The Rose Red Bride JK2 Read Online Free PDF

rubbed her eyes in answer, as if too exhausted to remain awake, then pretended to struggle to focus on her needlework.
    “You do look tired, Vivienne,” Isabella said, sounding for all the world like their mother.
    “It is not like you to tire so early,” Annelise commented. “You are usually the last of us to come to bed.”
    Vivienne shrugged. “I was tired all this day.”
    “And you did not eat your dinner,” a sharp-eyed Elizabeth reminded them all.
    “Perhaps sleep would be best for you,” Isabella said. “And morning will find you hale again.”
    Vivienne set aside her work with apparent reluctance. “I admit the notion has an appeal.”
    “Go!” Annelise urged. “You can work upon your panel another day.”
    Isabella smiled. “Needlework awaits our attention most patiently.” The other sisters laughed and Vivienne did not require further urging to leave their company.
    She climbed the stairs slowly as long as they could see her, so slowly that she might have been having difficulty lifting her the weight of her own feet. She heard Isabella tut-tut and smiled to herself, then darted across the floor above to fetch and light a candle. The moon was new, so there would be no light in the chambers above.
    Kinfairlie’s keep was no more and no less than a single square tower wrought of stone. It was tall, so tall that Vivienne’s father had once called it a finger pointing to the heavens, so tall that it could be seen from as far away as their uncle’s keep of Ravensmuir.
    Kinfairlie had not been rebuilt precisely to the former design after it had been razed to the ground. Curtain walls, for example, were now believed to be too difficult to defend, thus Kinfairlie’s surrounding walls had not been rebuilt. The remnants of the old walls yet marked the property, though they were tumbled in places, choked with thorns in others, and had vanished in still others.
    Despite this, the keep could be readily defended by a few stout men. There was but one entry to the tower, marked by a portcullis, and a wide wooden door studded with iron. The entry was cunningly designed so that an intruder would be tricked into taking what appeared to be the larger way, though that corridor led only to the dungeon. Once there, the intruder would be trapped and at the mercy of the laird. Further, the corridor that proved to lead to the hall itself offered many opportunities to assault any assailant who managed to pass through that heavily-secured portal.
    Above this entry, the tower was simple in design. The interior was marked by a staircase, which wound its way upward, making a quarter turn around the perimeter of the tower for each successive floor. There were four floors in total, the highest one characterized by a sloped ceiling defined by the point of the roof. The banner of Kinfairlie, graced with a glowing orb, fluttered from the pinnacle of the tower.
    Vivienne knew the tower and its whispers as well as her own hand. She knew - as she suspected did most of her siblings - which stair could be relied upon to squeak, which corner was dark enough to hide an eavesdropper. She paused on the landing of the second floor, the one above the hall proper, listening for her brother’s whereabouts. She strode past the one empty chamber on the second floor, which had once been shared by her brothers, and wondered fleetingly how her two younger brothers fared in their respective training at Ravensmuir and Inverfyre. Did they miss their sisters as much as Vivienne missed them? She passed the larger chamber shared by herself and her sisters, then continued up the staircase.
    The next floor comprised the laird’s quarters, including a large solar and a small chamber in which Alexander kept the ledgers of the estate. Both rooms could be secured from the stairs and adjacent corridor. From his rooms, the laird could look in three directions over his holding. There was not so much as a candle lit in the lord’s solar, though a glimmer of