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The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle

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by Karen Marie Moning




  Beyond the Highland Mist, To Tame a Highland Warrior, The Highlander’s Touch, Kiss of the Highlander, The Dark Highlander, The Immortal Highlander, and Spell of the Highlander are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Dell eBook Edition

  Beyond the Highland Mist copyright © 1999 by Karen Marie Moning

  To Tame a Highland Warrior copyright © 1999 by Karen Marie Moning

  The Highlander’s Touch copyright © 2000 by Karen Marie Moning

  Kiss of the Highlander copyright © 2001 by Karen Marie Moning

  The Dark Highlander copyright © 2002 by Karen Marie Moning

  The Immortal Highlander copyright © 2004 by Karen Marie Moning

  Spell of the Highlander copyright © 2005 by Karen Marie Moning

  Excerpt from Into the Dreaming copyright © 2012 by Karen Marie Moning

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States by Dell Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Dell and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The novels contained in this omnibus were each published separately by Dell Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2005.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Into the Dreaming by Karen Marie Moning. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53826-0

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Beyond the Highland Mist

  To Tame a Highland Warrior

  The Highlander’s Touch

  Kiss of the Highlander

  The Dark Highlander

  The Immortal Highlander

  Spell of the Highlander

  Dell Books by Karen Marie Moning

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Into the Dreaming

  Featured Alternate Selection of Doubleday Book Club and Rhapsody Book Club

  Praise for the novels of

  Karen Marie Moning

  The Dark Highlander

  “Darker, sexier, and more serious than Moning’s previous time-travel romances … this wild, imaginative romp takes readers on an exhilarating ride through time and space.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Pulsing with sexual tension, Moning delivers a tale romance fans will be talking about for a long time.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “The Dark Highlander is dynamite, dramatic, and utterly riveting. Ms. Moning takes the classic plot of good vs. evil … and gives it a new twist.”

  —Romantic Times

  Kiss of the Highlander

  “Moning’s snappy prose, quick wit and charismatic characters will enchant.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Moning is quickly building a reputation for writing poignant time travels with memorable characters. This may be the first book I’ve read by her, but it certainly won’t be my last. She delivers compelling stories with passionate characters readers will find enchanting.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “Here is an intelligent, fascinating, well-written foray into the paranormal that will have you glued to the pages. A must read!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Kiss of the Highlander is wonderful…. [Moning’s] storytelling skills are impressive, her voice and pacing dynamic, and her plot as tight as a cask of good Scotch whisky.”

  —The Contra Costa Times

  “Kiss of the Highlander is a showstopper.”

  —Rendezvous

  The Highlander’s Touch

  “A stunning achievement in time-travel romance. Ms. Moning’s imaginative genius in her latest spellbinding tale speaks to the hearts of romance readers and will delight and touch them deeply. Unique and eloquent, filled with thought-provoking and emotional elements, The Highlander’s Touch is a very special book. Ms. Moning effortlessly secures her place as a top-notch writer.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Ms. Moning stretches our imagination, sending us flying into the enchanting past.”

  —Rendezvous

  To Tame A Highland Warrior

  “A hauntingly beautiful love story … Karen Marie Moning gives us an emotional masterpiece that you will want to take out and read again and again.”

  —Rendezvous

  Contents

  Master - Table of Contents

  Beyond the Highland Mist

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Part 1 – Beltane (Spring)

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part 2 – Lughnassadh (Midsummer)

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part 3 – Samhain (Harvest)

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  BEYOND THE HIGHLAND MIST

  A Dell Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Dell mass market edition / March 1999

  Dell mass market reissue / June 2004

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 1999 by Karen Marie Moning

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Dell Books, New York, New York.

  Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42697-0

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  For my sister, Elizabeth, with love.

  You are my sunshine …

  Special thanks to—

  My mother and father;

  Rick Shomo;

  Carrie Edwards and Jeanne Meyer;

  and my agent Deidre Knight.

  I couldn’t have done it without you.

  You spotted snakes with double tongue

  Thorny hedgehogs be not seen;

  Newts and blind worms, do no wrong

  Come not near our fairy queen.

  SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  PROLOGUE

  SCOTLAND

  1 FE
BRUARY 1513

  THE FRAGRANCE OF JASMINE AND SANDALWOOD DRIFTED through the rowan trees. Above dew-drenched branches, a lone gull ghosted a bank of mist and soared to kiss the dawn over the white sands of Morar. The turquoise tide shimmered in shades of mermaid tails against the alabaster shore.

  The elegant royal court of the Tuatha De Danaan dappled the stretch of lush greenery. Pillowed chaises in brilliant scarlet and lemon adorned the grassy knoll, scattered in a half-moon about the outdoor dais.

  “They say he is even more beautiful than you,” the Queen remarked to the man sprawled indolently at the foot of her dais.

  “Impossible.” His mocking laughter tinkled like cut-crystal chimes on a fae wind.

  “They say his manhood at half-mast would make a stallion envious.” The Queen slanted a glance beneath half-lowered lids at her rapt courtiers.

  “More likely a mouse,” sneered the man at her feet. Elegant fingers demonstrated a puny space of air, and titters sliced the mist.

  “They say at full-mast he steals a woman’s mind from her body. Claims her soul.” The Queen dropped fringed lashes to shield eyes alight with the iridescent fire of mischievous intent. How easily my men are provoked!

  The man rolled his eyes and disdain etched his arrogant profile. He crossed his legs at the ankles and gazed out across the sea.

  But the Queen wasn’t fooled. The man at her feet was vainglorious, and not as impervious to her provocation as he feigned.

  “Quit baiting him, my Queen,” King Finnbheara admonished. “You know how the fool gets when his ego is wounded.” He patted her arm soothingly. “You’ve teased him enough.”

  The Queen’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She briefly considered forgoing this vein of revenge. A calculating look at her men dashed that thought, as she recalled what she’d overheard them discussing late last evening in excruciating detail.

  The things they’d said were unforgivable. The Queen was not a woman to be compared with another woman and found lacking. Her lip tightened imperceptibly. Her exquisitely delicate hand curled into a fist. She carefully selected her next words.

  “But I have found him to be all that they say,” the Queen purred.

  In the silence that followed, the statement lingered, unacknowledged, for the cut was too cruel to dignify. The King at her side and the man at her feet shifted restlessly. She was beginning to think she hadn’t made her point quite painfully clear enough when, in unison, they rose to her bait. “Who is this man?”

  Queen Aoibheal of the Fairy disguised a satisfied smile with a delicate yawn, and drank deeply of her men’s jealousy. “They call him the Hawk.”

  CHAPTER 1

  SCOTLAND

  1 APRIL 1513

  SIDHEACH JAMES LYON DOUGLAS, THIRD EARL OF DALKEITH, stalked across the floor. Droplets of water trickled from his wet hair down his broad chest, and gathered into a single rivulet between the double ridges of muscle in his abdomen. Moonlight shimmered through the open window, casting a silvery glow to his bronze skin, creating the illusion that he was sculpted of molten steel.

  The tub behind him had grown cold and been forgotten. The woman on the bed was also cold and forgotten. She knew it.

  And she didn’t like it one bit.

  Too beautiful for me, Esmerelda thought. But by the saints, the man was a poison draught, another long cool swallow of his body the only cure for the toxin. She thought about the things she had done to win him, to share his bed, and—God forgive her—the things she would do to stay there.

  She almost hated him for it. She knew she hated herself for it. He should be mine, she thought. She watched him stalk across the spacious room to the window which opened between fluted granite columns that met in a high arch twenty feet above her head. Esmerelda sneered at him behind his back. Foolish—such large unprotected openings in a keep—or arrogant. So what if one could lie in the massive goosedown bed and gaze through the rosy arch at a velvety sky pierced by glittering stars?

  She’d caught him gazing that way tonight as he’d slammed into her, exciting that bottomless hunger in her blood with the rock-hard kind of maleness only he possessed. She’d whimpered beneath him in the greatest ecstasy she’d ever experienced and he’d been looking out the window—as if no one else was there with him.

  Had he been counting the stars?

  Silently reciting bawdy dittys to prevent himself from toppling over and falling asleep?

  She’d lost him.

  No, Esmerelda vowed, she would never lose him.

  “Hawk?”

  “Hmmm?”

  She smoothed the lavender silk sheet through her trembling fingers. “Come back to bed, Hawk.”

