A Promise of Love by Karen Ranney Page A

man's seed found purchase in your pristine English womb."
    Her pallor was replaced by blotches of red, the flat look in her eyes gone, supplanted by a look so fierce he almost recoiled from it. Yet she did not speak, and as he stared, she changed again, cloaking her rage in something he could not describe. There was no hushed comfort in her silence, nothing restful. It bubbled like an underground stream. There was concealment in her speechlessness, a hint of something clandestine, as if she were afraid to reveal the substance of herself.
    She did the one thing designed to infuriate him.
    Judith turned and walked away
    He had had enough.
    She felt the jolt at her knees and would have fallen if he hadn't scooped her up and thrown her over his shoulder. She screamed, which only fueled the laughter of those who’d followed her through the village despite the oncoming storm. Judith beat on his bare back, but all he did was hook his free arm around her legs and drop her by the ankles, until the long mass of her hair uncoiled and touched the ground.
    The eternal Highland rain began to fall, full, fat drops accompanying the symphony of thunder. It was, Alisdair thought, a curious diorama they enacted, complete with nature’s cooperation.
    Her nose was at the level of his knees.Judith was beyond humiliation. Her skirt was sliding down and, in a moment, her legs would be bared to the shuffling mass of people who relentlessly followed them despite the MacLeod's quick and determined strides. She ceased pounding on his back, replacing that futile gesture with one far more practical.
    She bit him.
    He dropped her with a shout.
    She landed on her back, momentarily winded. She stared up at the furious face of the MacLeod and realized that modesty was going to demand a price. She crept up on her hands and knees, brushed her hair back from her face with one wet hand, never shifting her gaze from him. She watched him warily as he rubbed that portion of his anatomy which had been the softest and most accessible to her teeth. When he came after her, she was prepared. She leapt to her feet, looked to the left, but darted to the right.
    They raced towards the castle and Judith knew that she was going to pay for her impulsive gesture but not, she vowed, in view of a hundred people. She gathered the skirts of her new dress in her fists and, without a thought to the modesty she had protected only moments earlier, lifted the folds of material above her pistoning knees and sprinted for her life.
    The storm was full upon them now, but Judith didn’t notice the pelting rain, her only thought was to escape the retribution she would receive at the MacLeod’s hands. The path she’d taken only moments earlier became as slippery as a stream bed, but still she ran.
    If he caught her, he was going to kill her, Alisdair decided. One less English woman was not going to be a loss to the world. Especially, this one. But, damn, the woman could run. The rain was icy upon his bare chest, but he was immune to such petty discomfort.
    Alisdair caught her just inside the bronze doors. He swept her up in his arms despite her struggles. The crowd cheered as he disappeared from sight with his sodden English wife momentarily tamed. Well, if nothing else, Alisdair thought, she had been an entertaining diversion.
    He swayed against the stone steps that led to the living quarters. She had not stopped fighting him, but he lacked the energy to throw her over his shoulder again. He’d been working in the fields since dawn while she, no doubt, had been saving her strength for their encounter. He scowled at her, a gesture that would have given a sane person a reason to cease their shouts and blows. No, his English wife was as stubborn as she was athletic.
    "Shut up, woman!" he finally shouted, and the sound bounced off the stone walls and seemed to echo down the long corridors.
    "Let me go!" she yelled in response. She had nothing to lose; she knew what punishment awaited her in