Read Seduced by a Highlander for Free Online

at her feet. “These are our enemies!”
    The soft blush across Isobel’s pert nose faded, leaving her flesh colorless and her eyes shimmering with alarm as she stared at him. “Yer…” she gasped for a breath and then continued. “Yer true name, please, m’lord?”
    He knew why he hadn’t told her earlier. It was the same reason he didn’t want to tell her now. Hell, his father killed hers, and right before her eyes. What could he possibly say to change her opinion of him after that? And why in damnation did he care what she thought of him? “Fergive me fer no’ introducin’ myself to ye sooner. I am…” He paused, looking to the left at his father walking toward their table, his great belted plaid draping shoulders as broad as they’d been over twenty years ago when the Devil rode out of the mists to seek revenge on the Campbells… and later, on the Fergussons. Damnation, this just couldn’t get any worse. “… I am Tristan MacGregor.”
    He watched the dreadful truth dawn on Isobel’s face as his father stopped behind the chair closest to his and sized up Alex with a look that blended sheer terror into her hateful stare. She moved, as if on instinct, in front of her brother and then aimed the sting of her most scathing contempt at Tristan.
    “My apologies,” she said, clutching her chest with one hand and pushing Alex backward and out of sword’s reach with the other. “I was gravely mistaken.”
    Hell.
    Tristan watched her leave, pulling at both her brothers’ sleeves to hasten their departure. She would never speak to him now. He could not fault her for that, but the way she had looked at him, as if he were the most vile mound of filth she’d ever come across, made him want to tell her that she was wrong—just as she was wrong about his uncle.
    “What were Archibald Fergusson’s bairns doin’ at our table?”
    “The gel thought she knew Tristan,” Mairi answered their father’s query.
    “I met her in the garden yesterday,” Tristan corrected woodenly. “I didna’ know who she was, nor did she know me.”
    “Is that why you made a fool of me for her sake?”
    Callum peered over Tristan’s shoulder at the shaky nobleman adjusting the powdered wig on his head. “Who is this man?” he asked, sizing him up and his place near Mairi, and looking none too pleased about it.
    “Lord Oxford, the earl’s son,” Tristan answered blandly, barely turning to look at him. “Someone who needs no help from me at being a fool.”
    His father gave Oxford a look that told him to closehis mouth and leave while he was still able to do so on his own. “I dinna’ trust the English,” Callum said, watching the nobleman scramble off. He turned his powerful gaze back to Tristan and frowned knowingly. “I like Fergussons even less. Ye know who she is now. There are enough women here to hold yer interest, son. Ye’ll no’ speak to that one again.”
    The hell he wouldn’t. Tristan did what he wanted without concern about repercussions. It was what had earned him, thanks to half the fathers in Skye, the well-deserved title of Satan’s Rogue. He didn’t care what opinion he left in his wake. They were mostly all correct. He was the Devil’s son, after all… and in a fortress filled with warriors, it was easier to be a careless scoundrel than… His gaze settled on Isobel’s table across the grand room… a gallant knight. But damn it, he was no barbarian and he intended to tell her so.
    “D’ye know what disagrees with me the most aboot yer ways of thinkin’?” he said to his father first, and then to Mairi. “The man ye avenged with such bloodlust would never have condoned it. Robert Campbell didna’ go around skewerin’ everyone who challenged him.”
    “ ’Tis no’ just him that I avenged, Tristan,” his father said, setting his eyes on his wife, who had returned with him and taken her seat opposite him at the table.
    Aye, Tristan knew what the Fergussons had taken from his kin.