The Making of a Highlander (Midnight in Scotland #1) - Elisa Braden Page 0,6

Because no one else saw him, apart from a simple lad and an old, daft woman.

“… not have time for this … think we should leave her be, sister,” said the handsome man, drawing the golden woman away. Lockhart. He was a lord.

Annie couldn’t bring herself to curtsy.

A coach rumbled into the square. The two golden-haired Lowlanders murmured with Gilbert MacDonnell before climbing inside.

Rain fell. Wind blew. The square emptied of all but her.

Another shadow merged with hers, taller by a foot and doubly wide. Long, masculine fingers plucked her hat from her limp hand and set it upon her head. Broad shoulders stooped to retrieve her thread from the mud.

“Here, now, Miss Tulloch,” the shadow said in crisp, English tones. “Don’t forget this. I’ve heard it’s the last of the lot.”

Something in his voice made her seek out his eyes. Hazel—brown and green and gold, all at once. Too beautiful for a man, made more so by dense, dark lashes.

And, oddly enough, they were not kind. Not chary like the golden-haired lord’s or gentle like his golden-haired sister’s.

These eyes were simply calm, as though they’d seen too many storms to think one was any worse than another.

“H-he’s gone,” she whispered, unsure why she bothered telling the Englishman.

A crease formed between dark brows. “Who?”

She shook her head. Deep and jagged, the wound that had been gouged minutes earlier widened inside her ribs—that place where Finlay had been tethered.

Gone. Finlay gone.

It hurt so badly, she nearly doubled over.

She must find a way to bring him back. She must. But how? She’d failed to save him. Failed to halt his decline. Failed to hold him tightly enough.

The Englishman continued frowning, but he didn’t keep after her. Instead, he glanced around the empty square, eyed her dripping hat, pocketed her muddy thread, and sighed.

“My cart is this way,” he said, taking her elbow and turning her toward the corner.

“Unnecessary, English.” Her voice sounded faint. Choked. She swallowed and breathed, took enough steps to keep pace with him. “I can walk the same way I came.”

He didn’t slow, didn’t release her. “The cart is faster.” Calm hazel slanted down at her then forged ahead. “Perhaps your stepfather will be more amiable after I drop his daughter at his door.”

Chapter Two

TlU

Everyone called her Mad Annie. Until now, John Huxley hadn’t understood why. True, she occasionally talked to herself. But she’d always appeared sane enough to him—fiery and foul-mouthed, impertinent and utterly unconcerned with convention.

But sane.

Now, the redheaded virago had gone dead silent. She sat beside him on the cart’s bench, soaked and gray, rocking subtly like a graveside mourner.

It was bloody disturbing.

He’d conversed with her a handful of times while meeting with Angus MacPherson. For all her fire, she was a little thing; the top of her head wouldn’t even scrape his chin. But her size was misleading.

Angus MacPherson and his four sons were the real power in this wild, isolated Highland backwater. Hard, ruthless men with all the charm of dyspeptic badgers, the MacPhersons were, nevertheless, wily negotiators.

And formidable opponents.

None of them stood a hair shorter than six-and-a-half feet. None of them weighed a pebble less than sixteen stone. None of them was married, though Angus had been widowed twice. Obsessed with expanding their backwater empire, they’d spent the past twenty years accruing MacDonnell land around Glenscannadoo and the neighboring valley, Glendasheen. The area’s residents—including the supposed clan chieftain, Gilbert MacDonnell—seemed happy to live under MacPherson rule.

Yet, after a single visit to MacPherson House, John quickly realized who ruled the MacPherson men. And she wasn’t even a MacPherson. According to his solicitor, Anne Tulloch had been brought into Angus’s household with her mother around the age of five. A year later, her mother had died, widowing Angus and leaving Annie to be raised by five rough Scotsmen.

She was quite the oddest female he’d ever encountered—and he’d encountered more than his share. Even so, John had grown accustomed to Annie Tulloch’s eccentric ways. Often, she was bizarrely attired in buff breeches, tall boots, white tunic, and a plaid that shrouded her in blue-and-green wool until the only way to know she was a woman was from the belt at her waist.

He’d grown accustomed to the shocking brightness of her hair, raggedly shorn around her face and plaited down her back. Sometimes she covered