Page 44 of A Hot Scot for Christmas
After her brother’s letters dried up, Magda feared the worst. She put the Hebrides behind her and answered an advert. One Hamish MacDowell, a widower in Glasgow, needed a woman to help with his household. No experience required. A kind heart, a steady hand, and a willingness to work hard were his requirements.
Love came quickly for the pair.
Magda was still weeping, her shoulder gently shaking as she stayed in her brother’s arms. But above her head, Sabrina saw the greatest gift. It was the glow on Rory’s face. His weathered blue eyes found hers. In them was a message, so deep and penetrating.
Thank youwas the message there.Thank you. It was pure gratitude and devotion.
Little by little, her Highlander knight erased those years of loss and wandering.
And he did it at Eden House with Sabrina, one kiss, one Christmas at a time.
Read the romance that started it all…
The Scot Who Loved Me
Chapter One
August 22, 1753
Torchlight flickered over a monster of a man sitting on the ground, his braw arms manacled to the wall of Marshalsea Prison’s strong room, the outbuilding for troublesome criminals. The floor reeked of piss. Night soil’s scent clogged the air. Rebellion had a cost, and it was paid for in the shed. Anne crumpled a handkerchief doused with lavender oil against her nose and stepped gingerly inside.
The warder’s bruised eyes searched her hooded face. “There’s less beastly men I could show ye, miss.”
“No, he’s the one I want.”
Chains clinked, the cold noise rippling over her skin. The sleeping beast stirred, shifting a tattered MacDonald kilt on massive thighs, and the bottom of a hairy ballock swung into view.
“See what I mean?” The warder sniffed. “Not fit for the kindness of yer bosom.”
She was eyes on the beast, a generous purse dangling from her fingers. “It’s my bosom, Mr.Ledwell. I’ll thank you to keep your concern to yourself.”
Grasping hands cupped the offering. “Yer payin’ a lot for one worthless highlander.”
In the shadows, eyes of molten gold glared through lanky hair, riveting eyes that stripped lesser souls. The brute was bound but not defeated with his head tipped back and arms resting in fetters as if he took his ease. The English could never conquer him. He’d rotted on a prison hulk at Tilbury Fort for his part in the Jacobite Rising of ’45 and lived to tell the tale.
But this imprisonment he’d done to himself.
Why?
She winced behind her scented cloth. Untended cuts and nasty bruises showed through his torn shirt. Still, he was a sight. Blond-brown hairs glinting on rock-hewn thighs. A thickly carved chest whittling to a lean waist. With his size came a large nose and a wide, once familiar, mouth. Passionate, soft (the only part of him that was), and utterly kissable.
But those eyes had the power to mark a woman. Brash on his best day, moody on his worst. Spite flashed in their depths at the warder sifting a bony finger through the purse.
Ledwell raised a polished coin to the light. “A Queen Anne half guinea. Don’t see much of this fair lady.” His thumb rubbed the stamped profile. “Looks newly minted too.”
“You have thirty pieces of gold, as agreed,” she said.
“No’ thirty pieces of silver?” Mocking words climbed out of the dark.
He speaks.She stepped closer, dank straw submitting to her foot.
“Ledwell is greedy, but he’s no Judas.”
Husky laughter floated from the floor. “And I’m no savior.”
The warder’s face scrunched in confusion. The beast, however, fixed a keen gaze on her. With her hood pulled forward, a single torch lighting the shed, and a cloth muffling her voice and hiding her face, Will couldn’t know it was her. Yet, for all her confidence, his presence tied her in knots, and he was the one in chains.
“What makes ye think ye can handle him? Three men couldn’t.” A leering Ledwell slid the purse into a pocket inside his coat. “Countin’ on yer feminine wiles to get that filthy rag off him?”
