Teresa Medeiros Read Online Free Page B

as their chieftain was in mismatched tartans and trews. Sabrina shuddered, wondering how many people had died to clothe them. From what she had heard of the MacDonnells, she suspected their victims had found themselves stripped before their bodies had even cooled. The wilted plumes of their bonnets danced in the breeze from the open door.
    The old man’s gnarled fingers clutched the hilt of a rusty claymore that dragged the ground with each step. Sabrina’s father had a similar antique mounted on his chamber wall.
    “Dougal Cameron, ye worthless son of a whore!” the MacDonnell bellowed. Enid gasped and shifted her hands from her eyes to her ears.
    Sabrina’s father swaggered forward, hands on hips and legs splayed in arrogant challenge. “Angus MacDonnell, you foolish goat-spawned bastard!” he roared in return.
    The chieftain of the MacDonnells cocked his head like a canny parrot. “Is that any way to greet an ol’ friend?” he whined before throwing his arms around her glowering father and drawing him into a crushing embrace.
    The hall resounded with alarmed cries. Brian and Alex rushed forward to ensure the wily old man wasn’t hiding a dirk in his knobby paw.
    “The Glasgow stage lost a great actor in that one,” Sabrina whispered.
    “I once read of an actor whose wig caught afire and—”
    “Shhhh,” Sabrina hissed, not wanting to miss a word of her father’s reaction.
    Dougal waved back his would-be rescuers and slapped Angus on the back. “Friend or enemy, Angus MacDonnell, welcome to Cameron Manor. Tonight we lay down our old grudges to feast together.” He stepped back and spread his arms wide. “As a sign of our goodwill, my men have laid down their weapons as well.” Arching his eyebrow, he gave the MacDonnell’s ancient claymore a pointed look.
    A rumble of discontent and profanity rose from the motley band of Highlanders, but when their chieftain drew out his claymore with a flourish and tossed it down, they had no choice but to follow suit. An arsenal of broadswords, pistols, harquebuses, dirks, muskets, and clubs emerged from scabbards and hidden pockets to rain down on the stone floor. The clatter was deafening.
    Sabrina took advantage of the confusion to search their ranks for Morgan’s slender form. But all thoughts of her old nemesis fled as a man who had been hanging behind the others stepped through the door in a swirl of night mist.
    “Holy Hannah,” Enid breathed. “The legends are true! They
are
giants!”
    Sabrina’s breath caught in her throat. The MacDonnells were tall, but this man towered head and shoulders over every other man in the hall. He neither strutted nor swaggered as his clansmen did. He didn’t have to. He wore no bonnet and his sun-burnished mane hung well past his shoulders. A belted hunter’s plaid of misty blue and black hugged his massive form, and Sabrina realized with shock that he was not only bare-kneed, but barefoot as well. He made the Cameron men in their European dress look effete by comparison. Sabrina wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a mad skirl of bagpipes herald his arrival, wailing in time to the throbbing drumbeat of her heart.
    His back was to the gallery and she could see the tension knotted in the massive breadth of his shoulders as he drew a monstrous Lochaber ax from his belt. A primitive thrill of fear clutched her heart. It was too easy to imagine his muscled arms swinging the gleaming blade, cleaving off the heads …
    Enid nudged her, already fumbling for the bottle of hartshorn she carried in her pocket to avert potential swoons. “You’re deathly pale. You’re not going to faint, are you?”
    Sabrina wrinkled her nose and shoved the pungent spirits away. “Of course not.” She shook off a shiver, trying to convince herself revulsion had prompted it. “I just don’t fancy large men. Especially large men with such enormous … muscles.”
    A dreamy sigh escaped Enid. “I shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss him if