Free The Return of Black Douglas by Elaine Coffman

frown was sexy as hell. Why did she feel she had seen him before?
    Masculine to the core, he seemed as fierce and wild as this barbarous place. He might be a hottie, but she sensed that within he was as cold and hard as a slab of coarse-grained granite. I’m staring into the face of history. He was a Highlander through and through. Never, ever, in a million years of excavation would she imagine this was what a Highland warrior would look like, and oh, was the real warrior better than the imagined one. The opportunity, the research that could be done here. It was a gold mine, not to mention the possibilities of extracurricular benefits. The thought left her mystified and somewhat breathless.
    She tried to present a brave front and decided to break the ice. “Greetings, Sir Knight, I hope your chivalric beliefs have not been truant of late and that your code is as honorable as your knight’s regalia.”
    He stared at her impassively, and just when she thought he wouldn’t, he spoke, his words tempered with a lilting burr. “’Twould seem ye have yerself in a bit of a predicament, lass.”
    Lass… Oh, my, with that voice, he could make a bloody fortune in ringtones. “Yes, I’m in need of help, as you can see.”
    “The middle of a battle is no’ a safe place for a woman. Mayhap ye should take care in the future, not only with where ye step, but with the matter of yer clothes—or the absence of them.”
    She lifted her head higher and met his stare until she thought her neck would get a crick in it. She really hated answering him from her submissive sitting position.
    “If you plan to kill me, do it now and get it over with. However, if you’re thinking to ransom me, you are wasting your time. I am alone and have no family save the sister your men kidnapped.”
    Isobella wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to her before that this man with the icy stare and the manners of a caveman might actually be responsible for Elisabeth’s kidnapping. The last thing she wanted was to let him see how desperate she was. She raised her chin to a lofty height.
    “Where have you taken my sister? I swear, if your men harm her—”
    “Do ye always talk so much and say so little?”
    She sputtered, searching for something clever and gave up. “Only when I’m nervous.”
    “We didna take yer sister,” he said, with a grudging hint of respect underlying the tone of his voice. “My brothers hope to rescue her from the Macleans.”
    “The Macleans? Then who are you?”
    “I might be asking the same of ye, mistress, but I can tell by yer speech that ye are an English wench.”
    She didn’t miss the way his hard stare passed coldly over her. She tried to pull the hem of her shorts lower, to no avail. Bruised legs bare and her knees knocking together in fright, she wondered what the rest of her person looked like. Not that it really mattered. What did she have to lose at this point? She lifted her chin again in the manner that always made her mother say, “That blasted Scots blood!”
    A sharp pang of separation from her life and her world ripped through her. What a day of trauma it had been so far. Her home and family were centuries away, and the Black Douglas was beyond vague about their future. That revelation had been a real shocker, turned tragic the moment those ruffians rode off with Elisabeth.
    Isobella could only pray they were the kind and honorable sort and would do her sister no harm. Mull was a small island and very sparsely populated in 1515. If she were to venture a guess, she’d say there probably weren’t more than a few hundred people on the island. There were no towns, just castles and a few settlements. It shouldn’t be difficult to learn where she was.
    She wouldn’t tell him any of this, however. Never expose your weakness. “I am neither English nor a wench.” The whole situation was almost comical, and she bit her lips to keep from laughing at the absurdity of it. Here she sat on her bruised