Page 9 of A Highland Duke to Claim Her Heart

Cassandra gasped, sucking in the air, and then choked. There was water in her lungs, and she fell onto her hands and knees again, still half-submerged in the water.

Then a hand took her firmly by the arm, pulled her to her feet, and led her out of the loch and onto the grass.

She was safe.

She blinked and tried to look around.

The light was too bright. The world too sharp and full of angles. It took her several moments of blinking and rubbing at her eyes before she could see properly again. And when she could, she realized that she was crying. The water on her face was not just from the loch. They were tears of fear but also relief. And gratitude.

And then a voice spoke.

“What in God’s name were you thinking?”

The voice was rough, masculine, and filled to the brim with anger, and it startled Cassandra out of her shock.

She turned toward it, and then her heart nearly stopped.

Towering over her was the largest man she had ever seen in her life, broad as a doorframe, glowering down at her. He wasn’t just large, either, he was wild-looking. With long dark hair that was curly and plastered to his face from the water, brown eyes, a weather tanned face, and a thick beard.

“Have you lost your mind?” the man demanded, his accent thick with Scottish lilt but no less furious.

Cassandra took a step back.

This man was no gentleman. Of that she was certain. He was too tall, too wild-looking, too unkempt. No gentleman she knew had a beard, they were all clean-shaven, and they did not speak with such grating fury to a lady.

“How do ye not know about rain lochs?” the man thundered, his hands flying up in the air as he gesticulated. “Their depths are deceptive, everyone knows this. Even a child could have told you this! And yet, you waltz into one, without a care in the world, without a thought! What if I had not been here to rescue you?You might have drowned! And then O’Murphy would have had to fish a dead girl out of his loch? Have you any consideration?”

Cassandra gaped at him. She could not quite believe what she was hearing. Not only because his accent was difficult to follow, but because he seemed to be mad ather—the person who had just nearly drowned.

“I beg your pardon!” She cried, raising a hand and interrupting him in the middle of his lecture. Her voice was hoarse, but audible, and he froze, staring at her. “Is this always how you speak to ladies, or just to those who have nearly lost their lives?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, but she thought she saw a slight reddening in his cheeks as well.

“I appreciate the information about rain lochs,” she continued, even as her vocal chords screamed at her in agony, “but I am from Cornwall, not the Highlands, so I hardly think I can be expected to have known this beforehand. Furthermore—” she continued brusquely, when he looked as if he might interrupt her, “I would suggest that in the future, you have some compassion and kindness for someone who had nearly just drowned, rather than startling them off their feet in the first place andcausingthe accident about which you seem so displeased.”

There was a long, tense silence, during which the large man continued to stare at her. But she glared right back.

As she did, she became aware of the fact that she was soaked through, and that her pale walking dress was clinging to her body in the most scandalous way. She was also cold and beginning to shiver. In every way, she felt vulnerable and exposed.

But she would not let this man see her fear. She would not let herself be intimidated.

And to her surprise, as she glared at the man, her hands firmly crossed in front of her chest, her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, the man’s anger seemed to melt away.

The fury left his eyes, his shoulders relaxed, and something even like respect fluttered across his face as he considered her.

“Well,” he said after a long moment. “You may not be from the Highlands, but you certainly have the spirit of our women.”

She blinked, taken aback, and the faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“They are warriors too,” he said.

She swallowed. A prickling awareness was going through her. The man was not just large, she realized. Nor just wild. Hewas also… handsome. Not in the way that gentlemen of thetonwere; certainly not in the way the elegant, lean, and impeccably-dressed Lord Christopher was. But there was a brutish attractiveness to his dark eyes, to the way they seemed to bore into her as if he could see all the way into her very soul, and in the size of him, which made her feel small and delicate for the first time in her life.

Without another word, he moved around to his horse, where he unwrapped a tartan blanket from under the saddle. Returning to her, he draped it around her shoulders. As he did, she got a look at his hands—the hands that had rescued her. They were large and calloused. The hands of a real man who worked in fields.

Her heart hammered in her chest, and she felt her stomach quiver.

“We should get you home,” he said. “Where can I take you?”