Highland Wolf Read Online Free PDF

everyone he is, but he isnae.” Meggie suddenly looked nervous. “But ye must ne’er say that I said that, please.”
    “I will never do so. It is to be our secret, oui? ”
    “Aye, our secret. I ken he kissed my mother, but that doesnae make him my father. He has kissed a lot of women. My da was handsome and kind and laughed and smiled. Sir MacKay just yells and hits people. He isnae a nice mon at all.”
    Stunned by the words I ken he kissed my mother , James had to take a moment to clear his mind enough to respond coherently to Meggie’s confidences. “ Non , kissing does not make a man a papa. Where is your nursemaid?”
    “Annora? She is working in the gardens. See?” Meggie held up her very dirty hands. “I was helping her but I needed something to drink. Big Marta gave me something. Why do ye think they call her Big Marta? She is a wee woman, nay a big one.”
    “I am thinking the name is a jest, oui? Something to make people smile.”
    “Oh. They tease her? Do ye think it hurts her feelings?”
    “ Non . I think she carries the name well, eh? She is big in spirit, oui? ”
    Meggie smiled and nodded, causing her thick curls to do a wild dance around her head. “She is verra strong and everyone does what she tells them to.” She looked back at the wood James was working on. “’Tis verra, verra pretty. When I have clean hands can I touch it?”
    “ Oui . I am in here most days, working. You may come whenever you want.”
    “Meggie!”
    “That is Annora. I better go back to her. She worries ’bout me, ye ken.”
    Before James could say anything, Meggie was gone. James stared at the doorway she had just fled through, but saw nothing. His own thoughts consumed him until he was blind and deaf to all else. The innocently said words of his child pounded in his brain.
    I ken he kissed my mother .
    He tried to tell himself that Meggie was imagining things, that she had only been two years old when Mary had died. It had to be impossible for a child that age to know what she saw and recall it for three years. Yet, he could not shake the words from his head.
    Mary unfaithful? It was impossible to believe. Mary had been painfully shy. She had blushed and tensed even during the most restrained form of lovemaking. He had not wanted to believe that she had found his touch distasteful, had even hoped that after a few years of marriage she would begin to enjoy the more intimate side of their union. Now he had to wonder if what he had seen as an intense shyness had indeed been distaste, a distaste born of the fact that Mary had been in love with another man.
    James tightened his grip on the awl he held until his hand threatened to cramp. He had never understood Mary’s acceptance of Donnell MacKay, but perhaps he should have looked more closely. It was hard to think he had been made a fool of, but it was time to look back over his brief marriage with a more critical eye. Although it was difficult to believe the Mary he had known had had any part in his destruction, James knew he could not ignore the possibility.
    Once he accepted that Mary might not have been the sweet, shy wife he had thought her to be, James then wondered if she was really even dead. The body he had buried had been the right size, but the fire had burned that body beyond true recognition. He had accepted that it was Mary, for witnesses had placed her in the tiny cottage at the time of the fire and one small, charred hand had still been adorned with the wedding ring he had slipped on Mary’s finger. There had even been a few charred remains of the gown she had worn that day. That still left a lot of room for doubt, however. The biggest doubt was stirred by the fact that he did not think Mary had the clever deviousness needed for such a plot and he could not believe she had the patience to remain hidden from sight for so very long.
    Shaking away the questions clogging his mind, James turned his attention back to his carving. The slow, meticulous