Morganna (The Brocade Collection, Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

back.”
    “I’m na’ you,” she answered.
    “I let you keep this braid, you obey me? You’ll become my squire in every sense? Guard my back, and take care of my person with nary a complaint?”
    Morgan swallowed with a throat that felt too sore, too tight, and too dry. “Hack it off, and have done,” she answered, closing her eyes to all she’d hidden from herself and waited for him to do it. Her tears weren’t subsiding, though, and the woman in her that she’d tried to destroy was the one sobbing. She told herself it was only hair. It would grow back. It was stupid to keep something just because her mother, in another lifetime, had hair just like it. Nothing she tried to tell herself was working, though.
    He shoved her away. “Get that KilCreggar sett off. I’ve a kilt for you. If you’re not undressed, washed and awaiting it when I return, I’ll hack more than your braid off you. You ken?”
    She was already stripping the tartan off.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Morgan didn’t waste any time luxuriating in the water, but then again, she never did. She was quick enough to be brutal, but without her thigh-length jerkin, laced-on sleeves, or the yards of tartan, folded about her body to form a kilt and cape affair called the feile-breacan, she looked exactly like what she was; a slender female. She raced from the water to hide behind a tree and await him.
    She very nearly didn’t make it, and his disgust at finding her out of the water was obvious.
    “ Morgan, lad! If you make me hunt you—”
    His words stopped when he saw the pile of KilCreggar cloth on the bank. Morgan watched him kick it into the water with his boot, as though it was too filthy to touch. She shut her eyes on the desecration, before darting along the edge of the foliage, watching the sodden black mass bob in the current.
    “You wore it within an inch of its use, lad. You needn’t mourn such a rag.”
    Morgan watched him call the words over his far shoulder and knew now was her moment . She was as good at shifting positions as Zander had looked to be. She was an excellent swimmer, too. Just about everything a lad could do, she could do better. She was beneath the water and sliding her body to where her KilCreggar plaid had gone under before he said another word.
    “… more use of my colors. You’ve no need to shun them. You’ve more reason to welcome them.”
    Morgan heard him as she surfaced . She didn’t know what else he’d said. She had a clear view of where Zander was still talking over his shoulder, as she propelled herself to a spot on the bank below him. She was going to be in plain view for a moment, but it couldn’t be helped. She said a swift prayer for his continued ignorance of her position before she chanced it.
    “Why, many’s the lass who has fallen into a swoon at seeing the FitzHugh plaid . It’s a fine color, vibrant and alive. Not like that dark, ugly KilCreggar gray. Besides, the threads are softer, spun tighter, and weave’s done by skilled hands. You’ve not much to lose, you ken?”
    Morgan slipped out of the water and back behind the curtain of bushes while he was still speaking . She knelt to wring the material out, close to the ground, keeping the drops from making sound. She frowned as she realized the obvious. She wasn’t going to be able to keep it with her. Not all of it, anyway.
    For the first time in eight years, she wasn’t going to be able to wear her clan colors. The certainty made her shake. She stifled it. She might be forced to wear the enemy’s colors on the outside, but she’d keep a piece of KilCreggar plaid close to her heart. She would pretend to be one of them. She told herself she’d parade around in leopard skins and jewels if it got her the justice she was seeking. Then, she’d have another KilCreggar sett woven. Her ancestors would have to be content with that.
    Morgan ran her fingers along an edge, searching for a particularly weak spot. She longed for one of her dirks.