Free Passion and Plaid - Her Highland Hero (Scottish Historical Romance) by Anya Karin

after leaving was an invitation to my wedding, a note that we
were in Fort Mary safe and sound and waiting for all of you to come and
celebrate the happiest moments of our lives, but-”
    “Gavin? Who am I? Who is talking to you right
now?”
    “I’m not drunk,” Gavin said with a grin.
    “This is John talking to you. You’re my best
friend and unless something’s changed in the last three days, I’m yours. We’re
sworn brothers. You’ve helped me out of more terrible spots than I can count,
and I you. If you got lost on the road to Russia, I’d come and find you. And I
know you’d do the same for me.”
    “And I too!” Ben roared, slapping Gavin on the
back. “You’ve made me feel more alive than I thought I ever could!”
    “You set my spirit free from the sheriff,” said
Rodrigo. “I’m your man.”
    “It’s because of you I found my love,” Lynne said
wrapping her arm around John’s waist. “For that, I owe you everything.”
    “You have save my husband,” Elena said, smiling
and getting it close enough to right that Olga didn’t correct her.
    “I can’t thank you all enough. I’m...I’m blessed
to call you friends.”
    “No,” Olga said in her stern and serious voice as
she caught one of his wrists and squeezed his arm. “You’re blessed to have arms
what like you do. You’ve earned friends like this. Like us.”

Six
    M ornay’s Cleft
    August 17, Early Morning
    ––––––––
    K enna had grown used to the morning haze from the
hills on either side of Mornay’s Cleft. So much so, in fact, that she began to
enjoy the smell of the burning wood. It reminded her of the fires that her Da
and Ma kept burning back at home.
    It seemed so far away that she was afraid for a
moment she’d never see it again. A soft knock, getting more insistent the
longer she ignored it, caught her attention and made her shake her head to clear
the dangerous nostalgia.
    “Sorry,” she called. “Who is it?”
    “Duggan,” the voice answered. “Sorry to bother you
ma’am, but I was just checking to see after you being alright. You were pretty
upset last night when you went up.”
    She had been. That much was true. Kenna spent most
of the afternoon into the early part of the evening chatting with the various
people who came and went through the inn’s front room. As Duggan predicted, as
the festival drew near, people from both villages, and many out-of-towners had
begun to fill the inn. She heard accents from Edinburgh, from the port towns on
the east and west sides of Scotland, even a couple from northern England.
Plenty from Duncraig as well, but Kenna was amazed at just how many people
there and from how far they’d come.  
    “Sorry, I just got a bit taken in with all the
things happening. The crowd got to me, I think.”
    Most of the visitors were tired from the road and
wanting a drink before they went off wherever they were going to sleep for the
night, but a few had talked with her, though the things she learned were
largely useless. One man from Duncraig, for instance, had a lust for a Mornay’s
Cleft farmer’s wife, and it had evidently become well known town-talk for all
the bawdy rhymes that were made at his expense. Another man from the other town
had almost breeched the subject of Mayor Willard when she asked, but as soon as
someone else entered the inn, he closed his mouth, remarking that you never know
how far the spider could feel his web twitch.
    That shook her.
    The rest of the night she spent talking to Lachlan
and Egan as most of the patrons drank and ate their fills, and went to their
rooms for sleep. But, when she was finally alone with Duggan, she admitted how
she’d not been paying much attention to them after hearing about the way the
townspeople saw the mayor as a spider waiting to prey. He seemed distracted by
something, as though his thoughts were elsewhere, or he was being extra
cautious with his words. He’d not said much, so by the time Kenna went up