A Promise of Love Read Free

open ledgers, yellowed bills of sale, correspondence from the corners of England. It was utilitarian, functional and dreary, a dismal place to be on a sunny morning.
    The rain which had greeted her arrival yesterday had dissipated, to be followed by a wonderfully bright spring morning. Her father’s summons, however, chilled any cheer Judith might have felt about the weather.
    The squire nodded to Judith, surveyed her in one sweeping look that did little to hide his contempt for her less than fashionable attire and turned his attention to the man standing beside the window.
    Judith glanced at the visitor anxiously, seeking an explanation for her summons in his presence.
    His face was as dark and scarred as the old oak in the meadow, his nose askew of the center of his face, his hair silvery brown. He was a broad man with a stocky chest and thin short legs that made him appear like the mis-matched halves of two other wholes. He would be more at home, Judith suspected, on the back of a horse or on the deck of a rolling ship then he was here.
    Malcolm MacLeod would have been more at home anywhere than here. He watched the Squire with ill concealed impatience. He did not like the squire; he was a mealy mouthed sort of Sassenach who cheated you when your back was turned. But then, he didn't like being in England either. The last time he had been this far south, it had been on the march to Carlisle and the Scots weren’t exactly trading for sheep then.
    However, the MacLeod and the clan still came before his own personal preferences. It was his duty to carry sheep home with him, if possible. The fact that the Squire had refused to talk terms for barter had at first irritated Malcolm, not worried him. But the increasing delay led to the distinct, and disagreeable, feeling that he was being played like a salmon on the end of a line.
    The squire leaned back in his chair, unable to mask his feeling of triumph. Soon, one of his greatest sources of trouble would disappear. It would cost him dearly, of course, but by his actions, he would rid himself of Judith once and for all.
    "Malcolm, my friend," he began jovially, not noticing the sudden tensing of the man to his left. "I have a proposition for you."
    Malcolm MacLeod watched his host with shuttered eyes. No Englishman called him friend. Nor, did he doubt that the proposition soon to be offered to him also carried with it a threat. No Englishman had ever played fair with a Scot and hadn’t they a millennium of history to prove that?
    "I issue no credit. I have never done so, and will not do so now. Hold man!" the squire said, half-rising in the chair as the other man made to leave.
    “An’ why would ye not tell me that in the beginning? Ye think the MacLeods have barrels of gold for yer English sheep?”
    "I will give you one hundred Leicester sheep," William Cuthbertson continued, forced to look up at the angry Scot. "In exchange for something."
    "Name your bargain," Malcolm said curtly. He would play this stupid game to its conclusion, and if it was an Englishman’s trick, Malcolm would just as soon gut the fat pig with the dirk hidden in his boot.
    William turned to his daughter, who had remained motionless and mute since her entrance into the room. He noted her sudden pallor with indifference.
    "The sheep are free if you take my daughter with you," the Squire said, glancing back at the Scot with a small smile playing around his thin lips.
    Malcolm looked at the young woman whose presence he had noted and then dismissed. She was tall, and too thin, with hair the color of old, rich leather. He had seen the squire's family, but this one was as unlikely a relation to the others as a Highland deer was from a sheep. She was not petite with plump rounded curves like her sisters, she was lithe and willowy. Nor did she flutter in the silence as if afraid of it; she’d simply stood and waited silently.
    She glanced over at him, as if sensing his look and his curiosity. Her eyes