Unwilling (Highland Historical #2)

have to kill anything they come across, and you let me live.”
    “That I did.”  He smiled, if a bit
smugly, very glad, indeed, that she lived.  “’Tis why I have to marry ye.  And,
ye werena almost raped.  Ye desired me in that coach.”
    She twisted in the saddle to pin
him with an incredulous glare.  “You’re really so self-important to think I wanted that?  You, sir, are sorely mistaken.”
    Of this, he could be certain. 
“Aye, lass, ye wanted it.  For, a Berserker canna bring harm to his mate, he
canna lay claim to her body unless she wants him to.”  He understood this
painful fact all too well.
     

Chapter
Eight
     
    “Connor Douglas Gerard MacLaughlan!” 
    Lindsay watched with astounded
fascination as a wide-eyed Evelyn MacLauchlan dropped her bandaged wrists and
charged her captor with the incensed fury of a mother bear.  “ You.  Tied. 
Her.  Up? ”  She punctuated each word with a sharp swat on the arm with a
wooden spoon she’d swiped from her apothecary table. 
    “Wha—she was goin’ta get away.”  He
ducked her barrage, attempting an unsuccessful retreat around the large, round
table. 
    So, his name was Connor.  Lindsay
never thought to ask.  A name made him seem more real, somehow.  More—human.  It
was a good name, too.  Fitting, somehow, to the brutal handsome face.
    “Out!”  The woman pointed to the
doorway, currently filled with the bulk of her husband, Roderick. 
    Connor rubbed at his abused arm,
looking like a gigantic chastised boy.   “But she’s my —”
    “ Out !” 
    Roderick pushed his wide shoulder
from the doorframe and clapped his elder brother on the back.  “Come, let’s let
yer woman bathe and dress, we have much to discuss.”  In an identical move,
both men looked back to where Lindsay perched on the window seat.  She could
only stare at them.  They could have been twins but for a few minor
distinctions.  The same green eyes set in harshly-angled, handsome faces.
Though Roderick’s sparkled with an untroubled mirth and Connor’s narrowed with defensive
concern.  Comparable bodies of pure sinew and strength draped with the Lachlan tartan
drew an appreciative eye.  Their hair was the same color of ebony, though
Roderick wore his long and Connor cropped his almost to the skull.  Lindsay
thought it added an air of dangerous brutality to the elder brother.  That, and
the fact that Roderick seemed downright affable in comparison.
    Connor looked like he wanted to say
something to her, but he glanced at his brother and sister-in-law and stormed
out.
    Roderick turned and bowed to the
ladies with a wide smile.  “ Cuisle mo chroi, ” he crooned to his wife.  Pulse
of my heart.
    “Thank you, my love.”  Evelyn
winked and tilted her head to watch in appreciation as her husband ambled off
in the direction of his brother.  Once Roderick was out of sight, Evelyn set to
work at the table, pulling jars and clay pots from various shelves.  “I called
for a bath to be brought.  They should haul it up as soon as the water is hot. 
You just relax there and I’ll make you something that will heal your wrists.” 
She bustled about until she found a mortar and pestle.  “I could just strangle Connor.  I love him dearly, but sometimes that man is thicker than the
walls of a mire dwelling.”
    Lindsay had liked the Englishwoman
the moment she’d laid eyes on her, and her esteem had only grown within the
last few moments.  Though she was short and on the stout side of curvaceous,
her golden hair and flaxen eyes set off the sweetest smile Lindsay had ever
seen. 
    “Your husband, Roderick, is he—what
I mean to say is—does he turn into…” 
    “A Berserker?”
    Lindsay nodded.
    “He does.”  Her lips tilted up in a
secretive smile.  “He’s been teaching me some of the alchemic magic I’ll be
using to heal your wrists.”
    Now regarding the accoutrements
with a dubious skepticism, Lindsay raised her eyebrows.  Magic?  Didn’t the
woman know she could be burned for speaking of such things?  Of course, if she
spent her days attached to the two Berserker brothers, what cause would she
have to feel fear?  Silently, Lindsay turned to look out the casement over Loch
Fyne and the bustling, successful village of Strathlachlan.  She couldn’t see
one church steeple in the entire valley.  Did these MacLauchlans follow the old
ways?  Living as a far north and west as they did, and isolated by the