Hugh should be there to see Grey end her life. Both MacCarrick and Weyland should know the searing purity of grief.
    There was power innate in having nothing left to lose.
    Years ago, Weyland had said that Grey was suited for his occupation because he possessed no mercy, but he’d been wrong then. Years ago, Grey wouldn’t have been able to happily slit Jane’s pretty throat. Weyland wasn’t wrong now.
    With a shriek, Jane rolled out of the way just as a corner of the mural hammered into the floor directly beside her. She didn’t have time to gape at how close it had been because more charging people overwhelmed her. She couldn’t breathe. With a cry, she ducked her head down, raising an arm over her face.
    Seconds later, Jane lowered her arm, brows drawn in confusion.
    The crowd was parting around her instead of treading over her.
    At last, she had room to maneuver, a fighting chance….
    She’d be damned if she’d be killed by the very spectacle she’d come to leer at! Finally able to gather her skirts, she made another wobbling attempt to rise, and lurched to her feet. Whirling around, she lunged forward. Free!
    No! Brought up short, she dropped to her front with a thud. She crawled on her forearms, but realized she was crawling in place. Something still anchored her. More people coming in a rush—
    The middle-aged roué she’d seen earlier dropped bodily to the ground beside her, holding his bleeding nose, staring up horrified at something behind them. Before she could even react, another man went flying over her, landing flat on his back.
    Suddenly, her skirts were tossed up to the backs of her legs, and a hot, calloused hand clamped onto her thigh. Her eyes went wide in shock. Another hand pawed at her petticoats, ripping them.
    “Wh-what are you doing?” she screeched, her head whipping around. With her mask askew and her hair tumbling into her face, she could barely see the man through the shadows of a jungle of legs all around them. “Unhand me this instant!” She jostled the leg he held firmly.
    With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair away, and spied another flash of her attacker. Grim lips pulled back from white teeth as if in a snarl. Three gashes ran down his cheek, and his face was dirty.
    His eyes held a murderous rage.
    The visage disappeared as her attacker bolted to his feet and felled another oncoming patron, before dropping down beside her once more. His fist shot up at intervals as he ripped again at her petticoats.
    She realized he’d finally stopped—when he swooped her up onto his shoulder.
    “H-how dare you!” she cried, pummeling his broad back. She vaguely noted that this was a bear of a man who’d lifted her with the ease of plucking lint from a lapel. The body she was looped over was massive, the arm over her heavy and unyielding. His fingers were splayed, it seemed, over the entire width of her bottom.
    “Don’t go this way! Put me down!” she demanded. “How dare you paw at me, ripping at my undergarments!” As soon as she’d said the last, she spotted the remains of her petticoats pinned beneath a mural with a jaunty satyr covering a nymph. Her face flamed.
    With his free arm, the man sent patrons careening. “Lass, it’s nothing you have no’ shown me before.”
    “What?” Her jaw dropped. Hugh MacCarrick? This murderous-looking fiend was her gentle giant of a Scot?
    Returned after ten years.
    “You doona remember me?”
    Oh, yes, she did. And remembering how she’d fared the last time the Highlander had drifted into her life, she wondered if she mightn’t have been better off trampled by a drunken horde.

Five
    O utside, instead of following the general flight down Haymarket, Hugh immediately ducked down a back alley behind a gin palace, then set her on her feet.
    Before she could say a word, he began pawing her again. “Were you