Highland Protector Read Free

eyes?”
    The pony snorted.
    “Aye, ‘tis pathetic. All I feel is a pinch of regret o’er the loss of a dream. Nay a dream of that lying bastard, but of having my own home and some bairns to hold. I am one and twenty and I was hungry for that. Too hungry. The greed to fulfill that dream was my weakness, aye?”
    With a flick of its tail, the pony slapped her leg.
    “Best ye get used to my complaints and my blathering.
    We will be together for at least three days. Ye need a name, I am thinking, since ‘tis clear that I will be babbling my troubles into your ears from time to time.”
    Ilsabeth considered the names from all the stories Sister Beatrice told so well. Although she preferred horses, good strong animals that could gallop over the moors and give her that heady sense of freedom, she had a lot of respect for the little Highland ponies. She wanted to give this one a good strong name.
    “Goliath,” she finally said, and was certain the pony lifted its head a little higher. “We will just make certain Walter’s snake of a cousin, David, doesnae get near ye with a sling and a stone.”
    She looked around at the moonlit landscape and tears stung her eyes. Her family was spending the night running, finding places to hide, and keeping watch for soldiers. If any of them got caught they would face pain and humiliation, perhaps even death, before she could save them. It was so unfair. Her father had done his best to return honor to his branch of the Armstrong family tree and it did him no good. One whisper from Walter, one dead body, and everyone believed the worst of them.
    Her father’s insistence that everyone knew how to run and hide, speedily and silently, now made sense to her. All those well-supplied hiding places, all the intricate plans for scattering his small clan so far and wide it would take months to find any of them now revealed a foresight she had never seen or understood. Sir Cormac Armstrong had always known that the stain his parents had smeared the clan’s name with and the many less than honest cousins he had could come back to haunt him no matter what he did.
    “Oh, I shall make Walter pay dearly for this, Goliath. Verra dearly indeed.”
    Elspeth turned from staring out into the dark when Cormac stepped up beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “She is out there all alone,” she whispered. “Alone and weighted with guilt for something that isnae her fault.”
    “She will be fine, love. Two is strong and stubborn,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “She is also good with a knife and clever.”
    “She hates that name, ye ken.”
    “What? Two?”
    “Aye. If ye werenae her beloved papa she would punch ye whene’er ye say it just as she does the others.” Elspeth smiled faintly when he chuckled. “Tell me she will be safe, Cormac.”
    “Aye, loving, she will be.”
    “I want to believe that but she is my child, my Ilsabeth.”
    “Ye have two Ilsabeths.”
    “Nay, I have a Sister Beatrice and an Ilsabeth. Oh, my firstborn still loves us all and she will hide and protect those now in her care, but she is God’s child now. Her heart and mind and soul belong to him. Ye could see it happen whilst she was still a child; the calling was so strong in her. But this Ilsabeth is all ours and carries a lot of both of us within her. Good and bad. She was still but a toddling bairn when I kenned I had given the name to the wrong lass. Ilsabeth was a name for a fighter, for a lass who grabbed life with both hands and lived it to the fullest.”
    “And all that is why our Ilsabeth who used to be Clara will succeed.”
    “Ye truly believe that, dinnae ye?”
    “Aye, and so do many others. Did ye nay see that none scoffed when told of how we have sent her for aid? They ken the strength in the lass and the stubbornness that will keep her fighting for all of us until she wins.”
    “And this mon Innes will listen to her and help her?”
    “Aye, I have no doubt of it. I have met the mon