The Lover

Angus took a step toward her, but she held up her hand to ward him off. “Don’t, Grandfather!” Anguish seized her features. “Nothing you could say can justify the risks you’ve taken with other people’s lives. You thought to play God—” She shook her head. “I had best leave before I say something I would forever regret. Rab, come!”

Without waiting, she whirled her horse and rode blindly toward home, anger and hurt and humiliation warring within her breast. She had been used as a pawn in her grandfather’s machinations, played for a fool, while he had imperiled hundreds of lives.

Worse, Niall had been given no choice but to wed her. She’d been forced on him through subterfuge and guile. He’

d submitted to the marriage only because he thought her clan endangered. But there’d been no reason for them to wed.

Shame flooded Sabrina at the thought. How could she ever face him now? Did he even know about Angus’s sham illness?

Her heartbeat faltered. When Niall learned he’d been tricked, would he want to end their union? It was too late to petition for a grant of annulment, but he might wish to be free of the alliance he had never wanted.

Dismay swept through her with the power to make her tremble.

There was another issue to resolve as well. The feud with Clan Buchanan. Perhaps it was not too late for peace. Owen had wanted a truce all along. And once Niall learned the truth about the cattle raid, it might temper his hatred for his foes, enough for him to reconsider an end to the hostilities. In any event, the matter of the cattle thefts must be set right with the Buchanans.

But first, Sabrina thought with a bleakness she couldn’t shake, she had to speak to her husband and discover if he still wanted her for his bride.

As she neared Creagturic, Sabrina steeled herself to face Niall, but when she rode in, she discovered that her crucial conversation would have to wait.

Eve Graham had come to call.

Sabrina left her horse with a groom and her dog happily sniffing for rodents, and entered the house. Rigid with nerves, she went upstairs.

Her guest was not in the drawing room, she discovered to her surprise, nor was she in any of the other chambers on that floor. The serving maid, Jean, thought Lady Graham might have ventured to the orchard behind the castle, for she’d glanced out a window earlier and had seen the laird strolling with the lady there.

Niall and Eve in the orchard? An inexplicable misgiving gripped Sabrina.

She considered waiting for them to return, but chided herself for acting the coward. Making her way from the manor, she followed the stone path up a hill, to the walled orchard where apple and cherry and quince trees grew in gnarled profusion.

She faltered when she heard hushed voices emanating from beyond the stone wall, yet she took a deep breath and forced herself to peer over the top edge. The intimate scene that greeted her barely a stone’s throw away made her blood turn cold.

The beautiful Widow Graham and the handsome Laird McLaren were lying on his plaid in the grass, embracing.

Sabrina clasped a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. She knew she should go, yet she remained riveted where she stood, paralyzed by the sight.

Niall lay on his back with Eve straddling his hips, kissing him fervently. The skirts of her elegant gown were hitched up, while her bodice was loosened nearly to her waist, baring her ripe, heavy breasts.

Pushing herself up then, Eve grasped both of Niall’s hands and guided them to cover the swollen mounds.

His expression was strangely grim as he gazed up at the beautiful woman above him. “You’re a randy tart, sweetheart.”

“As I recall, you used to consider that one of my charms.” Provocatively, Eve arched her back so that her peaked nipples jutted forward into his palms. “You still enjoy my charms, do you not, Niall?”

His fingers closed over her nipples, squeezing lightly. Eve released a whimpering moan, shutting her eyes and letting her head fall back.

Sabrina stared, riveted with anguish, the air trapped in her lungs. The erotic image of those strong bronzed fingers cupping pale voluptuous breasts would be forever branded in her memory, as would Niall’s face, taut with sensuality as he pleasured another lover.

She took a stumbling step backward, a sick fury cramping her heart. When Eve gave another moan of delight, Sabrina choked back a sob and forced her feet to move. Turning, she fled before they could see her.

She ran, tears blinding her eyes.

Somehow she made her way back to the house and found herself in her bedchamber, their bedchamber…the one where Niall had stripped away her innocence and initiated her into lovemaking. Where he’d shown her so many hours of indescribable pleasure. Where they’d begun to build a bond of tenderness and trust between them….

Desperately Sabrina clutched at the bedpost, bracing herself against the wild trembling that had invaded her limbs. Betrayal burned like acid inside her, while a savage pain raked her heart.

She felt cold, sick inside, beset by tumultuous emotions, one bleeding into the other. She hadn’t expected this awful pain in her heart, this heaviness in her chest that threatened to strangle her very breath.

“Niall…” she whispered in agony.