Read Highland Jewel (Highland Brides) for Free Online Page B

have the cross?
    "And what is it you found?" she asked, her voice unsteady as she remained on her knees, facing him.
    He watched her in silence, his expression curious. "Ye dunna ken?" His tone was nonchalant.
    He was toying with her! "No!" she snapped angrily, then steadied the tremble of her hands and smoothed her voice into something that very faintly resembled the Lady Abbess'. He was merely a temptation sent by Satan to test her, she reminded herself. "I do not know," she murmured, lowering her eyes.
    "Then why, I ask meself, did ye come?" queried Leith.
    "Because there was need," Rose answered stiffly, her mouth pursed again.
    "And what is yer need, wee one?" he asked huskily.
    "Not mine!" she countered irritably. Did this man know nothing of pious martyrdom? she wondered, then smoothed away her angry expression and clasped her hands more firmly together. "I have no need but to serve my Lord."
    "Are ye certain?" Leith asked casually, canting his head a fraction of an inch so that the moonlight flickered across his dusky features.
    For a moment Rose was transfixed by the look of him—his arrogance, his massiveness, the sheer force of his presence. When the Lord sent a temptation, He didn't do it in small measures. "Of course I'm certain," she said finally, pulling her eyes from him with a righteous effort.
    He nodded, and, bending forward slightly, dipped his hand to his pocket. "Then..." he said with a shrug. "Ye dunna care to have..." His hand appeared, and from his fingertips dangled her humble wooden cross. "... this?"
    It swayed on its coarse chain—held hostage by his fingers, and her gaze followed its arcing trail, mesmerized by its haunting presence.
    She did not mean to grab at it. She had every intention of retaining some dignity, but just at that moment he grinned—that devilish expression of victory that drove her relentlessly past the point of caution.
    Her lunge was ill-planned, yet she nearly had it—her fingertips just grazing the rough wood.
    But he swung the cross in a simple arc toward his chest and Rose toppled forward, tipped off balance by her frantic movement and falling to all fours like a begging hound.
    Leith stared at her in surprise, his wicked grin broadening. "What is yer sin, wee nun, that ye would feel such a powerful need to hide it?"
    Rose stared up at him from mere inches away, her eyes as wide as the moon, her composure torn asunder. Her mouth fell open. Her lips moved. God's toes! There was something about this man. Something intangible and dark, something so deep and tempting that she doubted her will to resist. But no! She would not fail the test.
    Rose scrambled backward, her robes scrunching beneath her to fall straight finally as she jerked hurriedly to her feet. "I was hot," she said quickly, her hands grasping each other as he rose to his feet before her. "I but went to the lake to feel the cool breeze against my face. Is that such a dreadful sin?"
    Leith watched her carefully. Her face was a flawless oval, her nose small and straight.
    "I didna say it was," he answered, taking a fluid step nearer. "But I ask meself—is that yer only sin, wee nun? Discounting, of course, yer terrible temper."
    "I do not have a temper!" she declared, her left eyebrow high, barely making a wrinkle above her amethyst eyes.
    "Aye, lass," he breathed from close proximity. "Ye do."
    "Well, hell!" she breathed, then grimaced at her horrid language and wrung her hands in abject mortification. "The likes of you would cause a saint to curse."
    He chuckled, the sound coming from deep within his broad chest. "Aye. Mayhap I would, lassie," he admitted evenly. "But ye most assuredly are na a saint."
    She drew her back to ramrod stiffness. Who was this heathen to find fault with her attempts at piety? To force her from her homeland with blackmail, then insult her faithfulness? "I would guess my solitary escape from the abbey is far less a sin that the ones you practice on a daily basis," she said