The Rogue: A Highland Guard Novella (The Highland Guard) Read Online Free Page A

was a daily occurrence.
    Was it? She pushed the thought sharply away.
    But perhaps he was more affected than he appeared—he still hadn’t looked at her.
    “Are you all right, my lady?” the second man asked. “Were you harmed?”
    Devastated but not harmed. What had she done? How could she have let him kiss her like that? He was supposed to be courting her cousin, not kissing her. He didn’t even like her.
    “I’m fine,” she assured him, pleased by the relative evenness of her own voice when her insides were a riot of emotions too tangled to analyze.
    “We should get you back to the castle to make sure,” Randolph said.
    Their eyes met, and she felt a pinch of disappointment in her chest. The mask was firmly back in place. Whatever lightening of humor, whatever relaxing, whatever common ground they might have temporarily found had been wiped away by that kiss.
    He looked just as prickly as when they’d first started out. His arrogant features were set perfectly in place. The mouth that had just plundered hers so tenderly and thoroughly was pulled in a tight line and the jaw below it had turned once again as rigid as stone.
    She nodded and looked away, suddenly as eager as he to see this ride over.

CHAPTER TWO
    Lost in her thoughts, Izzie didn’t notice right away that the soft buzz of conversation beside her had stopped. She was doing some needlework with some of the other women who’d joined King Robert the Bruce at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. Bruce was in Edinburgh preparing for the return of the English king and his army—who were threatening to march on Scotland in the summer—by laying siege to two of the most important castles still in English hands: Edinburgh and nearby Stirling. Izzie’s cousin and Elizabeth’s brother, Jamie, had just captured another important castle, Roxburgh, from the English a few weeks ago.
    With Edinburgh Castle under siege, the abbey was serving as a temporary court for Bruce. This afternoon, Izzie, Elizabeth, and Jamie’s wife, Joanna, had joined the others in Lady Margaret Bruce’s solar. The three women had set themselves off a little—Izzie wasn’t alone in her unusual quiet—but it wasn’t until Elizabeth spoke to her that Izzie realized Joanna had gotten up to sit with some of the women on the other side of the solar, and Izzie and her cousin were alone.
    Her heart sank, anticipating what was coming. It didn’t take long.
    “You’ve been so quiet since you returned, Izzie. Did something happen on your ride today with Randolph?”
    That was one way of putting it. A stab of guilt pricked her conscience. Izzie looked over at her cousin and for a moment thought about telling her the truth: I temporarily lost my mind and let the man you are intending to marry kiss me against a cliff side… and oh yes, by the way, I might have kissed him back.
    The two cousins had always been extremely close, and Izzie suspected Elizabeth would be surprised—God knew, she certainly was—but not angry or heartbroken. It was clear this marriage, if there was to be one, was for duty and dynastic purposes, not affection. Her cousin’s heart was not engaged any more than Randolph’s. Nor was it likely to be, which would serve Elizabeth well when Randolph inevitably strayed from the marriage bed.
    It was silly and perhaps unrealistic—fidelity was hardly common among noblemen—but Izzie wanted more from her marriage. She wasn’t naive or romantic enough to think she would marry for love. Women of noble birth in her and Elizabeth’s position married to forge alliances and advance their families and clans. But she wanted respect, loyalty, and affection from the man she married. Her mother had had that with her first husband, Izzie’s father, but not with her second. She’d warned Izzie before she’d died not to make the same mistake—not to be fooled by a man who seemed too good to be true.
    Izzie had learned the hard way that she should have listened to her. She would not