Free Return of the Highlander by Julianne MacLean Page A

companions, shouldn’t we know at least something about each other?”
    She was pushing the limits he’d set that morning and she knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. Though Logan seemed forthcoming, Darach was the most enigmatic man she’d ever met, and she was frustrated by his disinterest.
    But there was more to it than that, she supposed, for whenever he looked at her with those dark, reflective eyes, her heart beat fast and feverishly.
    Logan reclined back against his saddle. “My favorite color is blue,” he lightly said with a smirk. “What’s yours, Larena?”
    “I don’t have one,” she replied, grateful for his facetiousness, for it lightened the mood. “I like them all.”
    “Cheers to that.” Logan raised his cup again to tap against hers, then eyed his brother crossly. He finished what was left in his cup, set it down on the grass beside him and turned his body toward her. “Ignore my brother. He prefers to keep to himself, but that doesn’t mean we must be dreary and dull.”
    She turned to face Logan and tried to hide her disappointment that Darach did not wish to take part in the conversation. “No, it does not.”
    Logan’s gaze roamed over her face. “You asked about our mother. She died giving birth to me, I’m sorry to say.”
    “And I’m sorry to hear it,” Larena replied. “We have that in common, then.”
    “Aye, because you lost your mother, too.”
    Larena was intuitively aware of Darach’s head turning to look at her. He watched her for a few seconds, then quit sharpening his knife and slid it back into its sheath. Lying down on his bedroll, he stared up at the sky.
    “Any brothers or sisters?” Larena asked Logan.
    “Two older brothers,” he replied. “They fought bravely at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, but died on the field.”
    “I share your grief in that as well,” she replied. “My brothers were killed in the same battle. Though I don’t remember them well. I was only six years old at the time.” She looked down at the wine in her cup. “Sometimes I wish the Jacobite cause didn’t exist at all. So many lives have been lost in the name of the Stuart king.”
    “We fought for our freedom on that battlefield,” Logan argued, “and for that, I have no regrets.”
    Surprised to hear this, she studied his face in the firelight. “You were there?”
    “Aye, lass.”
    “But it was fifteen years ago,” she said. “You couldn’t have been more than—”
    “I was eleven and Darach was fourteen.”
    She regarded Darach on the other side of the fire. “You were there, too?”
    “I was,” he replied, still staring up at the night sky while crickets chirped in the grass. “But I don’t see the point in discussing it, especially when your clan was fighting for the English Crown, on the opposite side of the field.”
    She watched him raise a knee, toss an arm up under his head, and continue to stare up at the stars.
    “Did you lose anyone else in that battle?” she asked Logan, choosing to ignore what was in the past and could not be changed. Besides that, her father had recently reversed his political leanings, so she wasn’t quite sure what to say about that.
    Something dark flickered across Logan’s expression. “Darach and I lost everyone in that battle, lass, and we were forced to escape the field alone. That’s when we were taken in by the great Laird of Kinloch—Angus the Lion’s father. He became like a father to us as well, and Angus, like a brother. We’ve lived at Kinloch ever since.”
    “So that explains why you are both so loyal to him,” she surmised, “and why you agreed to escort me home when I doubt either of you were delighted to be helping a Campbell.”
    Logan smiled at her. “I can speak for myself at least, lass, when I say that I am happy to do it.”
    Darach shook his head disapprovingly.
    “Thank you for sharing that with me,” Larena said to Logan. “You’ve been very forthcoming, but I should retire now. It’s