Free Captured by the Highlander by Julianne MacLean

death was a punishment meant for Angus’s father, who is a powerful clan chief, a celebrated warlord, and a persistent, outspoken Jacobite. He was the one who raised the army that fought at Sherrifmuir, and he was also the one who shot your father down on the battlefield.”
    Amelia flinched. She had nothing to do with any of this—
    she hated war and kill ing—yet she was caught up in this tangled and dirty web of vengeance, as they all were. “You think Richard wanted revenge … because of me?”
    Duncan removed a pistol from a saddle pouch and slipped it into his belt. “I don’t know the answer to that. all we know is that Angus’s father was standing over yours with his sword in the air, about to strike the deathblow, when your fiancé came riding out of the gunsmoke and clobbered him.
    Weeks later, Angus’s sister was dead and evidently your father was approving your engagement.”
    “So you think he saved my father’s life to secure his own rise.”
    “Aye.”
    “Do you believe also that my father was involved in this woman’s death?”
    “Nay. Your father was a good man. I know he was fair. I do not suspect him of such treachery.”
    She breathed a heavy sigh. “But you do not feel that way about Richard.”

    Duncan shook his head.
    Amelia tipped her head back and looked up at the gray sky—a perfect circle framed by the treetops.
    “I don’t know what to say about all this.”
    She could make no sense of her feelings. She was in shock and felt very lost. The one man she believed would come to her rescue like a knight in shining armor was in fact being accused of horrendous a cts of vill ainy.
    “I feel very naïve,” she continued. “I trusted my father to choose a husband for me, but now I must accept that his judgment may have been flawed. Who, then, do I trust? Who do I believe in?”
    Duncan strode toward her. “You rely on your own judgment, lass. No one else’s.”
    She pulled her gaze from the sky overhead and regarded his concerned expression. There was wisdom in his words, she knew it, but what seemed more relevant at the moment was the faint light of compassion she saw in his eyes, as well as the heavy beating of her own heart. She regarded him with curious wonder, let her eyes roam over the features of his face, and felt as if he understood what she was feeling.
    He looked away, toward the trees. A muscle clenched in his jaw; his chest expanded with a deep intake of breath.
    Amelia stood rapt, stricken by the need to know—what was he thinking?
    He moved closer. “You have much to learn about the world, lass.”

    More than ever, Amelia was shaken out of her comfortable, well -planned existence and had to accept that he was right, for none of this fit into her sheltered and clearly deficient realm of experience.
    Then he reached out to her, and for some reason she was not afraid as he brushed his thumb across her lips. His eyes roamed over her face, a bird chirped in the treetops, then he leaned forward and gently touched his mouth to hers.
    It was surprisingly comforting, which made no sense to her. No sense at all .
    She immediately pulled away and backed up a few steps, but he followed . all her senses began to hum, and she felt as if she were dissolving. She couldn’t think.
    He looked at her with fire in his eyes, as if he were just as surprised by the kiss as she. Then he backed away and turned his attention to the saddlebags, pulling the cinches tight and gathering up the reins.
    She wiped the moisture from her lips. “Why did you do that?”
    He did not give an answer. He simply led the horse to the edge of the glade.
    “I wish you would let me go,” she softly said, fol l owing him.
    “I am innocent in all this. Whatever Richard did is not my fault.
    I know nothing of it. And I don’t understand why Angus hates me so much, when he was the one who shot my father on the battlefield. He has it backwards. He is the one who wronged me. ”

    Stopping under the shade of a