Captured by a Laird Read Online Free

than he knew what to do with. More importantly, men on both sides of the border feared his name, and no one dared cross Hume territory without his permission.
    “’Tis time to take a bigger prize than cattle,” David said, staring out the window at the hills beyond his walls.
    “Blackadder Castle?” Robbie asked.
    David smiled at his brother’s quickness. “Aye.”
    “We’ll make the Blackadders pay for the wrongs they’ve done to us,” Robbie said.
    “I must make my move before someone else does,” David said. “A castle in the care of a young widow is like low-hanging fruit. All the Border lairds have their eyes on it.”
    From what he’d heard, the widow was meek. She would not hold out long.
    “Before they know it,” Robbie said, “you’ll take Blackadder Castle.”
    And the widow too. David did not say the words aloud. It was not yet time to share that part of his plan with his brother.
    But the widow was the key.

CHAPTER 3
     
    Alison sat alone at the high table, her bowl of stew gone cold, long after she dismissed her children to play. After ten years of marriage, she was finally free. But free to be whom? She did not know who she was anymore.
    She could barely remember the arrogant and sometimes thoughtless girl she had been at thirteen when she wed. As the granddaughter of two powerful clan chieftains, she had been raised to think rather much of herself. Yet even with her faults, Alison liked that girl far better than who she had become as Blackadder’s wife—a groveling woman with poison in her heart.
    Burning his bed had made her feel like that girl again. And she liked that feeling, however fleeting.
    When she became Blackadder’s third wife, he was forty, twenty-seven years her senior, and she was young enough for him to shape her into the sort of woman he wanted. She had heard him say it often enough to his friends.
    Women are like dogs and horses. Best to get them young when they’re easy to train.
    Blackadder constantly undermined her authority by ridiculing her in front of the household. He overruled decisions she made that were typically in the purview of the mistress of the castle, then criticized her because the household did not run smoothly.
    She intended to change all that, but it was not proving easy. The servants were long accustomed to ignoring her requests without suffering any consequence, and the Blackadder warriors were worse. They had followed her order to carry her husband’s bed into the courtyard only because they had thought her mad with grief and madness frightened them.
    The castle was hers now—or rather her daughters’—and she was determined to take charge of her household.
    She took another bite of the tasteless stew and decided there was no better time than the present. Before she lost her courage, she headed downstairs to the kitchens.
    “The meals have been lacking.” Alison confronted the cook, a thin, hollow-cheeked man with a grizzly beard and a surly expression. “There was no meat again today except for a bit of rabbit in the soup.”
    “I can’t cook what I don’t have, m’lady,” he said. “I butchered the last of our pigs when your Douglas kin descended upon us, and we have no more.”
    She suspected that the Blackadder men who deserted the castle had robbed them of their stores. This problem, at least, was easily resolved.
    “Then we must replenish our supplies,” Alison said, folding her arms. “Until we have more pork, we shall eat beef.”
    She was proud of herself for standing up to him.
    “The Humes have raided our cattle,” the cook said. “We’ve not a one left.”
    “How could that happen?” she asked. “And why did no one tell me?”
    “We’ve even eaten the hens,” he continued, ignoring her questions, “so we’ve no eggs either.”
    “Then we’ll send one of the kitchen maids to the market in the village to buy more.”
    “I already did,” he said. “She returned empty-handed.”
    Alison was stunned. “The