The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(117)

Egan touched her cheek. “Are ye all right?”

Zarabeth gasped, wrenching herself from the visions. She looked up to find Egan’s face an inch from hers.

She’d always loved Egan’s eyes, deep brown flecked with gold.

She remembered the first time he’d opened those eyes and looked at her. That had been after she’d found him in a ditch by the side of the road, half-dead. Her father had taken Egan home to be nursed back to health. When Egan had finally awakened, Zarabeth had been sitting by his bedside reading fairy tales to him in Nvengarian. He’d stared at her in confusion before demanding to know, in his luscious Scots voice, where he was.

Zarabeth pulled her thoughts to the present. She tried to keep her voice from shaking as she answered. “I am well.”

Egan straightened, holding the plaid closed with one tight fist. “Good. I’ll tell the landlord to get ye breakfast.”

Before he could turn away, Zarabeth asked quickly. “Where are we?”

Egan paused, scowling and impatient. “An inn up the coast from Ullapool. Closest thing I could find—couldn’t risk dragging ye all the way back to Castle MacDonald with you that wet and cold.”

Zarabeth shivered again but only from the bewildering memories of the wreck. “We are even then, you and I. I rescued you from a ditch, and you pulled me from the sea.”

Egan’s brows raised the slightest bit. “No, lass, you and I will never be even.” He swung around to the fire, lifting another log onto it one-handed, his hips moving against the plaid.

What did he mean by that flat statement? Zarabeth studied him, but she could sense nothing of his thoughts, as usual. Egan was the only man she’d ever loved, and the only man she couldn’t read.

“How did you find me?” she asked him.

“I heard ye calling out,” Egan said as he stirred the fire to new life. “Even over the storm, I heard ye calling from the rocks below. Good thing I did. I climbed down, and there ye were, clinging to the Devil’s Teeth, fainted dead away.”

Egan turned from the fire, snatched a much-wrinkled gown from a clothes rack where it had been drying, and tossed it onto the bed. “Dress yourself, and I’ll have them bring a meal to ye.”

Egan took up a large linen shirt and woolen stockings from the bottom of the bed without loosening his grip on the tartan. “Keep warm,” he admonished. Then he banged out the door and was gone.

Zarabeth sank down into the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. A few tears leaked from her eyes, and she quickly wiped them away. She’d grown too accustomed to being constantly watched to let her emotions show. So many people watched her for so many different reasons.

One thought in her jumbled mind stood out from the rest. Egan had said he’d heard Zarabeth call out, but she hadn’t, not in words. She’d been too exhausted to shout for help with her voice, needing all her strength to hold on to the rock.

She’d only called out with her mind, and Egan had heard her.

End of Excerpt