Teresa Medeiros by Whisper of Roses

courting.” He faced his wife. “I’m not willing to shed the blood of Morgan or my sons forthe sake of stubborn pride. Not Cameron pride or MacDonnell pride.”
    Elizabeth straightened her shoulders with visible effort. “Very well. If we don’t convince the MacDonnells we’re not murderers, I’ll be setting an empty table for my fancy suppers. I doubt Lady Fraser or the MacPhersons would care to dine with us if they fear we might poison their pudding or skewer them with the poultry pick.”
    Dougal would never have belittled her civilized fripperies. They were the very interests that made her so feminine—so essentially his Elizabeth.
    He reached for her hand, but she allowed him only the briefest squeeze before withdrawing it. “I concede to your wisdom. Do what you must, Dougal, to preserve your precious peace.” She lifted her skirts in a regal curtsy, then left him, closing the door softly behind her.
    Dougal sank against the windowsill, rubbing his beard. Whoever had struck this blow against both Cameron and MacDonnell had struck well and deep. All of his inquiries had turned up nothing. In the chaos following the stabbing, the villain had fled without leaving a single clue to his identity.
    Surely even Elizabeth would understand that Angus’s assassination had forced Dougal’s hand. If he wanted to hold up his head in the Highlands and safeguard the future of his clan as well as the future of his children, he had only one choice. He must give the chieftain of the MacDonnells an irrevocable emblem of his trust—a treasure of such exquisite value that Morgan could never again doubt his goodwill. A treasure Dougal had been holding in trust for the lad for twelve sweet years.
    He gazed at the closed door, praying his decision wouldn’t cost him his wife as well. God might forgive him for his scheming, but he wasn’t sure Elizabeth ever would. Behind him, the wild, haunting notes of the pipes pierced the Florentine glass as if to taunt him about what the morrow would bring.
    •  •  •
    Frantic to escape the maddening skirl of the bagpipes, Sabrina dragged the comforter over her head and burrowed beneath her pillow. From the foot of her half-testered bed, Pugsley lifted his head and growled deep in his throat. Still the pipes played on, their untamed melody luring Sabrina far beyond the sturdy walls of the manor that had enclosed her all her life. Ignoring Pugsley’s snarl of protest, she threw back the blankets and padded barefoot to the window.
    She drew it open. A frosted pearl of a moon dipped low over the foothills. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight silhouetted against its luminous backdrop.
    Tongues of flame from a roaring bonfire licked at the night. Sparks shot skyward only to be caught by the wind and tossed like a handful of rebellious stars back into their heavenly fold. Shadowy figures cavorted and danced within its halo of light, their tartans flapping behind them like wings.
    Sabrina knew that had she stood among them, the scene would have lost its romance. She would have heard the profanity, seen the drunken stumbling and recoiled in horror from Angus’s shrouded corpse laid out like a pagan sacrifice in their midst. But from the cozy distance of her second-story window, their revelry wove its own dark enchantment.
    The Highlanders danced wild and free, unfettered by the manners and conventions so prized by her mother. All of her life Sabrina had been lovingly snipped and pruned like one of Elizabeth’s blooms, groomed to someday travel to England and take her rightful place in the illustrious Belmont family. But sometimes when the thunder came down from the mountains in mighty drumrolls, her soul yearned to ramble like the wild Highland roses that tangled their thorny briers through fern-choked glens and stony rills.
    The song of the pipes made her ache to flee the staid silence of the manor in these wee hours of night. Her feet itched to caper across the dew-drenched