Highland Wedding Read Online Free PDF Page A

of them decided to increase their efforts to draw Iain into a liaison. They felt sure that, once he had become reaquainted with loving and his wife proved sorely lacking, his eyes would turn elsewhere. Knowing that her new husband was romping with another would put Islaen MacRoth in her place.
    Islaen sensed all that, could read it in a number of fair faces. It both pleased and worried her. She found pride in the fact that she would soon be wife to a man so many wanted. She worried that she might not be wife enough. Although he had said that he was no wencher she doubted he knew just how great a challenge to resist temptation would now be tossed at his head. Islaen could read the threat to trespass in far too many female eyes.
    It also annoyed her that they could not leave well enough alone, plotted to do to her as she would never dream of doing to them. The sanctified bonds and vows of matrimony clearly meant little to them. Their vanity needed appeasing, she supposed, and she felt ashamed for them. There was to be a fight ahead and she dreaded it, for she could not feel sure of victory.
    Dissatisfaction was in two male breasts as well. Ronald MacDubh and Lord Fraser were hard put to hide their anger. In each case the money Islaen would have brought them was sorely needed. The lives they led, remarkably similar, were costly. Debts were owed and to people who would not wait patiently for repayment. The chance of getting a well-dowered bride were few and far between for men who were of an increasingly unsavory reputation. MacRoth had been blissfully ignorant of their full characters. It grated to see such a prize go to a man who neither needed it nor wanted it. Such a thing hit them in the purse, where all their sensitivity rested.
    They also resented the property MacLagan would get. Opportunity for gain could be found upon the border. The king’s mailed fist was unable to fully control the area. Loyalties thinned in that area making it ideal for a man whose loyalty was only to himself. The chances of anyone outside of the clans or their allies marrying into them and gaining land that way were small. To watch such an opportunity slip into the hands of another man, himself from a border clan, was too much to tolerate. Resentment boiled and fermented in their breasts, aimed itself at Iain MacLagan and gave rise to plots, vague but growing clearer, of satisfactory revenge.
    Iain was not oblivious to all the undercurrents. He was uninterested in any female plots, just as he had been more or less unaware of women for a long time. His attention was on the disgruntled suitors. Money and land could stir emotions as easily and as deeply as love when lost to another. The fact that both rejected suitors were in sore need of both only increased the chance of possible trouble.
    What was frustrating was that he could not be sure how they would react to their loss. At the moment they looked close to uniting in their anger over losing such a prize. A union like that could be deadly. It was not really for himself that he worried either. Although Islaen was the prize the men sought, she could all too easily be hurt in whatever plan they might form. He was going to have to keep a close eye on both men.
    It occurred to Iain that, for such a tiny thing, Islaen MacRoth was towing a lot of complications behind her. Several of her brothers had hinted that any hurt done to their sister would be repaid in full. Iain wondered if the king knew how easily the strong alliance he sought could become the bloodiest feud the borders had seen in a long time. Added to that was the resentment of two men not known for their even temperament orgood sense. There could easily be swords drawn from that direction.
    When he recalled that he already had a sword hanging over his head like Damocles, Iain nearly laughed. While he fretted over Islaen possibly getting with child, he was ringed with people who could easily make her a widow before any seed of his could take