Once Upon a Plaid Read Free Page B

grizzled, one-eyed retainer didn’t suffer fools gladly. Especially not young ones. “He’ll not let anything befall the lass. No matter how much she might wish it.”
    “Why did ye not tell me these things?”
    “Ye haven’t exactly been wanting to talk with me of late.” In fact, since Michaelmas she’d insisted on separate bedchambers, as if they were damned English nobility whose reputation for chilly marriages was well known even in the Highlands. “Do ye really think so ill of me that ye supposed I’d bring a mistress under the same roof as my wife?”
    Her shoulders stiffened again. “So are ye telling me ye keep a light-o-love elsewhere?”
    “God’s Teeth, what do ye take me for, Kat?” he growled. “One woman in my life is trouble enough. What would I do with two? Ye’ve no right to be angry.” He stomped over to the only chair in the room and plopped down in it to tug off his boots. “I’m not the one who went haring off in the dead of winter without so much as a word. Did ye not think I’d be worried about ye?”
    The left boot slipped off with ease, but try as he might, William couldn’t seem to get the correct angle on the right one. Katherine sighed and came over to help him. At least she didn’t neglect all her wifely duties.
    “My brother’s wife is about to give him another child,” she said as she straddled his outstretched leg and gave the boot a yank. It wouldn’t budge. “Did ye not suppose she’d appreciate a kinswoman with her for her lying-in?”
    “Aye.” But would it have hurt her to tell him her plans? “That’s why I came straight here once I realized ye weren’t out visiting sick crofters or delivering food baskets to every gaberlunzie begging by the side of the road again.”
    Any beggar with a sad story to tell found an easy meal or a coin forthcoming from his Katherine. William thought her devotion to giving obsessive, especially since it meant she often neglected her other duties as his chatelaine to attend the poor.
    “Seems ye think every scruffy mendicant who turns up at our gate is a chance for you to host an angel unaware.”
    And of more importance than your husband , he thought with bitterness.
    He put his stockinged foot on her backside and gave it a push to help remove the other boot. It finally eased over his heel and Kat stumbled forward. She’d have fallen headlong if he hadn’t caught her by the waist and pulled her back onto his lap.
    “Ye make my charity sound silly,” Katherine said accusingly. She struggled to rise, but he held her fast.
    “No, ’tis not silly.” If married life had taught him anything, it was that sometimes it was wise to hold back his true thoughts. “But there are those who take advantage of your good heart.”
    She hung her head. “Ye only believe my heart’s good because ye dinna ken why I give alms.”
    She stopped straining against his arms and was still for a moment. William drew in a deep lungful of her scent, a sweet breath of spices and evergreens, and then let all the tension in his body flow out along with his exhalation. It was restful to hold her like this, as if they had stepped outside of time while the rest of the world went on without them for a bit.
    He lived for such moments—quiet, tender times when he could simply hold the woman he loved. Pity they were so few and far between.
    “Sometimes,” she said in a small voice, “I imagine if only I could do enough for others, if only my deeds were balanced against my sins and found to outweigh them, then maybe my dearest wish would be granted.”
    He didn’t have the courage to ask what that wish might be. He already knew. Hearing her voice it would break something inside him.
    Her head came to rest on his shoulder. “So ye see, Will, if I do acts of kindness only because I hope to gain, my heart isna all that good.”
    “I’ll be the judge of that.” William slid a finger under her chin and tipped her face up to him. Her eyes were enormous