A Promise of Love Read Online Free PDF

be sleeping like the dead."
    "Where?" An economy of words kept the pain in his jaw to a tolerable level.
    "And where do ye ken? Four rooms fit for a mousie to live in.”
    Malcolm had found her asleep in the chair beside the fire. He’d led her, then, to the room which had been Ian's chamber. The other rooms stood open and gaping, their wooden doors burned to ash, their interiors nothing but blackened shells. Yet, some sentimental notion had prompted the women of the clan to ready Ian's room as though Alisdair's brother had not been lost at Culloden.
    Alisdair threw him another fierce scowl, but Malcolm only turned away, hiding his wide grin.
    If he hadn't drunk enough brandy last night to summon forth a regiment of drummers in his brain, Alisdair wouldn't have minded that the roof frame was to be raised onto the new weavers' hut this morning. Now, he groaned at the thought of climbing twenty feet in the air while his stomach rolled and his head pounded and every limb felt dangerously weak. It was, he thought with a self-deprecating smile, enough of a lesson to keep him away from the brandy for months.
    He'd taken the time to inspect the sheep. They looked healthy enough, but their fleece should be spun of gold thread for the aggravation they'd brought with them.
    Yet, his only thought the minute he mounted the fragile wooden frame of the half-completed weaver's hut was his clan's welfare.
    The crofter's needed income. Income that was fixed and permanent and not subject to excess taxes or the fortunes of war. The Leicester sheep Malcolm had brought home would be cross bred to their native black faced breed, and the result would be longer fleece, and a thriving industry from the wool they would produce and weave. England paid dearly for Irish linen; Alisdair had long since vowed they would pay as well for Scots wool.
    As he stretched and pulled the lattice work of the roof frame in place, he was not aware of anything but the task at hand.
    Malcolm, however, made sure he didn't forget his new wife.
    From his viewpoint twenty feet off the ground, Alisdair could see Malcolm striding toward him, accompanied by the English woman. His clansman made a point of stopping at several of the crofter's cottages and introducing Judith. Alisdair could imagine what was said by the sharp looks directed his way. It would take only minutes before the knowledge of his new bride swept the village.
    Damn Malcolm!
    He looked down at the woman standing in a pool of light. The darkness had not flattered her. Here, at least, the sunlight picked up the tints of red and gold in her hair, turning the mousy brown into a rich hue. She was taller than most of the women in his clan, and although slender, the bodice of her dress strained over breasts most men would pay money to touch.
    There was promise in that face, he thought, as he watched her with a physician's detachment, colored as it was with his own personal thoughts. Her skin was so fair that it was almost translucent. Her face was too thin, accentuating the high angle of her cheekbones and that autocratic looking nose. No Roman god would be complete without a nose that patrician. Her lips, full and tinged a pale coral, pursed at the sight of him.
    Her eyes were black, he realized with a start, as she raised her face and stared at him. No, blue. Midnight blue, like the color of the sea during a storm.
    He pulled the ladder from its perch near the frame, hooked a boot on the top rung and lowered himself to the ground, jumping the last three rungs. His head thumped with discomfort.
    She tensed, the closer he came.
    The voices which had kept up an avid chatter droned to a murmur, then halted altogether.
    He did not miss her look of relief when he hesitated ten feet away.
    He had only been a vision of sweeping shadows before. That, and a long, lean column of strength as he had propelled her off her saddle. Now, she could see him clearly. It was not a reassuring sight.
    Alisdair MacLeod was a large man. He