Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF

timely and advantageous marriage for you, I’d do it.”
    “Oh, Michael, it would! You’ll see. Oh, pray send me!”
    “Unfortunately,” he said dryly, “I doubt that a single visit of several weeks would be sufficient for you to snare a husband on your own, if, indeed, you can ever manage to do so. Nevertheless, with so little time left before June first, arranging an advantageous marriage for you may be the only option remaining to me. Indeed, had I thought you old enough…Ah, but I have already neglected the matter too long.”
    “Not Sir Renfrew!”
    “No, I am not so cruel, lass, nor would Scottish law allow me to arrange any marriage to which you objected. But if you are willing…I had thought the cause lost, you see,” he added quietly. “But it is quite true that arranging a marriage for you could well prove the one route by which I can still win free. It occurred to me some time ago that there is a family that might be willing to ally itself with ours.”
    “What family? Who?”
    “First, you must understand that the most important goal of such a marriage must be to pay off the debt to Sir Renfrew Campbell, and to do so in such a way that would prevent him from making further trouble for us.”
    “He is very powerful,” Bridget said. “All the Campbells are powerful.”
    “Yes,” he agreed. “They became so by siding with the English during the Risings, before you were born.”
    “You were only a boy then, yourself,” she pointed out defensively.
    “Yes, and our clan was not one that fought for the prince,” he said. “But neither did we fight against him or provide support of any kind to the English. Our isolation here helped us then. As to the Campbells, they were powerful before the Risings, and became more powerful afterward. That is why our wisest move now would be to ally ourselves with them if we can.”
    “But you said—”
    “I said I would not force you to marry Sir Renfrew. I don’t even propose to marry you to a Campbell, merely to ally ourselves with one of the most powerful of them all, a close connection of the Duke of Argyll.”
    “But if he is not a Campbell, then how—”
    “His guardian is the Earl of Balcardane,” Michael said, “but the lad, as it happens, is a distant kinsman of our own. He is the young MacCrichton.”
    “Is he handsome?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I have never met him, but he is only four years older than you are, so I daresay you will deal well enough with him. If you really are willing, I could go to Balcardane Castle at once to put the matter to the earl. As you say, my title must be worth something. Moreover, I can offer to settle a third of my land on you, and to bequeath you the rest if I should die without issue.”
    Her eyes widened. “All the land? To me? Can you do that?”
    “Yes, because I agreed to break the entail when our father mortgaged everything with Sir Renfrew. The likelihood of your inheriting the estate is quite small, though, you know.”
    “But even if they agreed to a marriage and repaid your debt, you would still be poor, and you would own a third less land than what you own now,” she pointed out, adding complacently, “so very likely you will never marry. How soon can we go to Balcardane Castle?”
    “You are not going,” he said.
    “Don’t be absurd. Of course, I must go.”
    “You will do as I bid, Bridget. You will stay here.”
    “But who will stay with me?”
    “I’ll be gone only a day or two. If this weather holds, I can ride through Glen Tarbert to Loch Linnhe in the morning, take a boat across to Kentallen, and hire a horse at the inn. I should reach Loch Leven and Balcardane by midafternoon.”
    “Well, I’m still going with you. You cannot leave me with only servants to look after me, Michael. What if something happens to you? What then?”
    “Nothing is going to happen to me. You will stay here.”
    “But I want—”
    “By God, you will do as I tell you for once,” he