Free Highland Surrender by Dawn Halliday Page A

infuse a scoff into her voice. “I am a MacNab.” That statement held quite a lot of meaning in the Glen. Most of the residents here had feared her grandmother.
    “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes on both counts.”
    As much as she wished it didn’t, his agreement pricked her in the chest. It hurt.
    Nevertheless, she reminded herself that this was for the best. She didn’t want this man pursuing her. She had no desire to be the mistress of the Earl of Camdonn, and she had even less desire to become a rival of the future countess.
    She should be thankful for his dismissal, because God knew she didn’t have the willpower to resist him. One touch and she’d be lost.
    Yet she would be forced to touch him. Over and over again, until his wound had healed enough for her to leave.
    Ceana closed her fist around a tiny pot of medicine and rose to her feet, looking wildly about for a means to change the subject. She gestured at the wall where the hearth was flanked by the two doors. “What lies beyond those doors?”
    “Why don’t you go see for yourself.”
    She strode to the rightmost door first. Opening it, she found an enormous dressing room with a wardrobe, a clothespress, and shelves brimming with clothing and accessories. Enough to clothe the men of Glenfinnan for a year, she gathered. After a few moments, she backed out the way she had come.
    She walked to the other door and opened it to reveal a receiving room elaborately decorated with silk-covered furniture dyed in dark, masculine browns and rusty reds. At the far end of the room stood an exquisitely carved rosewood desk that matched Cam’s bed. Crystal bottles filled with clear and amber liquids covered the similarly styled sidebar that ran nearly the entire length of the wall backing the dressing room. Several plush chairs and a long sofa scattered the vast area between Ceana and the desk. The room was almost the size of Cam’s bedchamber, and equally elegant. Combined, the rooms were ten times as large as her cottage.
    Most women of her status would swoon with ecstasy to walk into such a room. Ceana, however, was a MacNab. It took more than this to impress her. She retreated and returned to Cam’s side.
    “Did you see the wine bottles beneath the sidebar?”
    “No.”
    “I could use a bottle right now.”
    “Absolutely not,” she declared. “Spirits make wretched aids to healing.”
    “Perhaps I ought to have called in my surgeon after all. He’d have allowed me to drink as much as I pleased.”
    She chose to ignore that statement.
    He frowned. “Even your grandmother allowed me a bit of whisky when I needed it for the pain.”
    “My grandmother wasn’t nearly so erudite as I am.”
    He laughed. “Is that so?”
    “Aye. Her expertise was in the old ways. I have found many of those methods to be effective, but I’ve studied newer forms of healing, and I possess far more knowledge of the science of it.”
    “What do you mean, ‘newer forms of healing’?”
    “Techniques of the East, for example.” She tore her gaze from him, an unsettled feeling fluttering in her chest. She often used the techniques she’d studied, but people rarely questioned her, and she’d never shared her knowledge of them before. She’d accomplished most of her learning through secret reading and sly observance. At first it was a matter of self-preservation that she didn’t discuss her knowledge, for no one would allow any woman, never mind a woman of her lowly and questionable status, to study as she had. Eventually her secrecy had become a matter of habit. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to talk about it to anyone, even after all these years.
    “Techniques of the East?”
    He seemed intrigued, and Ceana’s cheeks heated. She never blushed, but with this man, it had developed into a distressing, embarrassing habit. She pressed the backs of her hands to her face and kept her gaze resolutely on the stone hearth. “Aye, well, yes. I lived in Aberdeen for a time,