Highland Master Read Online Free

did aught to start the wound bleeding again.
    “Would your kinsmen so easily welcome a stranger?” he asked.
    “My lady mother welcomes all who come in peace,” she said. “In my father’s absence, I warrant she will be fain to have a strong man at hand, even overnight.”
    He realized then that she was of noble birth and that heought to have known it despite her untidiness. Commoners rarely owned wolf dogs or spoke as she did.
    “How far is your home from here?” he asked.
    “ ’Tis in the glen just over yon hill,” she said, pointing toward the granite ridge above them to the northeast. “We’ll go through the cut above those trees.”
    “Then I will gratefully accept your invitation.”
    Smiling in a way that made his body stir unexpectedly in response, she picked up his sword and sling and stood back to let him get to his feet.
    When he stood and reached for the sword, she said, “I can carry it.”
    “Nay, then, I do not relinquish my weapon to anyone, woman or man.”
    He saw a flash of annoyance, but she handed him the belt. He strapped it into place and took the sword from her, feeling its weight more than usual as he reached back and slipped it into its sling. But he did so, he thought, without noticeable difficulty. She did not
seem
to notice, but he felt new tension between them.
    The hill was steep, and it proved harder than he had expected to follow her up through the forest to the ridge. The waves of dizziness persisted, and halfway up, he began to feel weary, almost leaden. To be sure, he had traveled far that day.
    But such profound weariness was abnormal for him.
    When they reached the scree-filled cut below the sharp crest, the going grew easier. Still, the loose rocks underfoot and a number of huge boulders in their path required vigilance to avoid a misstep.
    Fin stopped gratefully when the lass did but assured himself that naught was amiss with him but his recurrentdizziness and the strange lassitude. The sweeping prospect of the towering, still snowy Cairngorms beyond was spectacular.
    “There,” she said, pointing. “We need only row across the loch.”
    He looked down to see a curving, mile-long, deep-green loch that looked like a shard from a lass’s looking glass, reflecting the wild beauty of heavily forested slopes and a few steep granite ones that surrounded it like the steep sides of a basin.
    Following her gesture southeast to a much nearer point, his gaze fell on an island fortress some hundred yards from where the shore curved around the base of the steep hillside just below them. At the sight of that fortress, he felt a sense of unexpected disorientation and disbelief.
    Maintaining an even tone of voice with effort, he said, “Is that not Castle Moigh, the very seat of the Mackintosh?”
    “Nay,” she said. “That is Loch an Eilein and my father’s castle of Rothiemurchus. But you are not the first to mistake it for Moigh. See you, we Mackintoshes like islands. They provide more security than other sites do.”
    “So you must be kin to the Mackintosh.”
    “He is my grandfather,” she said proudly.
    “Then you can tell me exactly how far Loch Moigh lies from here.”
    “Aye, sure, but why do you want to know?”
    “Sithee, I have come into Clan Chattan territory a-purpose to talk with the Mackintosh, to deliver a message to him.”
    Her eyes twinkled again. “Have you, in troth?” When he nodded, she added, “Then it is good that you did come with me, sir, because at present the Mackintosh and mylady grandmother are staying with my mother and me at Rothiemurchus.”
    “Our meeting today was fortunate then, was it not?”
    “It was, aye,” she agreed, turning away. “We’ll go down now.”
    He recalled then her belief that, in her father’s absence, her mother would welcome a “strong man” at Rothiemurchus.
    “I trust that your grandfather is in good health and…” He hesitated, having seen enough of her to know that the words on his tongue might