They were ill-matched...
He's charming and deadly.
She's intoxicating and skeptical.
What happens when an English lady with a secret meets a Scottish Highlander with a history?
Lady Elizabeth Kendall is on the run...
There is no one she can trust.
...
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Reade wasn't sure what he was expecting from his calm words, but he was not expecting laughter. Elizabeth—he was at least three-quarters sure that that was her real name—started out with a muffled giggle, and then in a matter of moments, she was rocked back in her chair and laughing as if she had heard the most magnificent joke in the world.
Reade thought about interrupting her but given the fact that she had been fighting for her purse and her virtue, if not her life, earlier that day, he decided it was better to see her laughing than not. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow when she finally stilled long enough to control her laughing down to soft giggles.
"Are you done?"
"Almost, I think. Were you serious, though? is that what you truly think?"
Reade shrugged, still watching her closely, and for some reason, that only served to send her off into fresh peals of laughter.
"You did! You did think that, and now you are acting as if you didn't to soothe your... your male pride!"
"I suppose I rather do have a lot of male pride. So, I take it I'm not close?"
"No, and I think you stole that story from that ballad that's going around. You know, the awful one where the girl ends up drowned in the river and her body drifts past the house where her true love is waiting for her?"
Reade thought for a moment, and then he cursed, shaking his head.
"I've heard that one before," he admitted. "Just a few nights ago."
"And you thought that I was a fine lady escaping an arranged marriage? I should be so lucky."
"All right then. What are you?"
When Reade saw her laugh, he had to admit how ridiculous his entire guess had sounded. Before, when she was cold and miserable and looked as if she might be scared stiff of him if he had said the wrong word, yes, it had been an easy jump to think that she was one of those prim Lowland noble girls, just a breath or two away from being English themselves, all prim and shut up from the world and its real troubles.
When she laughed, however, it brought color to her cheeks and put a sparkle in her eyes that could charm the devil himself, and Reade shook his head at his own foolishness.
She caught her breath a little before she spoke, and that small voice at the back of Reade's head, the one that warned him when a bar fight was going to go from a casual mess to a deadly serious matter, woke up a little.
Whatever she says next, it's going to be a lie. At least, it will not be entirely true.
Reade felt a rush of anger at that, that she would lie to him, and then he had to laugh at himself as well. It wasn't like he had even told her his real name.
