The Lady's Protector (Highland Bodyguards #1) Read Online Free Page A

built yet, the rider found the narrow dirt entrance between two of the ponds that the laborers used to cart in supplies. He spurred his steed toward the gate.
    The rider crossed through the gate and reappeared a second later in the yard. With practiced ease, he swung from the saddle. He turned a slow circle, seeming to take in the construction and the unfinished nature of the castle.
    This close, she could now see that he was soaked to the bone. His simple clothes clung to him, his dark, uncovered hair dripping down his back. He was far larger than she had realized from a distance. He would likely tower over most of the laborers, though his wide shoulders spoke of a familiarity with hard work.
    “Who is in charge here?” he barked to no one in particular.
    Isolda felt her brows collide. Did she detect a Scottish burr in the man’s deep voice? A new rush of unease thrummed in her veins. A Scottish accent was not so unusual to hear in the Borderlands. Yet the man who’d just barreled into the yard didn’t look like a simple Lowland laborer. His movements were too fluid, too…lethal. Like a warrior’s.
    Disquiet coiling tighter in her belly, she lifted her skirts and hurried toward the spiral stairs leading back down to the yard. When she was almost all the way down the gatehouse stairs, she heard the stranger’s booming voice demand once more who was in charge.
    Where was Bertram? She couldn’t hide like a coward and wait for her guard to arrive. Nay, she was the lady of this keep.
    She stepped through the open doorway and into the yard, dropping her skirts with a swish of silken fabric. The rider spun on his heels and pinned her with a hard stare, his dark eyes sharp and penetrating.
    Shoving down the quake of fear that jolted through her, she lifted her head in an imitation of the most regal of ladies.
    “I am.”

Chapter Three
     
     
     
     
    Ansel narrowed his eyes on the woman who stepped from the stone tower with the air of a queen, her red gown swishing softly.
    “What do ye mean, ye are in charge?”
    Whatever Ansel had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Granted, he hadn’t had much information to go on, but a castle in shambles housing an English noblewoman who claimed to be in charge was a stretch.
    He’d ridden hard for nigh a sennight to get here as fast as possible, imagining that Lancaster’s bastard son could be set upon by Edward’s lackeys at any moment. Though he’d been caught in squall after squall, with the latest rainstorm lasting all through last night and into this morning as he’d approached the castle, he’d pushed onward, determined to take on this mission.
    From a distance, Dunstanburgh Castle had been the imposing stronghold he’d been led to believe it was. But as he’d drawn closer, he made out the rough, unfinished lines of the curtain wall and the jagged protrusion of several incomplete towers. What kind of God-awful place had Lancaster stowed this son whom he claimed needed protection?
    And when he’d ridden right through the open—nay, nonexistent—gates as if he owned the damn keep without so much as a guard to greet him or a question leveled at him about what his business was, he felt as if he’d been kicked in the ribs. Could this assignment be even more absurd and ill-conceived than he’d let himself suspect?
    Now, the Englishwoman before him was looking at him as if he were a clump of shite stuck to a horse’s hoof. Though he would tower over her if she stood closer, her pale chin was tilted in such a way that she managed to appear as though she looked down on him.
    “What do I mean? I mean that I am the lady of this keep,” she responded tersely. “What business do you have here?”
    Ansel’s mood turned a shade darker. No one had mentioned anything about an English noblewoman running Dunstanburgh in Lancaster’s stead. What else didn’t he know about this cursed mission?
    “I am here to collect the Earl of Lancaster’s bastard son,” he ground