Page 11 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“I don’t know what you’ve been through, or what has happened to bring us to this place, but I think we can help each other,” the elegant woman was saying.

“I’m lost” were the only words Samantha could conjure. Hopelessly, incredibly lost. Adrift. Misplaced. In every conceivable way.

Alison’s gaze gentled. “Tell me, Samantha, have you ever been to Scotland?”

CHAPTERTHREE

Wester Ross, Highlands, Scotland, November 1880

Of all the things Samantha feared after agreeing to this farce, finding herself in the arms of another man so soon after the death of her husband hadn’t been one of them.

It really should have been, she thought, as she tried to gain her breath whilst crushed to a body hard as stone by arms as unyielding as the iron shackles she’d crossed an ocean to escape.

She should have dreaded thisverything, most of all. The wicked response of her traitorous body to the proximity of a strong and dangerous man.

She’d thought she’d prepared for every contingency, every dangerous pitfall.

Of course, in all the frenzy of the past few weeks, she’d never once considered the treachery of a proper woman’s footwear.

High-heeled boots were the devil’s contraptions… or perhaps one of the many punishments a wrathful God cursed upon modern descendants of Eve.

Either way, if Alison hadn’t insisted she wear thesedamned things upon disembarking onto the platform of Strathcarron Station in the Highlands, she’d have been sure-footed when the little urchin bastard had snatched her handbag.

It wouldn’t have mattered that she’d been staring, openmouthed, wondering—like a dim-witted idiot—just what a fierce Celtic barbarian was doing at a railway station at this hour.

Or, rather, in this modern day and age.

For hell’s sake, she’d not even had a chance to step down from the steaming, wheezing train onto the platform when the handbag was wrenched from her grip by a sprinting little wretch. Which was why she’d toppled from the highest rung of unstable folding stairs with an indelicate shriek, and landed in the miraculously awaiting arms of said fierce barbarian.

A barbarian… dressed like a gentleman?

That couldn’t be right, as he was nogentleman. The steady strength crushing the air from her lungs rendered that quite obvious.

“I’ve got ye, lass.” Something about the way the Highlander uttered the word “lass” instantly turned her insides to liquid. Even in such a setting, his baritone was supple as silk against naked flesh.

Writhing in his grip, Samantha pulled away enough to look up at him and changed her mind, yet again.

He was no barbarian. And certainly no gentleman.

He had to be a Celtic god.

Men worshiped metal and money these days, and he was crafted of both in equal measure. Also, there was no denying that the suit stretched over shoulders as wide as the Rocky Mountains must have cost incomprehensible amounts of cash.

More than she’d ever…

“My handbag!” Reminded of money, she squirmed in his grip, surprised that he didn’t set her down right away. All the cash she had in the world was contained in that lovely burgundy bag, along with other priceless documents.

Identity papers.

“Doona fash, lass. Yer handbag will be recovered and returned to ye.”

She’d have asked him what the hell “fash” meant, if his eyes hadn’t stunned her mute. Samantha had never in her life seen anything so verdant or so shockingly, absorbingly beautiful. Not the quaking leaves of the sparse aspens on the Nevada homestead where she’d been raised, or the brief spring grasses that quickly faded to gold, then brown beneath the relentless desert sun.

Not even the apparent ever-lush landscape of her new country.

Scotland.

She could still scarce believe it.