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SCOTLAND, 1808
Tib MacKinnon had a vivid imagination. Whenever she waded into the sea with her younger siblings to harvest oysters, Dierdre pointed to the seals on the rocks, and she pointed to the mermaids hiding in their midst. She used to terrify her brothers with tales of kelpies. And she coaxed Jennet into helping milk each morning by claiming a unicorn had followed the cows into the byre.
So that afternoon, as she walked up the path to her cottage, she wasn’t surprised to spot a dragon swooping over the trees.
She stopped short, of course. She even dropped her armful of purple loosestrife. But she’d been in a particularly dreamy mood—gathering flowers to brighten her bedside—and she assumed her fancies had run away with her.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d mistaken an oddly shaped cloud for a mythical beast.
But this wasn’t a cloud.
What she saw was distinctly green and gold, undulating wildly as it dove. Below its heaving, shining bulk, it clasped a boat, a fishing boat, plucked from the harbor. A fisherman stood inside, battling the monster for all he was worth.
He was stark naked.
Tib never imagined naked men. Or almost never. Certainly not in the sky.
She shut her eyes. Opened them.
Monster, boat, and fisherman were still diving, the descent faster, the angle steeper.
Oh no. Oh dear. They weren’t heading toward . . . but they were! They were going to dash against . . .
“My ain house!” Tib yelled at the top of her voice and legged it, racing up the hill.
She was a MacKinnon after all. She’d fight like the devil for her home.
She only wished she had a sword, or even a knife. Her apron pockets banged against her thighs, stuffed with bannocks she’d thought to eat in the meadow while reading one of the lovely books she’d borrowed from the minister.
She could try to feed the dragon to death.
She’d been hungry after hours spent waulking the cloth at Aunt Ellen’s. She’d carried off a truly gluttonous number of bannocks.
Bannocks. The best weapon at her disposal.
God help her.
She ran faster, struggling through the bracken, sides splitting, and heard a tremendous crash. And then a very familiar baritone uttering a string of curses.
“Bloody hell! Bollocks!”
She crested the hill. There was her wee cottage, whole and unharmed. The boat was lodged high in the nearest tree, the dragon panting and fluttering above.
Not a dragon. Rather, yards and yards of oily silk that moved strangely, independent of the wind.
“Dammit!”
“James?” Tib put her hands on her hips. She should have known. What fisherman ever made such a nuisance of himself? Fishermen were too busy fishing.
“Isobel?” James was draped over a branch, several yards below the sideways boat. His bare legs hung down, well-shaped and muscular, shadowed with dark hair.
“Lord Blane.” Tib said it icily, remembering—too late—that they no longer referred to each other by their Christian names.
“Miss MacKinnon,” James countered, swinging down from the branch. He reached with his toes—his toes!—until he found purchase on a stout limb just a few feet above Tib’s head. Slowly, he leaned forward, still gripping the branch. His chest filled her field of vision, curved and ridged with complicated-looking muscles.
In the three years since he’d last darkened the Isle of Dearnrigg with his odious presence, he seemed to have grown even taller and broader.
