Much Ado About Highlanders (The Scottish Relic Trilogy) by May McGoldrick Page B

want another husband. He might have sent her back, but they were still married. Alexander told her that. It was not too late.
    The last man in the room finally stood before her. Before he could ask for her hand, her father spoke first.
    “Take her. She is yours.”
    Kenna struggled against her invisible restraints. “I won’t belong to another, Father. I’m already married.”
    Tears blurred her eyes. She shook her head, trying to get away as the man approached. She struggled to push him away. But her hands would not move. They were tied, bound now behind her back.
    Startled, Kenna opened her eyes and gazed up at the blue sky through an opening in the trees. She was outside. There were no lines of men. Her father wasn’t there. There were no clusters of women ridiculing her for the way she looked.
    It was odd to imagine she’d come to think of Alexander as her escape. Six months ago, marrying him would have put an end to Magnus MacKay’s authority. But was she happy with the arrangement?
    She wasn’t. Especially not after the talk with her father.
    Alexander lay sleeping on his side an arm’s length away. They were sharing the same blanket. She looked at his unshaven face and long lashes. No man had the right to look as attractive as he did. Her gaze moved down his face, and she recalled the havoc the touch of his lips caused in her body.
    In her dreams she’d wanted him to come for her. During her months at Glosters Priory, Kenna dreamed he would pursue her, know her, accept her for who she was, and fall in love with her. Then she would go with him to the farthest corners of the world. But he’d never come. He’d sent a messenger instead.
    Perhaps she’d been too impulsive, burning the letter without reading it. But it was his fault. A man shouldn’t send a letter saying,
Sorry, dear. I drunkenly bedded a wench on our wedding night
,
or whatever else he wrote. If that in fact was the content of the correspondence.
    Anger rose in her. Her hands were still tied behind her. Her shoulders and arms were sore from sleeping this way.
    She glared at a bird singing loudly on a branch above them.
    “Fly away, bird, or I’ll be plucking your feathers the moment I’m free.”
    Kenna struggled and managed to sit up. Aches in the rest of her body matched the pain in her arms. She was getting too old to be jumping off towers and cliffs on the same day. She looked for her cousin. There was no sign of her.
    “Emily?”
    She couldn’t see James Macpherson or the other men traveling with them, either. And the horses. Where were the horses?
    Everyone was gone. They were alone.
    “Wake up, mammet,” she growled at her husband.
    He mumbled something in his sleep and rolled onto his back.
    “They’re all gone, Alexander. Where did you take Emily?”
    The coals in the fire were still smoking. They couldn’t have been gone too long. Kenna stood up. She couldn’t take more than a step away from the tree, for the cord restraining her hands was still tied to it.
    “My husband,” she said scathingly.
    She assessed the object of her anger and balanced her weight on the sore ankle before delivering a kick to his hip with the other. “I said wake up, you puny—”
    The breath was knocked out of her as she hit the ground. One moment she was delivering a kick and a curse and the next, she was down on the blanket with Alexander’s weight partially covering hers.
    “My wife. I can’t put into words what a joy it is to wake up to your caresses and endearments.”
    This was too close. He could surely feel the thrum of her heart. “Untie my hands, you villainous pignut.”
    “Must I?” He pushed the hair out of her face and gently cupped her cheek. His thumb caressed her bottom lip as he looked into her eyes.
    Kenna forgot to breathe and his knee slowly slid upward between her legs. She lost track of the terms of abuse she was planning to deliver. The weight of his body felt perfect. A delicious tingling spread to unthinkable