One Night with the Highlander (The Gilvrys of Dunross) Read Online Free

heard in his voice? “Our maid stayed to attend my mother,” she said calmly. “And besides, it is only a few steps from here to Ivy Cottage.”
    “I will walk you home.”
    The tone of command in his voice and the set of his jaw said he would not take no for an answer. Most likely he intended to use their time in private to warn her away from his family. And he would be in the right. She should never have suggested this call. Once she had left him at the post office, reason should have returned. She should have written with excuses, as Mother had advised. But it seemed where he was concerned Annabelle’s willpower was lacking.
    Just as it had been when she was a girl. The moment she had seen him, good sense flew out the window. Now it was time to face reality. “I am glad to accept your escort, Mr. McLaughlin.” She couldn’t do him too much harm in the time it would take him to walk her to her front door, and she would assure him she had no intention of drawing his cousin into her sphere.
    With a smile, she leaned down and patted Lady Jenna’s small hand. “All things pass in time,” she said softly. “The pain eases and leaves only the happiest of memories.”
    Once more Lady Jenna’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Thank you,” she said huskily.
    Gordon escorted Annabelle from the room.
    * * *
    He could not believe it. After all these years, he was strolling down a country lane in the sunshine with Annabelle’s hand in the crook of arm, accompanied by the twitter of sparrows. Fortunately, it hadn’t rained for days, and the rutted lane between the dry stone walls merely mired their footwear in dust.
    Though if there had been puddles, he might have had an excuse to carry her over them. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Where he had been stunned by her beauty yesterday, today he could only admire her aplomb. Her dignity. At least his mind held that sort of admiration. Another part of him was occupied by the base urge to investigate the rumors of her wantonness.
    And that disgusted him. She had been kindness itself to poor little Jenna, where he had been all fingers and thumbs. Tongue-tied when it came to offering comfort. Much as he had been when he had brought her to her aunt as a child.
    His mind hadn’t been on Lady Jenna then. The moment he saw Annabelle at that assembly, he’d been lost in a sea of desire.
    When she slipped away from the ball to meet him in the courtyard, he’d been enchanted by her bravery. Her spirit of adventure. He remembered her laughter and his clumsy kiss as if it was yesterday. The hesitant brush of their lips. The way she had tasted on his mouth. The warmth and silkiness of her cheek beneath his trembling fingers. And the scent of her soap. He never smelled roses without thinking of Annabelle, he realized. Or the desperate ache of a young man for a first love.
    He had never experienced those same heightened feelings again. Not for any woman he’d known. And while the pain of hearing she’d wed had dwindled over time, it was only now he realized an echo of it remained deeply buried. It was time to be rid of it.
    “I can’t believe it is five years since we met,” he said, to break the lengthy silence.
    She glanced up at him, shadows filling her expression. “We were so very young, weren’t we?”
    “Too young, I suspect.” He inwardly mocked the recollection of how his body had ached for her for days. “You married soon after I left, I understand.” In Boston, when he’d read the announcement in the Edinburgh paper, The Scotsman , he’d been angry as well as hurt. “I had no idea you were betrothed when we met.” The stars in her eyes when she’d looked at him had led him down a whole other path.
    “I wasn’t,” she said, her gaze fixed on the rutted road. “It was decided very quickly.”
    The breath left his body as if he had been punched in the gut. “Not because of me?”
    Halting in her tracks, she looked up, a frown crinkling her