Free Ravished by a Highlander by Paula Quinn

embraced her once. She did not know how to react to this half-dressed
     Highlander who held her as if she were his.
    “Yer Captain Asher was fightin’ fer his life. He told me ye lived after he saw yer arrow in my hand, and asked me to save
     ye.”
    Davina smiled and closed her eyes, remembering her dearest friend. Even with his own death at hand, Edward sought to protect
     her.
    “He told me yer enemies wanted ye to burn,” Rob went on. In front of him, Davina’s smiled faded. So, her captain
had
told him more than Rob had first admitted. What else did he know?
    “Did he guard ye under King Charles’s orders?”
    “No,” she told him truthfully.
    “Did he guard ye because he was in love with ye, then?”
    All of her caution could not have prepared her for Finn’s query. Not knowing how to answer, she turned to him and knew by
     the abashed expression on his face that Rob was staring at him also.
    “He did love me,” she revealed, desiring to lie as little as possible. He was going to tell her that night by her door, but
     he never had the chance. Perhaps it was better that he’d gone home to God not knowing that she did not feel the same as he
     did. “He was a good man and one that I shall never forget.”
    “A captain has no authority to keep his entire regiment holed up at an abbey to protect a lass whether he loves her or no’,”
     Rob told them both with a bit of a bite in his words. Davina felt him inhale deeply, as if he was trying to rein in whatever
     it was he was feeling. “I’ve let ye evade my questions long enough. I would know the truth of all this now, Davina.”
    He
was
angry. He wanted answers and he wasn’t getting them. Still, her name on his lips sounded tender, oddly profound. How long
     had it been since a man had spoken it? The last was Captain Geoffries when he was leaving her. Before that, mayhap her father…
    “If I’m to bring war to my clan fer aidin’ ye, I would know why.”
    At his words, Will, riding slightly ahead of them, turned on his mount and cast his cousin a curious look of his own. Rob
     ignored it and lowered his voice so that only she, and Finn riding so close, could hear.
    “Tell me why ye were cloistered away as if fergotten, but protected like a queen?”
    As if forgotten.
His words dug deep into the core of Davina’s sorrow. Her true family knew she existed, and though a legion of the king’s
     best men had helped raise her, the truth remained that she’d been abandoned. Her childhood was lonely, and her future, if
     she lived to see it, was crowded with cold smiles and false affection.
    But she had also been given so much by God, sisters who loved her and men who had given their lives for her. She had no right
     to mumble and complain about things not meant to be hers, and she never did. But being in this man’s arms, riding with his
     men across heather-lined hills, as if she were naught but a Highland lass returning home with her husband, stirred her longings
     more than ever before.
    “What have ye to do with the king, Davina? Why does Argyll or Monmouth want ye dead?”
    She turned to him, wanting him to see the truth in her eyes, and to look for it in his.
    “Do you truly not know, Rob MacGregor?”
    “Nae lass, I truly dinna’ know.”
    His answer didn’t make her as happy as she’d hoped it would. If he didn’t know, then there was still time to keep him out
     of this—and her selfish longings in check. She could never belong to him, or any man like him. The life she dreamed of was
     simply that—a dream. She’d known it since she was a child and she wasn’t about to awaken that lonely little girl.
    “Then please understand,” she said, turning forward between his thighs. “I would prefer you know nothing more. I am grateful
     for your aid and ask no more of you but your release when we reach Courlochcraig.”
    He didn’t move behind her. In fact, Davina was sure he didn’t breathe. Then, with a snap of his reins that urged