Across a Dark Highland Shore (Hot Highlands Romance Book 2) by Kelly Jameson Page A

here?”
    “Yea. And my father. He died three years ago. A vera brave man. All those battles where he charged into the fray with a seeming disregard for life and limb, for regimen and drill and odds, only to grow auld and become a sick, weak man and die quietly in his bed. It was vera hard to see him that way. He is one of the reasons the Macleans are known as the ‘race of the iron sword’.”
    Leith’s eyes had a faraway look in them. “On his death bed, when he was reminded that he’d been in at least nineteen battles, he laughed and said he should’ve made it an even twenty and asked someone to hand him his sword. He actually tried to get out of bed. But he was too frail.”
    “I am the bastard daughter of Brodie MacKinnon. Brodie loved my mother but he was already married to a shrewish woman, a marriage of convenience. A marriage made for practical reasons.”
    “Is there any other kind?” he said gruffly.
    “I think there could be.”
    “A marriage for love is undertaken with greater risks.”
    “Aye, Highlander. But there may be higher costs for taking a marriage that is devoid of love and affection, lacking in passion and excitement and understanding.”
    He frowned.
    “Anyway, I didna really have a chance to know my father until later in life and just as I was beginning to know him, he died.” Isobel turned her gaze back toward the snowy churchyard. “Why have ye no’ married before Lady Katherine?”
    “There have been other women. The kind that would have this face.” He frowned. “Truth be told, I was married once. I was young and I willna speak of it. Until Jocelin, I abhorred the idea of marriage. I thought of it as a game and refused to be caught. None of the proposed matches after Jocelin…well, none would bring a benefit to the clan as a match with Lady Katherine would. So I successfully avoided another marriage for years.”
    Her gaze once again sought his. “So others have since tried to snare ye into an abhorrent, life-long union?”
    “Countless, countless numbers.” A playful smile danced on his rugged face.
    “Perhaps they came to realize that their failure at capturing ye as a husband was actually their vera good fortune.”
    He laughed.
    “So why marry now, and why Lady Katherine, yer brother’s fiancée?”
    “It would bring a much needed peace with the Campbells. And I promised Logan I would take care of her, and the clan, if anything happened to him.”
    “He had a premonition?”
    “Aye.”
    The snow had begun to fall again and it ticked softly against the windows. Isobel rose and turned her back to him as she watched it. “Isn’t it always true that the one ye canna have becomes more desirable by far than all those that fall freely at yer feet?”
    “’Tis a match that makes sense from a practical point,” he said. “It would unite our clans and bring years of peace. Lady Katherine is a Campbell. It would….”
    Isobel turned to face him. “Ye dunna have to convince me of the reasons why. Love, desire, practicality …it chooses whom it chooses. And we often have no say in the matter.” She frowned. “Ye seem to take this all in stride though. I mean, ye seem to take it for granted that she’ll change her mind and eventually agree to marry ye in place of yer brother.”
    “How else could I take it? It’s what Logan would’ve wanted. Eventually she will see it.”
    “Are ye so certain?”
    The lines around his mouth tightened.
    “Ye dunna seem to realize that Lady Katherine views the prospect of marriage to ye as she might view her own approaching execution.”
    He laughed again, an explosive sound in the tiny chapel. “Then we have a lot of work ahead of us. I ken I canna ha’e with her what she had with Logan. I dunna expect it.”
    “Perhaps it is because ye dunna expect it that ye will fail.”
    “What do ye mean, Isobel?”
    “I mean, Lady Katherine is no’ a woman who can be won over with practicality and logic. She has been pampered and