Bridget MacLeod is recently widowed, so the honorable Alasdair MacDonald is trying to keep a respectable distance. But someone has noticed the sparks that fly between them, someone who’ll do anything to make Alasdair her own.
Bridget MacLeod needs some space from her well-intentioned but overbearing family who’ve been crowding around her since her husband’s death. How can she keep her late husband’s secret and explain to them that her arranged marriage was pleasant but passionless, that she lost a friend but not a lover. Seeking a change of scenery, she arrives in Arisaig only to find she has no place to stay, unless she accepts the offer from a family friend.
Alasdair MacDonald remembers Bridget well from when she stitched a wound in his leg last spring. Her touch was light and gentle, but she was a married woman. She may not be married now, but her husband’s passing is too recent for the honorable Alasdair to do more than invite her to stay with his boisterous family.
But someone notices the way Alasdair looks at Bridget, someone who will stop at nothing to make Alasdair her own.
Rogue of the Moors by Cynthia Breeding is a captivating Scottish Romance set in Arisaig and Glasgow, Scotland in 1800's. Rogue #6, but can be read as a stand alone.
Was given this book and promised a honest review.
Cynthia Breeding is an award-winning author of eighteen novels and twenty-four novellas. She currently lives on the bay in Corpus Christi, Texas, with her absolutely-not-spoiled Bichon Frise and enjoys sailing and horseback riding on the beach.
He’s everything she thinks she doesn’t want.
Copyright © 2017 by Cynthia Breeding. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Bridget MacLeod whispered the words, placed a sprig of rare white heather on her husband’s grave, and stood. Her marriage to Brodie Cameron had been comfortable, not passionate. They had understood and respected each other. No one would ever know the truth they had kept shrouded.
She looked around the tidy stone-walled cemetery that held many of her ancestors. Generations of MacLeods had called the medieval castle perched up on the promontory cliff home. Although her brother, Ian, headed the clan, she had run the household. Until now.
Bridget tucked loosened strands of her long red hair behind her ear and smoothed her practical muslin gown. Then she walked through the wooden gate, secured the latch, and started up the hill. She sensed her life was about to change.
“And I could use help with the babes,” Jillian, his wife, added.
“Your home has always been here,” Ian said.
Bridget wasn’t sure. Shauna had invited her to come and stay as long as she needed to after Brodie’s death from his illness last spring. Bridget just knew she wanted to make a life for herself somewhere.
“Robert willnae want his wife working once there is a family,” Ian said.
As if that would make a difference. Shauna was only slightly less stubborn than Bridget. Neither of them took kindly to being told what they could not do.
Bridget started to reply just as the fourteen-year-old twins came racing down the hall, nearly knocking over a vase of fresh flowers Jillian had put on a small table.
“We want to come too!” Caitlin shouted.
“She will come back to visit,” Jillian said gently.
The twins rushed at her so forcefully she might have been bowled over except for the fact they were both clutching her tightly. For a moment, her resolve wavered. She had lived in this redone medieval castle her whole life. Then she hugged the girls back and followed Ian out the door to the waiting carriage.
Ian didn’t speak as he strapped the trunk to the back of the coach and came around to open the door for her. Bridget was grateful for that. Sailing the stormy emotional sea of the past five months, she’d kept her feelings tightly sheeted in. Now was not the time to allow herself a weak moment. Instead, she returned Ian’s curt nod and waved briefly at Jillian and the twins standing on the steps. Ian closed the door and she heard him give last-minute instructions to the guards that would ride alongside. Then the carriage lurched forward.
Bridget resisted the urge to look out the window one last time. What good would it do? She never cried, and right now, she felt perilously close to doing just that. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin, and folded her hands in her lap. This was Ian and Jillian’s home now, a place where they could raise their bairns. Even though they had offered her a place to stay, she did not want to be the equivalent of a dowager aunt. At eight-and-twenty, she was no longer young, but Bridget did not want to grow old relying on Ian’s charity.
She needed to take hold of her ship’s tiller and steer her own course.
Early afternoon on the second day, the carriage finally reached Arisaig. Bridget would have preferred they just exchange horses at a coaching inn by Loch Morar and continue on, but evidently part of the instructions that Ian had given—which she hadn’t heard—were orders for the driver and guards to spend the night at the inn lest brigands or marauders attack them after dark. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to bless Ian for taking precautions or curse him for thinking she was some delicate hothouse flower that needed pampering. Widowhood had not turned her into a whimpering fool.
