Connie Brockway - Rose Hunters 01 by My Seduction

Author:My Seduction
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-25T23:59:56+00:00

With a muttered curse he reached down and cupped her chin roughly in his hand. “Don’t look like that,” he said harshly. “I promise I will be back. I promise you will come to no harm here while I am gone.”

“If I ask you to stay, will you?”

His gaze grew tortured. “I promised I would do as you asked, did I not?”

“Yes. But, would you stay?”

“I would do anything you ask.”

“Would you stay?”

A heartbeat passed. “Yes.”

She nodded somberly. “Then I won’t ask.”

He touched his heels to the gelding’s side and rode.

Only a few dull embers still glowed on the stone hearth when Kate awoke. She peered groggily into the near-perfect darkness of the windowless croft. A horse nickered outside, and she heard a man speak soothingly to it, his voice low and exhausted. MacNeill.

She hadn’t doubted he would return. Not for a minute. Not even when the fire had burned low and the wind had begun its plaintive whisper and darkness had spilled from the sky like a dead bride’s veil. He’d been near all along, watching over the croft. She hadn’t seen him. She hadn’t needed to. She’d just known.

She heard the door creak and opened her eyes a little. For a brief instant, he stood silhouetted against the star-strewn sky. Then the door clicked shut and the room fell into a deep darkness. She heard the crackle of the fire as he fed it more fuel, and a few seconds later golden light bathed her. She rolled her head over onto her arm and studied him through half-opened eyes.

He sat by the fire with his back against the wall, his knees bent, his hand resting on them, the fingers lax.

He was watching her, his eyes catching the occasional flare of firelight as the crimson light played fitfully over his face, stark and strong and hard and predatory. Like the ghost of some ancient Celtic king.

Maybe he was, she thought drowsily. So stern and forbidding and beautiful. A living phantom of a glorious, bold past.

“MacNeill?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“MacNeill,” she insisted groggily. “Do you believe in ghosts?” She was almost asleep when she heard him answer from a long way off, his voice soft and forsaken.

“Yes. Oh, God, yes.”

FOURTEEN

CONCERNING THE DOUBTFUL CHARMS OF VILLAGE LIFE

THE NEXT MORNINGKATEawoke to find the croft cleared. She hurried outside and found Kit waiting beside the phaeton.

“Good morning,” she said. In answer he handed her a hard-cooked egg and a piece of bread from the basket the monks had sent with them. As she reached to take it, the sheet of paper she’d been writing on fell from her pocket and sailed to land at Kit’s feet. Hastily, she bent to retrieve it, but Kit was there before her.

He picked up the page and read. “‘The Virtues of Turnips as Kitchen Staple.’” He looked at her sharply. “What is this?”

“A book I am writing,” she sniffed. “I am convinced I may find someone to publish it.”

“What is its subject?” His voice was sarcastic. He was in a foul mood.

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