Page 11 of Highlander’s Claim

Her shoes were destroyed, her purse was back on the boat…back…wherever Amanda and her other friends were. The laird of jackasses shoved her gently forward, and she walked, her feet slipping and her ankles hurting as she tried to keep her balance.

As they passed through the gates, her captor was greeted by a gorgeous young woman in a long, beautiful medieval dress with a belt embroidered with gold and silver threads around her thin waist.

“Uncle Aulay, who is this?” the woman asked.

Aulay… That name rang a bell. Where had she heard it?

“Dinna concern yerself, Laoghaire.”

“How canna I concern myself if our chief openly brings a whore to Dunyvaig? What will be of name MacDonald?”

Aulay MacDonald…

Through her still-cloudy mind, she remembered. That woman in the green dress. She had told Jenny she had a soul mate back in time… Aulay MacDonald, who’d love her even once she was wrinkled and old and…something.

Back in time?

Jenny was cold. As cold as if she had been turned into dry ice. Her feet hurt, her head hurt, her hands shook.

“You’re Aulay MacDonald?” she asked.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I am.”

“Uncle, who is she?” insisted Laoghaire.

“We picked her up on Achleith,” said a younger warrior, handsome and dark-haired. She remembered someone had addressed him as Colum.

“Achleith?” Laoghaire asked.

“’Tis where that rock is, the one that faeries visit,” said another man, stopping by Laoghaire’s side.

“Mayhap she was robbed,” said an older woman with a kind face who had stopped her washing to watch them pass. “Who would wear this openly in their right mind?”

Laoghaire looked Jenny up and down with disgust. “Aye, her legs exposed like that…shameless.”

Aulay took Jenny’s elbow and gently pushed her to keep walking. “None of yer business, good people. Leave her alone.”

“She may nae be human!” Jenny heard someone call out behind her back.

“Or mayhap she is witch,” suggested a man, and when Jenny looked over her shoulder, she saw that it was one of Aulay’s warriors from the ship.

When she looked up at Aulay to tell him she was human and she was not English and not a witch or a whore, there was a dark, thoughtful danger in his eyes.

She didn’t like that look one bit.

“Ye must lock her up, Lord!” cried Laoghaire. “She is dangerous!”

“Aye, lock her up!” echoed a man’s voice.

And then they all cried after them that she needed to be locked up and kept a prisoner.

And Aulay’s fist around her elbow tightened.

CHAPTER 4

Aulay sat in his great chair in the great hall of Dunyvaig Castle and stared at the most interesting woman he had ever seen in his life. The woman in the bright-green dress sat at one of the long tables that lined the huge hall and stared at the piece of boiled salmon on her trencher like she had no idea what to do with it. Thoughtfully, he rubbed his chin, watching the fires in the braziers play against her red hair.

A wee fox, wasn’t she?