A Gentle Feuding Read Online Free PDF

up to swipe the pests away, but the pain shot through his head, and he lay back down ever so gently.
    Where he was was beginning to disturb him. The last thing he could remember was being surrounded by Fergussons who had seemed to come out of thin air. But the truth was he had not been watching his back, but had had his eyes on the pool in the glenwhere he had once seen that beautiful young girl. If he had not been off his horse, waiting there like a fool for her to appear, he wouldn’t have been surrounded and struck over the head before he could even draw his sword.
    So. He was captured. The smell and the dampness began to make sense. A dungeon, no doubt in Tower Esk. Jamie almost laughed. There was no fool like a stupid fool, and he was certainly that. He had acted like a lovesick boy, coming to that glen more than a dozen times in the last months, hoping just to see the girl one more time. Yet that wasn’t the whole truth. He had hoped also to learn who she was. But she had never appeared. No doubt, as he had once supposed, she was a beggar passing through. He would never see her again.
    He had ridden here alone, as he had the other times. Not even his brother knew where he had gone, for he had admitted his obsession with the girl to no one. It would be several days before his brother would begin to worry. Even then, no one would guess he was in a Fergusson dungeon.
    How many days would he have to spend here before old Dugald let him go? Oh, Jamie had no doubt that he would be let go. Dugald couldn’t afford to keep any MacKinnion prisoner. Even if he found out who Jamie really was, he would have to let him go.
    The creaking of wood above alerted Jamie. He was no longer alone. But if he hadn’t heard the trapdoor opening, he would have doubted his senseswhen a pixielike voice whispered, “Are you really a MacKinnion?”
    The voice had no body. All was still pitch black. Cold, fresh air poured down on Jamie, and he welcomed it and breathed his fill before he answered, “I dinna talk to a body I canna see.”
    “I dare no’ bring a light. Someone might see.”
    “Well, you’d best go then,” Jamie said with a touch of humor. “It wouldna do for you to be seen talking to a MacKinnion.”
    “Then you really are?”
    Jamie didn’t answer. The trapdoor was quickly closed, then opened again a few minutes later. A small round head with a thatch of dark red hair peeked over the narrow opening in the ceiling. Dim light from a candle spilled down into what Jamie could see was a deep pit. The dungeon was about seven feet around, just a pit dug in the earth, its floor packed down hard. The dirt walls might have been climbed, but the trapdoor was in the middle of the ceiling, and, even if reached, it was undoubtedly kept bolted.
    Jamie had seen dungeons like it before. They were convenient because no guard was needed. They were impossible to escape from. He would have preferred a stone dungeon. At least the air wouldn’t have been as stagnant, and he might have had a little light.
    “You didna eat your food.”
    Jamie sat up slowly and leaned back against thewall, a hand to his head to hold back the pain. “I dinna see any food.”
    “In the sack, over there by you.” The boy pointed. “They just drop it down. ’Tis bound so the bugs dinna get it ’afore you do.”
    “How thoughtful,” Jamie replied tonelessly as he grabbed the sack and opened it. There was a chunk of oatbread and half of a small heathcock—fine for a peasant, but he was used to better. “If this is all that’s allotted a prisoner, it looks as if I’ll have to be escaping in order to get a decent meal.”
    “You’re no’ a guest, you know,” the lad said stiffly.
    “But I’ll be treated as one if I’m no’ to grow bitter over my confinement,” Jamie replied casually, as though arrogance came naturally to him. “Old Dugald wouldna care for my anger, I can assure you.”
    “Och, but you’re a bold one to be talking of revenge from