Amanda Scott Read Online Free

Council Isle?” Mairi asked him.
    “Nay, my lady, for wi’ this fog, he ha’ decided t’ hold council in the hall.”
    “But can that be legal, Ranald?” she asked as Ned led the ponies away and the younger lad fell into step beside them.
    “Legal enough, I warrant,” Ranald said as they passed from the grassy stable enclosure to the next one, which housed the chapel, guardhouses, and cottages. “’Tis his grace who interprets the laws, after all, and he is ever a fair man.”
    “Aye, that he be,” their informer said earnestly, trotting beside Meg to keep up with them. “The laird did say the great hall will hold all who come, my lady, and he did set men like me t’ direct them there. I’m thinking his grace will begin Ian Burk’s trial first, since it be the local one, and new. That’d be within the hour.”
    “I’ll just have time to change my dress then,” Mairi said, relieved that she would not have to appear before the company in her present soggy attire.
    Commanding Ranald to make her excuses to her mother, and taking care to avoid anyone else who might try to delay her, she and Meg hastened across the roofed and stone-paved forecourt and up the steep stairway within the ten-foot-thick wall of the family’s private quarters, to the bedchamber she shared with her younger sister Elizabeth. There, with Meg’s help, she quickly donned an ermine-trimmed tunic and kirtle of the rich scarlet wool known as tiretain, because it had come all the way from Tyre.
    Meg plaited Mairi’s glossy black hair into twin coils, pinning one over each ear, and concealed the whole beneath a delicately embroidered gold-mesh caul. Atop the caul, she set a narrow gold circlet to denote Mairi’s rank.
    “Your gloves, mistress,” she said sharply when Mairi stood and turned toward the door. “And, too, you should carry a lace handkerchief.”
    “Don’t be daft, Meg, I’ve tarried long enough.” But she took the gloves, knowing her mother would scold if she appeared barehanded before such a company. Then, without further comment, she hurried out and down the steep stairway, holding her long skirts away from her feet with her left hand. Her right hovered near the stone wall, but so great was her hurry that she barely touched it.
    From the top of the stairs, she heard male voices below in the forecourt, but by the time she reached the doorway, silence reigned outside. Even the hammering on the chapel roof had stopped, doubtless so the workers could attend Ian’s trial.
    Emerging into the empty forecourt, she bundled her skirts awkwardly over her left arm to keep them out of her way and pulled on her gloves as she hurried across the pavement and through the arched gateway into the courtyard of the vast rectangular great hall. Hurrying up the wooden steps at the hall’s southeast corner, she entered the antechamber to hear male voices again from the great hall beyond.
    The door into the hall stood open to allow two tall men to pass through, one behind the other and gentlemen both if their short, brightly colored velvet cloaks and tight-fitting silk hose were any indication. As she crossed the chamber, the second man, a bit shorter and slighter than the first, reached to pull the heavy door closed behind him. The voices inside the hall were fading, telling her that her father had already mounted the dais to begin the proceedings.
    “Hold there,” she commanded in a low but urgent tone as she held her skirts higher and increased her pace, fearing the man might attempt to bar the door.
    It continued to close, but she caught its edge before it did.
    “Wait,” she said more loudly, struggling against the strong grip that threatened to pull the door from her grasp. “I want to come in.”
    The door stopped, but as she sighed her relief and moved to pass through the narrow opening, she found herself facing a broad, immobile male chest clad in sky-blue velvet, and instantly realized that she had misjudged the size of the