Page 22 of Moon Craving

The nearly full, waxing moon illuminated a large group of warriors. Nine men in all.

Five were on huge warhorses and held themselves with greater confidence than the

others. Or perhaps it was simply that they exuded dominance over everything around

them. They were all big men, though two were near giants. They all wore a plaid different

from the MacDonalds, though the colors were hard to distinguish at this distance in the

moonlight.

The Sinclairs. They had to be.

The four remaining men wore the MacDonald plaid. Watching the interplay among

them, it was easy to determine who the MacDonald laird was.

The Sinclairs were not so uncomplicated to read. The other four warriors, including

the MacDonald laird, deferred to all five of the Sinclairs in subtle but unmistakable ways.

At least they were evident to a woman who had spent as much time deciphering the

language of body movement as Abigail.

And while it was clear someone among the Sinclairs had given the order to

dismount, she could not tell who had done it. The giant with hair the color of a raven that

brushed his shoulders, or the one with light-colored hair that glowed almost silver in the

moonlight?

Neither wore a shirt with their plaid, which she had been told was common when a

Scottish warrior hunted or fought in battle. At least among the Highlanders. The

MacDonalds all wore shirts, even if they still displayed their naked legs with a total lack of

civilized modesty. Abigail had spent so much time blushing over that Gaelic wardrobe

idiosyncrasy, she was sure her cheeks were tinged a permanent pink.

The raven-haired man had an intricate, dark tattoo circling his left bicep. She had

heard there were tribes in the Highlands that practiced the barbaric custom of

permanently marking their skin with blue ink, but it had never occurred to her that the

Sinclairs might be one of them. The dark swirls moved as the warrior's muscles bunched

when he swung down from his horse.

She experienced the most perplexing desire to follow those lines of dark ink with

her fingertips. The urge shocked her to her very core. Abigail was far more innocent than

her younger sister, Jolenta, who had spent several months every year for the last four at