Read Kate Wingo - Highland Mist 01 for Free Online Page A

of the stone-rimmed fire pit, Yvette pulled her voluminous linen undergarment between her legs to prevent it from dragging on the dirt floor. Had she known beforehand how this day would unfold, she would have donned more practical garb. Not that her trousseau contained much in the way of practical clothing. After all, an earl’s wife didn’t need to be concerned with practicality. An earl’s wife had servants and villeins to wait on her hand and foot. Only those who labored at manual tasks – like starting a peat fire – required practical clothing. An earl’s wife need only be concerned with greeting her lord husband’s guests, seeing to their comfort, and plying her hand at embroidery.
    Once I wed Hugh de Ogilvy, I shall have a lifetime of useless embroidery to look forward to , she thought glumly.
    Had her father permitted her to join a nunnery after her first husband died, Yvette would at least have had the quiet companionship of other women. But Lyndhurst had adamantly refused her request. In marrying her off to Hugh de Ogilvy, her father stood to gain lands in the Border country, greater prestige with King Edward, and a marriage alliance with a Scottish nobleman who, at least for the time being, swore allegiance to England.
    “And so the dye is cast,” Yvette murmured, resigned to her fate.
    Using the flint and stone that she found in the bottom of the pouch, she was eventually able to get a peat fire started. Gently blowing on the fledgling flame, she coaxed it to life.
    Satisfied that the small fire would sustain itself without further intervention, she seated herself upon the rickety three-legged stool, folded her hands in her lap, and stared dispiritedly at the orange and yellow flames.
    “The auld ones claimed they could see yer future in the flames of a peat fire.”
    Startled at hearing Iain’s burred baritone, Yvette gasped. Preoccupied as she’d been with her maudlin thoughts, she’d not heard him enter the hut. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that he was soaked to the skin.
    “I do not need a Highland oracle to know that my future is bleak,” she said scornfully. Or that the future was no longer hers to command. Not that it ever had been.
    Tossing aside the leather flask that he’d carried in with him, Iain grabbed the food pouch off of the floor. “No’ so bleak as it once was. The rain has stopped coming down in droves.”
    Laughing c austically, Yvette continued to stare at the fire, paying her captor no mind as he fumbled through the leather pouch.
    “Ye find that amusing, woman?”
    She turned on her stool to face him. “Yea, I do find it amusing that a man could so easily reduce the sum of one’s life to the banal simplicity of the here and now.”
    “I dinna see the point in wasting my time worrying over that which is out of my c ontrol,” Iain said with a shrug. “I canna control the future anymore than I can control the rain. All I can control is this moment in time. I have lived long enough to know that if ye put yer hope in the future, those hopes will eventually bite you in the arse.”
    Unable to fault his reas oning, Yvette remained silent. She, too, had once placed her hope in the future; only to have that hope deteriorate into heartache.
    “Did you not eat with your kinsmen?” she inquired as she watched Iain greedily stuff an oat cake into his mouth.
    “No, I didn a,” he said around a mouthful. “I was busy tending to the horses.”
    On the verge of asking Iain if he’d like for her to prepare a hot meal, Yvette thought better of the offer at the last. She was the laird’s hostage, not his lackey. Unless he ordered her to do so, she would not wait on him.
    Let the fiend stuff his belly with cold oat cakes. I care naught.
    For lack of anything better to do, Yvette turned her back on Iain and resumed staring at the flames. Although the small fire created what she knew to be a false sense of security, she took what comfort she could from it. Eventide would soon