Highland Thirst Read Online Free

at Rosscurrach would help him then.

Two
    Brona
quietly left the great hall, the meal she had eaten sitting heavily in her
stomach. She was not sure what had troubled her more—the way Hervey had played
the hospitable, ever-smiling laird, a man interested in and concerned about his
clan, or the way Angus had watched her. A shiver went through her. She had seen
lust in the man’s eyes, a dark, predatory lust. She might be innocent in body
but Hervey had not been laird of Rosscurrach for long before she had begun to
learn all about lust, so she knew what she had seen in Angus’s cold eyes and it
terrified her. The man was as hard and cruel as Hervey.
    Forcing
all thought of Angus from her mind, she hurried up to the lady’s solar.
Relieved to find it empty, she hurried toward the narrow opening near the far
wall. She lit a lantern and stepped inside, but instead of following the
corridor all the way, she stopped about half the way through. Grabbing the rope
handle of one of the chests that lined the hall, she pulled it away from the
wall, revealing a hole in the floor. By the look of the thick drape of cobwebs,
Brona suspected that no one had ever told Hervey about the secrets of
Rosscurrach. He was not a man to ignore the advantages of such passages within
his walls, either using them himself or sealing them off so no one else could
use them.
    She
grabbed a broom used to sweep the floors of the solar and the bedchamber
connected to it by the passage. Brushing away the curtain of cobwebs, she then
tucked the broom in the crook of her arm and stepped onto the narrow stone
steps leading down into the many passageways running through the walls of Rosscurrach.
Once below the level of the floor, she grabbed another rope handle attached to
the bottom of the chest and dragged it back over the hole.
    Using
the broom to brush aside the worst of the cobwebs in her way, Brona made her
way down to the narrow passageway that would lead her to the one running behind
the great hall. She knew that Angus and Hervey would have sought the chairs by
the fireplace the moment she left. Even as she approached the chimney she
feared she would not be able to eavesdrop on the men for too long. It was
uncomfortably warm near the chimney. The sound of the men’s voices quickly
distracted her from the discomfort she was already beginning to feel, however.
    “MacNachton
isnae telling us anything,” complained Hervey.
    “He
will,” said Angus in that deep, cold voice that always made Brona shiver
inside.
    “Angus,
I have been torturing the mon for nearly a week and he still shows no sign of
weakening. The only thing left for me to do to him is to start taking off wee
pieces of him. Although it might be interesting to see if he could recover
from, let us say, the loss of a finger or a toe. Do ye think he would drain a
mon dry ere he could fix that?”
    “What
I think is it was a mistake to make him drink Peter’s blood.”
    Brona
put a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp of shock and horror. Colin and
Fergus had spoken the truth. Sir Heming had drunk of poor Peter’s blood. Even
after hearing that horrifying truth, however, she still found it difficult to
believe the man was a demon, hell-born, and a slave to the devil. Surely there
would be something she could see or sense or even smell that would tell her she
was in the presence of a demon. She had a gift for scenting the evil in a
person, even what they felt at times, but she sensed no true evil in Sir Heming,
only something feral. And since her gift worked best with animals, that feral
part of him should have told her a lot, yet all she had felt was that air of a
predator but one that was no threat to her.
    “It
gave me the proof I needed to verify all of the tales told about the
MacNachtons. They are demons.”
    Angus
snorted, the sound rife with scorn. “He isnae a demon. If he was some spawn of
Satan, ye wouldnae be able to treat him as ye do. He would have some power,
some ability to