My Highland Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

chieftain’s wife.”
    The hound disagreed with a low, rumbling growl.
    Both dogs lumbered to their feet and retreated to the passage connecting the meeting hall to the outer kitchens.
    Cowards.
Gray glared at the retreating beasts, all the while wishing he could join them. Ever since the
dearbh fhine
had named him
Tànaiste
to the chieftainship rather than Fearghal, his father’s only legitimate son, Aileas had seen fit to test his patience, along with his leadership, at every opportunity.
    The bitter woman had never publicly denounced him as the bastard son of her dead husband’s leman, but sources reported she had shared this opinion privately on more than one occasion.
    A sad smile pinched one corner of Gray’s mouth as he straightened in the chair. Damned if he wouldna wager his best warhorse that his parents had reunited on the other side and stood together at this verra moment…laughing because he had been left behind to deal with the unpleasant Aileas.
    The tall, gangly woman lumbered forward. She kept one oversized hand locked in the crooked arm of the puny young man stumbling along beside her. Aileas’s wispy hair had escaped its combs, fluttering about her perspiring face and wide shoulders like a veil of mud-brown cobwebs. The exertion of dragging her clumsy son the length of the hall had reddened the broken capillaries covering Aileas’s bulbous nose and her sallow, pockmarked cheeks.
    When Aileas came to a halt in front of the main table, she yanked her ill-fitting dress back into place across her sturdy, big-boned frame.
    As he had more times than he cared to remember, Gray wondered how his father could e’er bed such a woman and manage to seed a son. There was nay enough whisky in all the Highlands to blind a man to the undeniable truth that the Lady Aileas more closely resembled a surly blacksmith than a comely chieftain’s wife.
    “My chieftain.” Aileas coughed out the word “chieftain” as though it had lodged crossways in her throat and she was trying to hack it loose. “Fearghal is greatly distressed o’er the treatment he received this verra morning at the stables.”
    Gray shifted his gaze to the nervous man twitching at Aileas’s side. Gray almost felt sorry for the poor excuse for a Scot.
Almost.
Fearghal might be a sniveling wimp, but he also possessed a cruel streak Gray had witnessed on several occasions. Fearghal’s preferred method of bolstering his own confidence was to torment those less fortunate than himself. Fearghal was a bully. In the worst possible ways, the unpleasant oaf mirrored the cruelties of his hateful mother. Gray rolled his shoulders against the wave of disgust Fearghal and Aileas always triggered. It couldna be that he and Fearghal shared the same father.
    “What distressed ye this time, Fearghal?” Gray struggled to keep the contempt out of his tone as he straightened in the chair and feigned interest in Fearghal’s plight. His father’s words rang in his ears: a chieftain is known by his actions as well as his words.
    “They…” Fearghal’s annoying voice stalled out. He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple skittered up and down his long narrow neck like a mouse scurrying beneath the bedclothes. His wide-set eyes darted nervously to the right of the room where several of Gray’s men were seated. “Yer guard would nay grant me wish to ride one of the horses that best suits me station. The man dared suggest I take one of the children’s training mares.”
    Fearghal’s pompous statement soured Gray’s mood further. What arrogance. Gray didna doubt Fearghal’s claim. The last time the dunce had been given a decent horse, Fearghal had returned on foot and the valuable horse had ne’er been seen again.
    By this time, Colum, Clan MacKenna’s chief man-at-arms, had assumed his usual position close beside Gray’s chair. With one hand resting atop the pommel of his sword, Colum stepped forward and joined the conversation in a tone leaving no doubt as