Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] by Master of The Highland (html)

gog-eyed bystanders as he came. “Yon lady kens I leave the exvotos at every shrine we visit,” he recited the agreed-upon words. “She will have but sought the way back to her liege husband by using my votive offerings to trace our steps.”
The grumbles amongst the crowd dwindled until one cheeky soul called out, “And the other lass? Be she your wife?”
Iain’s heart dropped to his feet.
He’d not thought far enough ahead to include the fiery-haired postulant’s tall, generously made friend into his plans.
Indeed, he’d clean forgotten her until her sudden appearance at the beauty’s side.
His blood running cold, Iain glanced off toward the distant foothills of the Highlands. He couldn’t, just couldn’t, look at MacFie.
Or the two women.
Heavy silence stretched taut over the uncomfortable gathering until the comely-featured woman herself pushed to her feet and ran to Gavin MacFie’s, near knocking him down in her exuberant greeting.
The crowd drew a great collective breath.
Iain held his.
And Gavin MacFie played along, setting her gently from him, but keeping a very husbandly-looking arm slung low about her well-rounded hips.
“Anyone still doubt this lady is my wife?” Gavin challenged the onlookers, drawing the lass even closer against his side . . . and winning a good piece of Iain’s gratitude.
Nigh giddy with relief—and some other best-unnamed emotion—Iain raked the crowd with the iciest glare he could muster. “And I, good fellows and ladies, would now see to my own wife,” he said, dropping to one knee beside her.
“Without an audience,” he added, glancing at the lass, his heart twisting at the waxy pallor of her creamy, lightly freckled skin.
He smoothed a softly curling lock of bloodied hair off the side of her face with more tenderness than he’d shown a woman in years—including the one who’d been his true wife.
A gesture he hoped would soothe her . . . and stay her questions until the crowd dispersed.
To that end, he gave them one more warning. “Be gone with you now,” he called over his shoulder, “and be aware that just because I kneel does not mean my steel cannot be at your throat in a heartbeat if you linger.”
None did.
Even MacFie and the beauty’s friend moved away, strolling toward a stone bench placed against the far kirk wall, the Islesman still dragging his leg, though not quite so flagrantly as before.
And to Iain’s greater surprise, the two appeared to be conversing most companionably.
As he would love to do with the beauty stretched at his feet if only she’d crossed his path a lifetime ago.
At a time when he would have been able to greet her with pride and woo her with grace rather than a simple show of muscle and a farcical ruse built on lies.
A faint hint of her clean, heather scent wafted past his nose just then, and Iain swallowed, his reclaimed bravura already showing the first cracks.
Willing them not to worsen, Iain unsheathed his dirk and cut the rope wrapped tight around her ankles. The same slender and delicate ankles that had so fired his blood in the cathedral, now making his gut churn with sheer, roiling anger when he saw how the rough-hewn rope had marred her tender flesh.
“Sweet Jesu,” he swore under his breath, biting back a more volatile oath as he eased away the rope as gently as he could.
“Who are you, sir? I would thank you,” she spoke at last, her voice weakened from her ordeal, but sweet enough to fell him with its pleasing, musical lilt . . . its softness.
A Highland lass.
“Nay, my lady, it is I who must thank you,” Iain managed, still looking at her ankles. “A man on pilgrimage doesn’t oft have the privilege of aiding a fair damsel in need.”
And I would thank you for making me feel alive again.
Alive in ways that went far beyond the fine heat she ignited in his loins.
Saints, but he wished she’d speak again . . . simply for the enjoyment of listening to her lilting, honey-toned voice.
Iain squared his shoulders, the full gravity and mass of everything