The Heart Queen Read Online Free PDF

to the first floor where her chamber was, then up to the second where the nursery was located.
    Alasdair’s brother Reginald and his wife also had rooms on the first floor, as did Archibald, the third brother. Marjorie had a small cottage house away from the tower.
    She went up to see the bairns. The nursery consisted of a small room where her son stayed except when she took him down to her own room, a sitting room that doubled as a play room, a bedchamber the lasses shared, and a tiny anteroom where Molly stayed.
    Grace, the quiet one, was reading a book Janet had borrowed from the vicar. Her husband had not approved of lasses receiving an education. In truth, he had little himself, and there were no books at Lochaene. Janet was teaching her daughters to read with what books she could borrow.
    Rachel was gazing out the window at the rare activity in the courtyard and Annabella was playing with a doll. They all looked up as she entered the room, Annabella getting up from a chair and scampering over to her.
    “Where is Molly?” Janet asked. She’d told the girl to stay with the children. She should have known better. One more reason to discharge her.
    “She leave us,” Annabella said forlornly. “I doan think she likes us.”
    “Did you get something to eat?”
    Annabella shook her head.
    “Would you like some meat pies?”
    “Aye,” Rachel said.
    “And some pastries?” Annabella said hopefully. Then her face fell. “Father would no‘ like it.”
    “Your father has gone to heaven,” Janet explained for the sixth or seventh time in the past four days. She sincerely doubted it, but she hadn’t wanted to scare the children with visions of another place. A small lie. A kind lie.
    After her much greater sin of wishing her husband dead, she dinna think God would be too outraged at this small one.
    “Will we go there, too?” Rachel, the curious one, asked.
    “Not for a very long time, love.”
    Janet looked toward Grace. “Will you look after your little brother?”
    A smile lit Grace’s face. She loved nothing better than to be asked to do something. “I will,” she said.
    Janet knelt and held out her arms. The three girls crowded inside them, the small bodies warm, their arms clinging. They’d all been starved for love when she came to Lochaene. She hadn’t been able to spoil them while their father lived. He’d seemed to object to every small gift or gesture. She would make up for it.
    But now hugs were important to them. And to her.
    Neil’s appearance had opened a wound that ran deep and wide.
    It was all she could do to keep the tears banked behind her eyes, to hold in the hurt she thought she had conquered.
    A few kind words had torn down all the barriers she’d so carefully constructed. She didn’t know why he had come, but she knew she had to be careful.
    She also realized Neil Forbes was now a marquis, a higher rank than that of her husband, but he didn’t look like a marquis. But then he never had, and she recalled that his indifference to clothes was one of the things that attracted her. He’d worn saffron shirts open at the neck and a great tartan plaid that was now outlawed. He’d looked rugged and handsome.
    And now? Though his clothes were stained with travel, she’d noted they were of good quality. He wore a dark blue waistcoat over a linen shirt with blue trousers tucked into dusty boots. Unlike most of the other lords, he did not wear a wig. Instead, his own hair was a little shaggy, as if he couldn’t be bothered with it.
    Neither had there been any softening in his face despite his kind words.
    She steeled herself against seeing him again. She would endeavor to stay away from him. Surely he would not stay long, especially since it seemed he’d brought little with him.
    Janet slowly untangled herself from the children. “I will be right back,” she promised.
    She made her way down the stairs. All the servants had been recruited to help with the food and drink for the many