At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

motioned to Davy to follow him inside, out of the light snow that began to fall. “I want you to give Malcolm command of guarding the larder,” John said. “Not a thing to come in or out without his say so.”
    Davy grinned but scratched at the back of his head. “Malcolm makes a surlier watch-dog than I do, but we must suspect there’s a traitor inside the walls. If not, the enemy would never have dared a winter assault. The Donalds and MacDonalds must be waiting for the right time to strike at our food supply. Poison, or spoil, or steal it.”
    “And you suspect Malcolm?” The laird narrowed his eyes in surprise, disbelieving. The dark, scarred, unsmiling Malcolm was his best swordsman and loyal as a hound. And if Malcolm ever was to turn against his oath to the laird, he’d come at him with a blade, not poison.
    “ Och , no I don’t suspect him ,” Davy said, eyes wide as if mortally offended by the suggestion. “Malcolm’s loyal as a hound. A mean, surly, hound. He’s not the sort for tricks, and that’s why I make a better warden for the larder, because he’s not the kind to suspect tricks either.”
    “But you are,” the laird said, remembering that as a boy, Davy had once talked himself out of losing a hand for thieving. Davy was as slippery and clever a warrior as the laird had under his command. Which is why he needed him for something else. “Malcolm will have to keep the larder stocked and well-guarded down to the last onion skin, because I’ve a different mission for you…”
    When the laird had finished explaining himself, Davy broke into a sunny grin. “The situation must be desperate, I see. Otherwise, you’d never give me such blanket permission to get up to mischief.”
    “Aye, it is,” the laird admitted. On account of Davy’s strange capacity to laugh in the midst of a sword-fight, he was often dismissed by others, but the laird saw in him a great potential, and now was his time to prove it. “Can you do it?”
    Davy’s eyes danced a bit in defiance of the danger the laird was setting him up for. “Well, it’s foolhardy. Which is my speciality. I s’pose that if I can’t do it, no one can and we’ll all be dead men anyway.”
    The laird clapped him on the back, letting the gesture convey not only his gratitude, but his pride. “Good man.”
    Davy slanted him a glance. “Of course, now is probably the time to ask a boon of you, isn’t it?”
    John stopped, let out a long breath, and eyed the red-haired warrior. What did he want? Land grants? Gold? “I s’pose it is.”
    “I want your permission to marry,” the warrior said.
    “The enemy is flinging dead animals over our walls and you’re thinking of the lasses !” The rage came upon the laird at once, but what a hypocrite he was. Still, he couldn’t help but be shocked by the request. And coming from Davy, no less—a great whoremonger who had never before shown the least desire to take a wife.  
    But Davy seemed unchastened by his laird’s outburst. “Seems to me that a siege is exactly the time that a man can’t help but think of the women that are important to him and the life he’d like to lead if he lives through it.”
    Bloody Hell , the laird thought. If that wasn’t the truth of it. The war, the danger, it all made one long for the comforts of love and peace. No wonder he hadn’t been able to keep Heather from his own mind. Perhaps he ought not be so hard on Davy. “Well, then, who is the lass you want to take to wed?”
    Davy squared his shoulders, and steeled himself, which gave the laird a peculiar sense that he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Her name is Arabella; she’s—”
    “I know who she is,” the laird groused, agitated. Arabella was Heather’s little sister—a trouble-making, gossip-inspiring little coquette who liked to wear men’s clothes and possibly dabbled in witchcraft. Arabella had worked his men into such a fever of desire for her, that the laird would have put her