Rose In Scotland Read Free

care for her. She was well away from the castle when the soldiers came.”
    Hugh closed his eyes in relief. “Thank God,” he murmured feelingly. “I could not have borne it to have lost her as well.”
    “Ye almost did.” James’s lips curled in a rueful smile. “For when she heard what happened, what did the lass do but take herself off to London to demand their release. Aye, and her not but seventeen at the time. It was a grand thing, and the clans speak of it still.”
    Hugh was too stunned to reply. He had been in London but twice, and the filth and the vice of it had horrified him. The thought of his innocent sister alone in such a place filled him with terror, and he made a mental note to give the little
deamhan
a sound shaking when next he saw her. After he kissed her and held her close, he admitted to himself.
    “Where does Aunt Egidia stay?” he asked, turning his thoughts to the next thing to be done. “Is she still living on Chambers Street near the kirk?”
    James nodded. “Aye. Keir MacKinney is at university there, and writes he saw Mairi not one month past. ’Tis said he is after courting her,” he added, twisting in his saddle to cast Hugh a teasing grin. “Though ye’ll have to have a word with him on that yerself, MacColme, to be certain the lad’s intentions are as they should be.”
    Hugh was silent on the long ride back to the village. Mairi being courted, he mused, dazed at the very notion. For the past fourteen years he’d carried the image of a dirty-faced urchin close to his heart, clinging to her memory even as he’d gone screaming into battle. Although he’d known she was growing up through the years, until this very moment he hadn’t considered the ramifications of what that would mean. A reluctant grin tugged at his mouth as he remembered her passionate declaration never to marry. ’Twould seem a great many things had changed in the years he had been gone.
    Despite James’s insistence that Hugh stay with him and his family, Hugh returned to the small, rough tavern that passed for an inn in Loch Haven. As it had been when he’d ridden out earlier that morning, the taproom was filled with hard-faced men, and ’twas obvious by their ominous silence that they were no more pleasantly disposed toward him than they’d been when he’d left.
    “So, ye’ve been to the castle and seen fer yerself the truth o’ what we told ye,” Angus MacColme, his father’s distant cousin, snarled, his thin mouth set in a contemptuous sneer. “Yer fine English king nae mair kept his word to ye than did ye to us. Or have ye forgotten the oath ye swore before us all?”
    Hugh set his tankard on the bar with studied care. Years of swallowing every manner of insult without complaint had taught him to keep his temper hidden, and none of his rage showed as he raised cool eyes to meet the older man’s derisive gaze.
    “I forget nothing, cousin,” he said, his tone deceptively mild. “Not a vow nor a slight. I remember all.”
    Angus’s cheeks grew red at the implied threat, but before he could speak one of the other men asked challengingly, “And what will ye do to take back what is yers? With yer father gone ’Tis the laird of Loch Haven ye be; his obligations and duties are now yer own. What will ye do to fulfill them, Hugh MacColme?”
    This was a question Hugh had been asking himself since learning of his father’s arrest and the seizure of their lands and title. His years with the army had taught him much about English politics, and he intended on using every bit of that knowledge to gain back what was his. But to do that he would need to journey to London—an action he was certain would make his remaining chieftains even more wary of him.
    “I will do what I must,” he said simply, raising his tankard and taking a sip.
    There was an expectant silence, and when he did not elaborate, the men began shifting their feet and exchanging confused looks. “That is all?” the man who had