At least she was here now. A new start to an independent life. Bridget looked out the carriage window as the carriage proceeded down the main street of the village. An open area on one side had a few stalls, indicating where the local market would be. Broken seashells paved the road and crunched beneath the horses hooves as they passed a small stone church with an array of tombstones, some upright and others slanting sideways, on either side of it. Past that, a wood-framed house stood, probably for the parson. A short distance away was the public house that, given its second story, probably also let rooms. A public stable and smithy were farther down the road. Behind those buildings would be the villagers’ homes, nestled in the shadows of the rocky Creag Mhor.
As the carriage turned right at the end of the road, Bridget caught a glimpse of the sheltered shore of Loch nan Ceall. An actual Viking longboat bobbed on a mooring not far out. Pretty as it was, did anyone actually use a longboat anymore?
The water seemed so calm compared to the rough waves of Loch Shiel that crashed below her home. Former home, Bridget reminded herself. Still, the familiar scent of salty sea air was comforting. She could also see a small white-washed building set back from the water that probably served as the marine office.
The horses trotted down a narrow, hardened-dirt street with a few sparse trees on one side. They passed several small cottages and a large two-story wood flat home behind high hedges and tangled vines. Three houses later, the carriage rocked to a stop.
This was it then. Her new life awaited her. Bridget took a deep breath as the coachman opened the door. She stepped down and stood for a moment surveying her sister’s home. It might be Bridget’s new home too, at least for a while. Larger than the cottages, smaller than the house behind the rambling vegetation, Shauna’s house sparkled with fresh white paint, green shutters, and varnished front door with a polished brass bell hanging from a bracket beside it. The short walkway was graveled with neatly trimmed lawn on either side. Everything looked shipshape, which wasn’t surprising since Robert was a ship’s captain and Shauna had a penchant for tidiness.
The coachman brought Bridget out of her reverie as he unloaded the trunk from the rumble seat with a grunt and carried it up the walkway.
“Ye will be spending the night here?” Bridget asked as he returned to the carriage.
Bridget didn’t need to ask why. The inn there was the only one within twenty miles and was also a popular spot for sailors coming up the loch. The proprietor kept the place well stocked with whisky and barrels of ale, and Bridget had seen several buxom serving maids when they’d stopped. Since Ian’s guards were already waiting down the street for the carriage, arrangements had probably been made last evening for tonight’s lodging and subsequent entertainment.
“Safe journey then, and thank ye,” she said.
He nodded once and snapped the reins. Bridget watched as he drove away and then walked the short way to the door.
She pulled the rope attached to the clapper and listened to the clang of the bell. The sound seemed lonely on the silent street. She waited for footsteps from within but none came. She frowned slightly. Why did no one answer? Come to think on it, why hadn’t someone come out when the carriage stopped? Robert might be at the marine office, but where was Shauna? Bridget pulled the bell rope again, a little harder this time.
Bridget turned at the sound of the man’s voice and then stifled a gasp. Alasdair MacDonald stood at the end of the walk, looking more magnificent than when she’d seen him months ago. He wore tight breeches, knee-high boots, and a leather jerkin with no shirt. With his heavily muscled arms and broad chest tanned deeply from the sun and his long, black hair blowing in the breeze behind him, he looked like a pirate.
She hadn’t expected to see Alasdair here since Shauna had written he alternated his time on the Isle of Skye, establishing kelp farming, and Glasgow, helping Robert obtain contracts for the kelp’s soda ash used in glassmaking.
She wasn’t very likely to forget the man, since she’d mended a gash to his thigh last spring. A wound that had not only warranted exposing the whole of his well-defined, brawny leg, but had also brought her face perilously close to his nether regions when she’d lowered her head to bite the thread she’d used to stitch him. Even now, her stomach fluttered a bit at the memory.
“They denied it,” Bridget said, feeling more like she was on safe ground now talking about her neighbors.
“Shauna was never Owen’s intended, despite what he thought,” Bridget answered.
A sinking feeling in Bridget’s stomach threatened to fall all the way to her feet, anchoring them to the ground. Now what was she going to do? Her coachman was already gone, and who knew when Robert and Shauna would be back. Bridget worried her lip and then abruptly straightened her shoulders.
“Nae,” Alasdair said and picked up her trunk, hoisted it to one shoulder, and turned to walk away.
“What? Ye are nae making sense. And where are ye taking my trunk?” she asked when he started walking again.
“Ye will be safer at my house. I’ll hear nae more of it.” Alasdair replied over his shoulder as he continued on down the street.
Bridget stared at his broad, retreating back, tempted to lash out at him, although she suspected it would do not more good than it did with Ian. Bossy, arrogant men. However, this particular overbearing male had all her clothing in that trunk, so she had no recourse but to follow him. She muttered a few choice words under her breath.
Alasdair MacDonald was a complication she didn’t need.