Read Beneath a Dark Highland Sky: Book #3 for Free Online Page B

onto my chest! I will put my fingers in the salt bowl and pick my teeth with my knife! I will lift my plate to my mouth and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. Nay, I will wipe my mouth on his sleeve! And I will be sure to feed the hounds beneath the table and throw the bones o’er my shoulders. I may e’en spit .”
    Satisfied, Sorcha sat down on a chair in front of the hearth and Nessa began to pin up her fiery auburn hair. Sorcha turned and pinched her.
    “Och! What do ye?” Nessa cried, rubbing her arm.
    “Yer the lady of the keep now! Ye dunna wait on me. And if ye make that mistake again, I’ll pinch ye harder!”
    They both laughed as Sorcha began to hastily braid her own hair, a difficult task, for it was wavy and thick, a shiny, rich red-brown like her mother’s had been. As a child, she’d tried to sleep with a nightcap but it had always wiggled loose and fallen off by morning. There seemed to be no cap that could contain her unruly tresses so she’d stopped wearing one. She’d often wished she’d had shiny, black hair like her brothers.
    Nessa sighed. “Ye dunna ha’e the bearing of a maid, Sorcha. I think it will be difficult to convince anyone yer a servant, even dressed as one. Ye ha’e a regal, confident way about ye. A commanding way.”
    “Are ye saying I am domineering?” Sorcha’s deep green eyes were playful, her smile teasing.
    “Och, nay, ne’er that,” Nessa teased. “Just that yer as stubborn as a wild bull.”
    Sorcha sighed. Her face was proud and expressive and there was no help for it. And she was stubborn. Yet would she have to act the part; she would have to play the ever humble and gracious servant while that hideous Maclean oaf was under her roof.
    “The powerful Highlander willna be easily fooled,” she said. “But mayhap we can convince him that, despite yer beauty, his betrothed is a hateful, intolerable, ill-mannered shrew. At the vera worst, if our ruse is discovered and the marriage to me is still forced, I can make his life so hellish that mayhap he will choose to spend most of his time on Maclean land and forget all about me and this keep.” She looked at Nessa and smiled. “This could e’en be amusing .”
    Nessa did not look amused. “What will happen to me if we are discovered?” she said quietly. “Will the Highlander cut off my head and drink my blood from my skull?”
    “Nessa, I will take all blame and all…punishment.”
    “I ha’e always thought ye the bravest person I’ve e’er known. Ye get yer bravery from yer Da, God rest his soul. What does it feel like to be that brave?”
    “I am nae brave. I am practical.”
    Sorcha missed her father Murry sorely. Murry was a cousin to William Douglas, Eighth Earl of Douglas. Sixteen years ago, James the Second had invited William to dine with him at Stirling Castle. But the hot-headed and suspicious James accused William of conspiracy in his dealings with Yorkists in England and through a pact made between Douglas, the Earl of Crawford and the Lord of the Isles.
    In the ensuing argument, James stabbed William twenty-six times and then he and one of his guards threw open the wooden shutters below a glass window and hoisted their victim through it. His bloodied and broken body had landed on the cobbles of the courtyard far below.
    Sorcha’s father’s keep had never been on a scale that could be compared to an earl’s, but the keep was well run and maintained despite all its inhabitants had lost after Arkinholm. After that battle, many of the Black Douglas clans had never risen to their previous statuses. It was due to Sorcha’s astute management and strength that her father’s keep had not fallen into disrepair or become a sad place with a musty smell of neglect.
    The rushes were changed frequently, the chores done regularly and promptly by the servants, and there was not a cup or bowl out of place. Sorcha had had to keep herself busy or she feared she would not be able to go on. She learned as much as