Free MacKinnons' Hope: A Highland Christmas Carol by Tanya Anne Crosby Page A

whispered, “ Cèol mo Chridhe, Keh-ole moe chreeyeh .”
    You are the music of my heart.
----
    “ A nd you mine ,” Page said, feeling every bit the wanton.
    Her senses heightened.
    Her husband was a master puppeteer, knowing her only too well. They had a houseful of guests, a wedding to see to, and that was only if you somehow managed to forget that they had a village to rebuild. With so much work to be done, this was not where she should be right now, though she must confess, at the instant, there was nowhere else she’d rather be.
    Iain loved her sweetly, filling her wholly, caressing her body from the inside out. Here, alone in the stables, she felt like a new bride lying beneath him, arching for his loving, letting him fill her as deeply as he pleased.
    It was easy to see how young folk could get carried away, and Page was so pleased for Constance. This was the reason for life…
    She cared not one whit that the ground was cold, or that the smell of pigs and horseflesh surrounded them. At times like this, she was again that lost little girl who had loved her reluctant champion so madly.
    But she detected other scents… scents that were hardly suited to a stable. Cinnamon and ginger. Lavender. Cloves. Page froze.
    “Iain?”
    Her husband stopped loving her at once, responding to the tone of her voice.
    “Did you order supplies to be stored in the stables instead of the storehouse?”
    “Nay.”
    “It’s dark,” she said. “Light a lamp.”
    “Right now?”
    His voice sounded incredulous, but Page had a sudden and unshakable sense of peril. Before either of them could entirely regain their senses, she heard the crack of metal against bone and felt Iain crumble against her.

Chapter 6
    A ny sense of chagrin Page may have felt over having been caught in the midst of loving her husband fled at the sight of Iain sprawled on his face on the stable floor. The man hit him hard enough to leave him for dead, and then he dragged her out of the stable, screaming in protest.
    Unlike the night before, all work had ceased. Her husband had declared this a day of celebration so everyone was at the bonfire, half a league away—purposely built to keep the fire as far from surviving structures and new construction as possible.
    “We cannot leave him there!”
    The man—dressed in MacLean red—jerked her arm so hard it made her squeal.
    “He’ll be fine,” the stranger said, “I merely cracked him on the head, but if ye make me go back, I’ll make certain he won’t rise again.”
    Page’s relief was palpable. “You have no idea what you have done. My husband will come searching for me the very instant he wakes. He will find you,” she warned, and then she wished she hadn’t made such a boast. The last thing she wanted was for the man to go back and make sure Iain was dead.
    “He won’t find you ’til ’tis too late.”
    Page had a sinking feeling down in her gut. “Too late?”
    She couldn’t place the man’s accent—not precisely. He wasn’t Scots. His accent sounded strange to her ears—and yet vaguely familiar as well.
    “Because your father is going to kill you,” he explained.
    Page was genuinely confused by his claim. Her father had had very little to do with her for ten years and more. “My father?”
    “Aye. Your father.”
    “Hugh is here?”
    “Aye.”
    “With you?”
    “Not precisely.”
    “He has come to kill me?”
    “Does it matter?”
    Page bristled at the man’s question. “Of course it does!”
    What child ever wanted to believe her father could do such a thing?
    Hugh FitzSimon had never loved her overmuch, but Page could not see him come to murder her in cold blood. And still … he’d been quite willing to discard her—never mind that he’d changed his mind and then wanted her back. To Hugh, Page had never been aught more than chattel, and still, it made her heart wrench that her father might want her dead. But why? What could he hope to gain?
    She was not a son, and