Conquer the Night Read Online Free PDF

painted men of the north who were equally a part of what made up the Scotsmen of his kind and clan. They were all tribal men, no more civilized than the horses who swept the continent in the dark ages gone by. Not even the Romans had troubled much with them, for they were far too much like animals to be worth the effort.
    Yes, this man was definitely …
    An animal?
    Thus Kinsey had described him—as he described all Scotsman. To Kinsey they were one and the same. Especially the Highlanders. This man, though, was from Stirling, so she had been told, and kin to the Sir John Graham who rode so closely to the rough renegade William Wallace, a man who was little better than the berserkers who had ravaged these coasts not so very long ago.
    Yes, she knew of this man, one of the Grahams, a clan of born Lowlanders themselves, who led and fought and died with the heathen Highlanders. They hailed from a southern section of the country, where they should have become far more civilized—more Anglicized—but they chose to be a group of Gaelic-speaking madmen who defied God and law and practiced every manner of barbarism known to the imagination.
    So this was to be her salvation! she thought, feeling a new rise of panic grow within her. She had prayed for something to happen to change her life. This! This was God’s jest, God’s irony upon her.
    But then, indeed, she had said that she’d gladly meet with Satan himself….
    And still, it wasn’t so much what she had been told about him that so frightened her.
    It was what had been done to him!
    All in the name of justice, all in the name of the king, so Kinsey Darrow had said. But Kinsey gave his loyalty to the English king, while the Scots, both desperately and furiously, were fighting against subjugation to that very king, at least Scots such as this one. Fools, Kinsey often said, for Edward I of England meant to have homage paid to him by Scotland, one way or another.
    Killing Scots was not like killing people, Kinsey had boasted in the great hall of this very castle. She must always remember: they were animals, and thus killing them was like killing animals; they should be bled, their throats should be slit. Then they should be gutted. Castrated. Quartered. Burned.
    Burned, yes, that was what he had done….
    A chill swept through her. Like rays of an ice-sun, the cold streaked out into her limbs as she stood, staring at him, feeling the hard, calculating assessment of his cobalt eyes in return. She gritted her teeth very hard, fighting another wave of panic.
    She suddenly realized that she very much wanted to live, though she didn’t want to admit she was afraid to die. And if she was going to be executed, she should meet her new destiny with all the dignity and courage of her rank and station in life—chin high as she walked toward death!
    She should know such dignity and pride.
    What a pity she was so terrified. It was amazing how much easier it was to be brave and courageous when not facing imminent torture and death.
    What else could she be but afraid—very afraid?
    The methods used for execution between these enemies were beyond cruel and horrible. If she was tortured, would she suffer in silence?
    Most probably not.
    God, the way he looked at her was nearly as frightening as knowing what he had decided—and anticipating what was to come.
    After what had been done to him….
    In the name of Edward I—who wanted to be known as the Hammer of the Scots.
    And in her own name, of course, for she was the heiress of an English man, an English lord given dominion in this land. Though her mother had been a Scot, she was an English subject, and subject to the man who would be Hammer of the Scots.
    So what awaited her now? Would she be drawn and quartered? Disemboweled? Suffer a fate more fitting the members of her fairer sex, condemned for witchery, heresy, betrayal?
    Burning …
    God help her, she wouldn’t face the flames.