Highland Storm Read Free

wanted to forgive him, she truly did, but she couldn’t. He would sell her all too easily. Her sister—their sister—was already dead. Lianae might see the same fate—and for what? For Lulach’s self-assurances? To line his coffers? Why?
    There was only one way to avoid this fate. It was to allow her brother to assume she would relent. His mind was already made up. “When?” she asked, swallowing her grief. “When would you have me commit this atrocity?”
    “Tonight.”
    “Tonight!”
    Tears welled again in her eyes.
    “Lianae,” her brother pleaded. Despite his youth, there were all-new wrinkles etched in his brow, frown lines that hadn’t previously existed. His wife also seemed older than her years, but Lianae couldn’t help any of them; but she most certainly intended to help herself. She was not prepared to become a sacrifice. Her body longed to spring up from her seat and run screaming out the door, but she sat.
    Peering into the balcony, she caught sight of a figure at the rails, peeping down. William fitz Duncan was not a man who took his chances. No man in the line of succession could rest at ease. Not since the day Kenneth MacAilpín up and murdered the sons of seven Pecht nations had Scotia known lasting peace. Cousins murdered cousins. Brothers murdered brothers. Sisters were naught but chattel to be bartered away.
    Her mind grappled for a plan.
    The bathhouse was a filthy puddle of sweat, an immodest structure left standing after the retreat of the Roman legions. It was the last place anyone would get themselves clean. But that’s where Lianae must find herself tonight… somehow.
    Beneath the bathhouse was a tangle of pipes, fed by sweet Highland streams. The pipes were all sealed now, and the bath itself was refilled once a week by a procession of unhappy servants. But Lianae knew how to access those pipes. From there, she could escape into the woods, although she mustn’t give rise to suspicion. She must go with the clothes on her back. And once she assented here now, they would return her to her room only long enough to fetch her wedding attire—Elspeth’s wedding attire. She cringed, for the thought of taking that odious dress and putting it on her person left her with a pang in her belly that gnawed at her from the inside out. A knot formed in her throat, but she forced words past it, “Very well, but please… at least allow me the courtesy of taking my vows after a bath. As you can see I am filthy.”
    Lulach lifted a brow.
    Does he remember?
    She and Elspeth used to enter the pipes from the woodlands, and peek within the bathhouse, giggling with delight over the education they’d received in there—some not so titillating. Forsooth, she’d had little idea how much men liked to pass wind when you put more than two together into a tub.
    Lulach stared at her, and Lianae threw up her hands. “Would you have him plug his nose over the stench of me? Look at me,” she begged, and prayed he would see the bruises as well. “I have come straight from tending your children. ’Tis little wonder he has stared at me all morn as though ye’d put a turd beneath his nose!”
    Lulach sighed, relenting at once. “No tricks, Lianae,” he warned. “If ye canna find it in your heart to do this for yourself, or for me, then ye must consider your nephews. Alan may yet find a way to make our father proud.”
    Dressed as a Sassenach? Nay. Never! Óengus would turn in his grave.
    Lianae narrowed her eyes. “It is for love of them I did not leave when I had the chance,” she reminded him. She loved her brother’s children as though they were her own. But Lulach had already pledged his fealty to the new Earl and she doubted fitz Duncan would harm them, not when he needed the people’s support. As a rightful born son of Óengus, Lulach was very well regarded. Even to the grave, the people of Moray loved her father dearly.
    “Very well, I will arrange the bath.”
    Lianae’s heart leapt with glee.