Read The Highlander's Dark Seduction (Secrets of the Darroch Clan) for Free Online

away.
    “Magnus?” She frowned, her fingers reaching for his cheek to smooth along his jaw. “Are you hurt?” Her gaze searched his face while her hands skimmed along his shoulder and his chest as if inspecting him for damage.
    He wanted to keep her with him always. To claim her in the way a man claimed a woman. For this lifetime and all the ones that followed. But he knew that would not be fair to her.
    “I am fine,” he lied, his heart aching with a fatal blow struck by her sweet hand. “Merely overcome by a need to thank you. You should not have endangered yourself for my sake, but that will not stop me from acknowledging what you did. I owe you my life.”
    “It is no more than you’ve already done for me.” Her gray eyes matched the color of the overcast sky full of mist. “This place is so lovely.” She looked around the glade where he’d reined in. A brook babbled nearby, the water making a soothing music as it rushed over the rocks. “Do you know it?”
    How had he known to stop here? He hadn’t even made a conscious choice to bring the horse to rest in this place.
    “Aye. I know it well.” Sliding out from beneath her, he dropped to his feet and then reached to help her down. “This is a magical glade. A place where
sidhe
lands meet that of mortals. A place where time does not touch.”
    She slid easily into his arms, trusting him more every time she came to him. Knowing that cut him deeper. Would make their inevitable parting all the more impossible.
    “Truly?” She frowned, her expression growing fierce as he let her go. Touching her was a temptation he could not battle for long. “How can we be safe in lands so close to your enemy?”
    “The enemy can reach us anywhere. Yet here is a bit safer because time moves so slowly that you can stay here for days and the rest of the world thinks you’ve been gone but an hour.”
    A fair eyebrow lifted as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
    “An appealing place for lovers.”
    He all but swallowed his tongue.
    When he recovered himself, he found she stood even closer to him, as if she knew exactly the implication of her words.
    “Elizabeth.” He shook his head, knowing what she wanted even though he did not understand why. “I have naught to offer you. My life is already doomed to an existence I would not share with you, no matter how selfishly I might wish it.”
    Birds called and sang in the trees all around them, the glade teeming with life as if nature was more verdant here. Even the leaves seemed greener, fuller. The trees rustled gently in a breeze that chased the Highland mist to the edges of the clearing.
    “I am not asking you for that much.” She shook her head, the blond waves dancing along her shoulders like a water nymph’s. “I wish an afternoon. An hour. Just a short window of time to share with a man who does not find me a lurching and plain-faced mockery of womanhood.”
    There was no bitterness in her words, just honesty. Still, hearing she had ever been subjected to such vile stupidity made him itch to withdraw his sword and ride to London to skewer whole ballrooms full of spineless men who spewed such venom.
    Now, it was impossible not to touch her. His fingers came to rest on her cheek and he stroked the downy skin there.
    “I will admit I am grateful that you have spent your time with such stupid oxen that they cannot see past their noses to the incredible treasure you are.” He had never spoken such pretty words to any woman. Not even his long-ago love who had been dead for nearly a century.
    At this moment, he could not call to mind her face, his thoughts so full of Elizabeth that he knew it was time to put the past to rest. Elizabeth deserved his full attention. His whole heart.
    “You have kind eyes.” She smiled warmly and her simple beauty dazzled him more than any celebrated debutante.
    “I am…” His store of pretty words ran out, his tongue helpless to say whatever she might need to hear. He