Page 14 of Highland Spy

She nodded again and turned from the room.

He waited for some time to pass after her departure, until he could stand the scraping drag of time no more.

Then he turned toward his desk to do what he’d been dreading.

He lifted the first strip of parchment and snapped the seal. Waxy crumbles fell in several large chunks to his desk, but he paid them no mind. He unfolded the note with great care and read the single name written in the blackest ink.

Angus MacAlister.

A laird Connor had met only once as a boy, though he remembered little more than the name and how unruly the man’s dark hair had been.

Connor closed his eyes against the memory and tossed the parchment into the fire.

After it had long since burned to ash, he reached for the second.

The seal made a soft click as it succumbed to the pressure of his large fingertips.

Two names.

Two, dammit.

As if the one weren’t already difficult enough.

The paper crackled in his hands, loud as a shot in the silence of his room. His gaze skimmed the single name and his gut clenched.

Kenneth Gordon.

His hand curled shut, balling the paper in his crushing fist.

Kenneth Gordon.

A man he’d grown up with and once loved as a brother, who’d saved his life in the Battle of Glenlivet. The man who had then betrayed him.

And now the man Connor would have to kill.

Chapter 4

A subtle clink broke through the dark nothing of Ariana’s consciousness. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if doing so might let her sleep longer.

Clink.

Like the sound of a lid being lifted from a jar.

Ariana wriggled beneath the covers, loving the caress of the mattress and the soft sheets beneath her battered body. Had she ever been so wonderfully comfortable?

She cracked an eye open and found a golden-haired woman kneeling beside her bed with a metal tray.

The woman turned and gave the most beautiful, bashful smile. Ariana felt herself stare and was, embarrassingly, unable to stop. It wasn’t just the perfect white teeth showing between her full pink lips, but the woman herself.

Her large green eyes were rimmed with impossibly long lashes and her hair fell in silky waves around her porcelain face.

The woman was exquisitely beautiful.

Ariana’s hair had not been combed in some time, and she’d fallen asleep in the very clothes she’d arrived in. Surely she looked a fright, especially compared to so lovely a woman.

“I hope you slept well,” the woman spoke in a soft voice. The kind of voice Ariana’s mother always said ladies should employ.

The woman’s gaze drifted away before turning back to the jars littering her metal tray. Her fingers were slender and gracefully tapered, each nail a perfect arc of healthy white. She selected a small cup from the table and offered it to Ariana. “If you drink this, your body won’t ache so terribly.”