The Curse of Clan Ross by L. L. Muir Page A

clear and bright—when they were open—and suddenly his dream came back to him.
    His wife. He had assumed the daughter to whom she referred would look much the same, so when the lass dropped out of the hole looking just as expected, he’d never considered her to be the mother. He’d been too weary last night to consider anything as more than it appeared.
    His footsteps scratched and thumped clearly in the silence of the deserted hall. His quick steps echoed his mood as he flew up the stairs. As he turned toward his chamber, his fingers ran lightly over the stones of the outer wall, the rocks worn smooth by hundreds upon hundreds of similar touches. Her cheeks would be smoother still.
    His wife.
    He couldn’t wait to tell her—just as soon as he found out who had put her up to her shenanigans.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Jilly came fully awake in an instant, but she didn’t so much as twitch. She’d already suffered from this backward plane of existence where one suffered longer the more one complained. If she were awake when she shouldn’t be, no one else would know.
    Was that light coming through her eyelids, or just the hope of light?  If she opened her eyes to blackness, would she go mad?
    A man cleared his throat. The loveliest sound on earth; she was not alone.
    She sat up and drank in the sunshine, throwing her arms wide, exalting when her fingers brushed against nothing at all. The cup of water was there. Light, water, and air...
    ...and Laird Quinn Ross, dressed in a less formal kilt for today’s tourists. She beamed a smile at him for lack of something appropriate to say, but the grin he answered her with was a bit unsettling. Her chest expanded and felt tight in the same instant. Please God, don’t let him have any further games to play with her.
    As she felt her smile fall away, so did his.
    “Laird Ross,” she greeted tentatively.
    “Lass,” he answered, but nothing more. He only stared at her as if he waited for some sort of apology. She’d spent who knows how long buried alive in his bloody tomb, could very well have died while he was taking the time to change his clothes and who knows what else, and she had done something wrong?  Not likely.  
    “Well?” she prodded. Surely he would be falling on his knees begging her not to go to the authorities.
    “Well, what, English?”
    Surely he had meant to call her “American” in that less than flattering tone, but he didn’t look like he was in the mood to be corrected. In fact, the scowl brewing on his face was so fierce she would even waive her need for his apology.
    For now.
    Jilly opted for casual conversation—anything that might end the tension in the room.
    “Where are the Muir sisters?” she asked.
    His scowl turned to surprise, then back to a scowl. “So, the Muir twins. Why I should be surprised I dinna ken, but at least it was no’ a Gordon.”
    “What are you talking about?  What have those two done now?”
    He crossed to the small window and looked out. Wondering if he was looking down at Lorraine and Loretta, she tossed the covers off and joined him. Her shoulder bumped his arm as she sought what had caught his attention, and he turned to give her more room.
    “Sorry,” she said, then froze. He stood so near, his chin only inches away since his attention had turned to her. Jilly’s shoulder was pressed against the center of his enormous chest. It felt like a wall of rock beneath folds of flannel, and heaven help her, it was bare beneath.
    The sisters were forgotten as she became mesmerized by his right hand slowly snaking up in front of her, sliding around her neck and burying itself in her hair. She had no power to resist the turning and tilting of her head, and although there was no pause in his movements it was surely an entire minute before his mouth pressed against hers.
    Never before had Jilly experienced such a romantic kiss, nor been held so gently, yet intensely. Her toes curled inside her cowboy boots as she resisted the