Just Beyond Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

with great dignity into the shadows. The duke chuckled. He knew it wasn’t considered manly, but he actually liked cats better than dogs. Dogs, God love them, were loyal creatures to any who fed them. A cat, however, had to actually like you to be your friend. As he made his way up to his own chamber, the deerhound and the setter arose to follow him. The castle was so very quiet. One could actually sense there was hardly a soul in residence.
    He had sent his servant to bed earlier, for he was quite capable of taking his own clothing off and washing himself. Pulling on his nightshirt, Patrick Leslie lay down in the big bed in the ducal bedchamber. Until several months ago these had been his parents’ apartments, and this his parents’ bed. His mother had insisted upon his moving into it after his father had been buried. He was still not quite comfortable in the great bed. Still, he was soon asleep this night, and his sleep was dreamless.

Chapter 2
    W hen Patrick Leslie awoke the following morning, he found the day very gray and overcast. There was neither rain nor snow, but the wind had disappeared as he discovered standing in the open window of his bedchamber. “Tell the stables I will hunt today,” he told his manservant, Donal, who had been his boyhood companion and was distantly related to him. Donal’s family, the More-Leslies, had served the lords of Glenkirk for many generations.
    â€œCook thought ye’d be out early, m’lord,” Donal said. “There’s a fine meal awaiting ye in the hall. Will ye be wanting to take food wi’ ye? ’Tis deer we’ll be after, and apt to be gone the day long.”
    â€œAye, ye’re right,” the duke replied. “We’ll want oatcakes, cheese, cider. Tell the men to provision themselves in the kitchens before we go, Donal.”
    â€œI’ll see to it, m’lord,” Donal said, handing Patrick his drawers and breeches first, then a white shirt with full sleeves and a drawstring neck. He held the leather jerkin with the horn buttons in reserve while Patrick pulled the breeches on over his heavy, dark knit stockings.
    The breeches were wool, dyed a nut brown color. After tying his shirt at its neckline, Patrick sat down to draw on his brown leather boots, which covered the stockings and rose to his knees. Standing, he put on the jerkin and buttoned it up. Taking the fur-lined cloak and leather gloves Donal handed him, he exited his apartment, descending into the hall where his breakfast was awaiting him.
    Solitude had not deterred his appetite. Patrick wolfed down the oat stirabout with honey, several poached eggs in a cream sauce flavored with Marsala wine, three slices of ham, and a whole cottage loaf he spread with both butter and bits of hard cheese. There was a steaming mug of tea, a brew from his mother’s native land that he had grown to favor in the morning. It set better on an empty belly than ale or wine. His two youngest brothers had often teased him about his habit of wanting a hot drink in the morning, for they, like their father, had favored brown ale with their breakfast. He smiled at the memory, wondering how well Duncan and Adam fared in Ireland with its constant sectarian violence and warring. They, too, were yet bachelors. He sighed, resigned. It was certainly up to him to set them a good example.
    Finishing his meal, he noted uncomfortably that his cook had quickly learned to do for just one. He found it disquieting. As he rose from the board, his eye swept the hall, seeing the thin layer of dust on the ancient oak furniture. The castle definitely needed a woman’s touch. Without his mother’s majordomo, Adali, the servants were grown slack. They had no one to guide them. He needed a wife, but where the hell was he to find one?
    Glenkirk was well isolated deep in the hills of the eastern Highlands. His holdings stretched for miles in all directions, which was good, but it also meant