The Border Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

fear he meant. “Sir Adam, Father?”
    “Aye,” Duncan declared proudly, “Sir Adam Douglas, one o’ the wealthiest men in all Scotland, though he do be border-bred. In troth, he’s like tae become an earl one day, sae unco pack and thick do he be wi’ young Jamie. And he wishes tae be wed in a twink, lassie.”
    “Sir Adam Douglas?” Even to her own ears the strained repetition sounded half-witted. But memories she had thought long buried were forcing themselves to the surface of her mind in a veritable eruption of outraged, confused thought. She shivered as though the chill winds from that stormy October night gusted now through the cozy parlor.
    The strange chill was quickly replaced by an even odder tingling sensation that began at her toes and spread swiftly upward. Her hands trembled. It was as if, suddenly, she were watching this scene in her mother’s parlor from somewhere outside her own body. Perhaps, she told herself, if her father hadn’t fired the news at her so unexpectedly, she might be able to think more clearly. As it was, she found it difficult to remember anything beyond the Douglas arrogance, that cocksure manner in which he had described her to his friends, and more horrifyingly, the astonished look on his face just before he had collapsed at her feet. What, oh what, she wondered wildly, had possessed the blasted borderer that he must needs offer her marriage? And what had possessed her otherwise sensible father to accept such an offer?
    “’Tis no wonder you’re betwattled, lass,” Duncan said then. “’Tis amazed I am m’self the mon’s no wed afore this, he’s that suitable. But he said he ne’er gave it a thought ere his family began hounding him tae beget hisself an heir. His father, Lord Strachan, is a baron, ye ken, though that willna be sae much gin the lad gets hisself belted.”
    Scarcely hearing his last words, Mary Kate turned away toward the window. Duncan’s initial announcement about finding her a husband had surprised her, but for the few moments they had been discussing her betrothal to an unknown suitor, it had been easy to remain calm, to behave as she was expected to behave. She had even felt a tremor of excitement. But the discovery that Douglas was the suitor came as an unwelcome shock, and she struggled without much success to keep a rein on her quick temper. “You cannot truly mean to marry me to Sir Adam Douglas, Father,” she said stiffly. “I have no wish to marry a borderer, and I do not even like the man.”
    “What manner of ill-fared deaving be this, forby?” demanded Duncan. “I’ve accepted the mon’s offer and ye’ll marry him wi’ nae more yaffing.” Frustrated, he shoved a hand through his rough gray curls. “Such talk disna become ye, lassie. I’d nae notion ye’d even remember the mon, for he said he met ye only the once and decided tae make yon offer when he found ye tae his liking and learned that Parian Drysdale’s land, which will one day be his, adjoins me own.”
    Though her cheeks flushed now with anger, Mary Kate hesitated to speak, not knowing what she might safely say. Duncan had bristled at her one brief display of temper, and the storm warnings were clear. She was certain Douglas’s offer had nothing to do with land, unless he expected thus to acquire control of Duncan’s estate when Duncan died. But by Scottish law Speyside would be hers, and to a man of Douglas’s wealth and power it would be but a paltry acquisition. She had no doubt he wanted her simply because she had bested him, because he knew he could have her by no other means.
    For one brief moment she felt a near hysterical urge to laugh, thinking the borderer had certainly picked an effective way to be revenged upon her for a clout on the head. But since Duncan took the matter seriously, it was no laughing matter to her, either. Her father’s highland pride clearly stopped short of whistling a border fortune down the wind.
    She tried another tack,