Free Saved by the Highlander by Emily Tilton

say that I cannot believe you this foolish—to run away South on your own.”
    Alice felt her heart flutter like a little bird in her chest. Truly, she realized, he had named accurately both the chances she had seen the moment Niall declared that she must stay here in his village. He continued to look down upon her, wearing the smile of a man who knows that his intentions are right. Alice could not understand, all of a sudden, how she could have been so very unwise as to insult his breeding; she saw now in his handsome face all the honor she had just accused him of lacking. The dawning realization that her governess’ ideas about nobility and lineage could not meet the challenges Alice faced in the present hour made her anger—at her governess, at Lord Roderick, at her father for giving her to that vile man, at the outlaw for awakening her to her body’s yearnings in such a degrading way—blaze up suddenly within her breast. Yes, she might apologize, but she could never show Niall MacAlpin that she had truly seen the error of her impression that he was a barbarian. The man was about to strike her with a leather strap, after all!
    “I do apologize, sir,” Alice said, trying to keep her tone as cold as she could. “It was beneath my dignity to insult you thus.”
    Once she had spoken these words, she wished them back immediately. How could she possibly have said something so very rude? But she knew, did she not? She had spoken that way in order to conceal her true consciousness of having done him wrong under a guise of elevated manners. Perhaps part of her, too, had wanted to ruffle his calm—even to make him angry—in order that he would not discern Alice’s confusion. But she had not of course taken the comfort of her backside into consideration, and she watched her words succeed all too well in angering Niall McAlpin.
    Alice’s racing heart and her rapid breathing, though perhaps they did cover over her sense of shame at having insulted him, also betrayed the much greater sense of shame she now felt at the idea that she would have to raise the plaid and her chemise under it, uncover the round little cheeks of her bottom in front of him, and then… then the even worse part would begin.
    Niall’s eyes positively blazed. “My lady,” he said, with a grim resolution, “you had better stand up and go over to the bed this instant. I do not wish to shame you as much as you seem to wish to shame me, but I am going to punish you thoroughly now, even if I have to pick you up and carry you to the bed, and hold you down upon it while I whip your noble rump.”
    Before the highlander’s onslaught of authority, Alice’s nerves broke down. “Please,” she whispered, beginning to cry. “Please don’t. I am… I am so sorry…”
    But Niall reached out his hand, grasped her firmly around her upper arm, and began to pull her off the stool. Somehow the thought of being dragged to the bed seemed so much worse to Alice than moving there on her own feet that she cried out, “No! No, I’ll go!”
    Niall let go of her arm them, and Alice did rise on very weak knees. She clasped her hands in front of her waist, where she had belted the arisaid upon waking, proud of her new ability even if she still found the garment very strange. She began to shuffle toward the sleeping end of the croft house.
    “Faster, if you please, my lady,” Niall said behind her. “The sooner you bare your backside for me, the sooner this will be over.”
    The true punishment, Alice thought to herself then, wasn’t the strapping, was it? No, the true lesson Niall now taught her was about the very same dignity she had tried to assume in attempting to locate the limits of his resolve and her power to use her noble birth. She had wanted literally to lord that birth over him. Telling her to make haste to raise her skirts and show him her naked posterior presented for discipline demonstrated to Alice that he held the power of this humiliating