Highland Hawk: Highland Brides #7 Read Online Free PDF Page A

children, the music of a psaltery, and a hundred voices all speaking at once.
    Catriona scanned the high-beamed room as she shepherded her grandmother through the throng toward an empty spot at a trestle table. Around them, lords and ladies and soldiers milled with servants and hounds.
    Sowens made of oats and barley steamed in pots, nestled against round loaves of fine white bread, roasted venison, and a dozen tempting delicacies. Ale was served far more readily than milk. Mead and beer were plentiful.
    Marta settled creakily onto a seat and scowled at-a server until he offered her a wooden bowl and a nearly flat ladle. Occupied then with stirring honey into her porridge, she gummed her breakfast while Catriona filled her leather mug.
    "Here then, allow me."
    Catriona glanced up to see de la Faire taking the ale from her hands with a smile.
    "Good morningtide," he said. "I trust you slept well in our bonny castle."
    "Aye." It was an outright lie. She had barely slept at all. "Very well."
    "And what of you, Grandmother?" he asked, turning his perfect smile on Marta with the confidence of the privileged who also happen to be comely.
    "I am old," she muttered, glaring up at him through her darker-than-hell eyes.
    "You jest." He brightened the brilliance of his smile. "You don't look to be a day over—"
    "I am older than the warts on your father's arse," she said. "And I have no time for your—"
    "She slept well too," Catriona interrupted quickly.
    "My father's—" He stopped. "How did you know he has warts?"
    "What is your name?" Marta asked, while keeping her hard gaze pinned on the Frenchman.
    De La Faire blinked, taken aback, but struggling to find his balance. "I am the Marquis de la Faire of Marseilles."
    "If you are from Marseilles why are you here?"
    He laughed, but the sound was nervous as he shifted his gaze to Cat's. "My father wished me to ask a favor of the king."
    "Then why not ask it and be gone?"
    He shuffled on his slippered feet. They were pointy-toed, red on one side, white on the other. But it was the rest of his costume that was truly stunning: Sunflower-yellow hose; a red, lavishly slashed doublet; and a pearl-encrusted codpiece the size of a melon. Had Cat had any difficulty awakening, this ensemble would have done the trick.
    "I came for His Majesty's birthday," said the Frenchman, who then looked somewhat embarrassed. "Father thought it wise to come bearing gifts."
    "Hmph," Marta grunted.
    Catriona watched her breathlessly. But when the old woman looked up, her eyes were uncertain. She shrugged shallowly with a weary shake of her head.
    Cat turned away, glancing across the crowded room, but there were too many unknown faces, too many uncertainties. Suddenly she could sit still no longer.
    She rose restlessly to her feet.
    "Princess Catriona, 'tis good to see you again," said the spectacled duke from the night before.
    "Catriona." Another man entered the fray. "What an unusual name. My wife's name is Catlina. We are here with our Roberta," he said, glancing at a pale girl in pink who seemed barely bold enough to raise her gaze from the table. "She is to be engaged to Lord Drummond."
    "I saw your performance last night," said another. "I must say, I've never seen the like."
    " 'Twas quite magnificent."
    Men crowded in on all sides.
    "I saw a portrait of an Indian princess once. You bear an uncanny—"
    "I cannot think for all the yammering!" Marta rasped. "Lad!" She snapped her devilish glare to the soldiers at the next table. "Tell them to be still."
    Catriona felt, rather than saw, Haydan's approach. Though courtesy demanded that she focus her attention on the man who still spoke to her, she turned to watch the Hawk. For a man of such size, he moved with a hunter's easy stealth.
    "It has been some time since I've been called lad," he said, his gaze on Marta's dried-apple face.
    "All things are young when compared to something. The oak tree is only a babe in comparison to the sun," said Marta, glaring up