  “I’m restless tonight, sweet.” He toyed with the stem of a large pale blue blossom. A half hour earlier he’d swept the dewy petals along her silken skin.

  Esmerelda flinched at his open admission that he still had energy to spare. Sleepily sated, she could see that his body still thrummed from head to toe with restless vigor. What kind of woman would it take—or how many—to leave that man drowsing in fascinated satisfaction?

  More woman than she, and ye gods, how that offended her.

  Had her sister left him more sated? Her sister who had warmed his bed until Zeldie had found a way to take her place?

  “Am I better than my sister?” The words were out before she could prevent them. She bit her lip, anxiously awaiting his answer.

  Her words dragged his smoky gaze from the starry night, across the wide expanse of the bedchamber, to rest on the sultry, raven-haired Gypsy. “Esmerelda,” he chided gently.

  “Am I?” Her husky contralto soared to a shrewish pitch.

  He sighed. “We’ve had this discussion before—”

  “And you never answer me.”

  “Stop comparing yourself, sweet. You know it’s foolish …”

  “How can I not when you can compare me to a hundred, nay a thousand, even my own sister?” Shapely brows puckered in a scowl above her flashing eyes.

  His laughter rolled. “And how many do you compare me to, lovely Esmerelda?”

  “My sister couldn’t have been as good as me. She was nearly a virgin.” She spit out the word with distaste. Life was too unpredictable for virginity to be a prized possession among her people. Lust, in all its facets, was a healthy aspect of the Rom culture.

  He raised a hand in warning. “Stop. Now.”

  But she couldn’t. The poison words of accusation tumbled out fast and furious at the only man who had ever made her pagan blood sing, and his boredom between her thighs had been chiseled in granite upon his perfect face this very eve. In truth, for many evenings now.

  He suffered her rage in silence, and when at last her tongue rested, he turned back to his window. The howl of a solitary wolf ruptured the night and she felt an answering cry well up within her. She knew the Hawk’s silence was his farewell. Stinging with rejection and humiliation, she lay trembling in his bed—the bed she knew she would never be asked to enter again.

  She would kill for him.

  Which is precisely what she meant to do moments later when she rushed him with the silver dirk she’d slipped from the table by the bed. Esmerelda might have been able to leave without swearing an oath of vengeance, if he had looked surprised. Momentarily alarmed. Sorry, even.

  But he exhibited none of these emotions. His perfect face lit up with laughter as he spun effortlessly, caught her arm and sent the dirk hurtling through the open window.

  He laughed.

  And she cursed him. And all his begotten and any subsequent misbegotten.

  When he shushed her with kisses, she cursed through gritted teeth, even as her traitorous body melted for his touch. No man should be so beautiful. No man should be so untouchable. And so damned fearless.

  No man should be able to forsake Esmerelda. He was done with her, but she wasn’t done with him. She would never be done with him.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Hawk,” Grimm offered. They sat upon
the cobbled terrace of Dalkeith sipping port and smoking imported tobacco in purely male contentment.

  Sidheach James Lyon Douglas rubbed his perfect jaw with a perfect hand, irritated by the perfect shadow of stubble that always appeared just a few hours after shaving.

  “I just don’t understand, Grimm. I thought she’d found pleasure with me. Why would she seek to kill me?”

  Grimm arched a brow. “Just what do you do to the lasses in bed, Hawk?”

  “I give them what they want. Fantasy. My willing flesh and blood to serve their every whim.”

  “And how do you know what a woman’s fantasies are?” Grimm wondered aloud.

  The Earl of Dalkeith laughed softly, a heady, confident rumble of a purr that he knew drove women wild. “Ah, Grimm, you just have to listen with your whole body. In her eyes she tells you, whether she knows it or not. In her soft cries she guides you. In the subtle turnings of her body, you know if she wants you in front or behind her lush curves. With gentleness or with power; if she desires a tender lover or seeks a beast. If she likes her lips kissed, or savagely devoured. If she likes her breasts—”

  “I get the picture,” Grimm interrupted, swallowing hard. He shifted in his chair and uncrossed his legs. Recrossed them and tugged at his kilt. Uncrossed them again and sighed. “And Esmerelda? Did you understand her fantasies?”

  “Only too well. One of them included being Lady Hawk.”

 

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