On a Highland Shore Read Online Free Page A

and danced on the breeze. She was being absurd. The head that had washed up on the beach was not an omen, not a sign of unrest across the waters or conflict within their borders, not a portent of the future. It was simply the head of some poor unfortunate soul lost at sea, washed ashore at the whim of the tide. Missing his head? She pushed the unsettling thought aside.
    She let the others run ahead, waiting alone for Fergus to finish examining the worms he’d found, a battered flower clutched in his hand.
    “Come, laddie,” she said, bending over him.
    He held up a worm for her inspection. “Look.”
    Margaret smiled. Someday she might have a child of her own as wonderful and full of life as this little one and his brothers. “Let’s let the worms live, shall we?” She scooped them back into the hole. “Put him with his friends. Aren’t ye hungry?”
    Fergus looked from the worm to Margaret, then nodded and dropped his captive into the hole. She brushed him off as best she could, then took his hand and hurried him through the inland gate, where she collected the others and they made their way to the keep. The boys ran across the courtyard and barreled through the ground-floor storeroom that doubled as the guardhouse, then, punching each other, scrambled up the spiral stairway to the passageway that led to the great hall. They waited there, for Margaret and Nell and Fergus. She straightened their clothing and tidied their hair, then gestured them into the hall.
    This was her favorite room in all of Somerstrath. The hall was not large compared to the structures she’d seen at Stirling and Edinburgh and in the mighty castles now being built in the Norman fashion all over central Scotland, but it was big enough to hold rows of polished pine trestle tables with their well-worn benches. And the stone-hewn fireplace at the end of the room was magnificent enough to grace any castle she’d seen. Her mother had warmed the room with tapestries, and her father had lined the walls with stag’s heads and the occasional boar’s head, which had inspired the boys to invent stories.
    Several of her father’s men were gathered in a corner, talking among themselves. Her father and Rignor sat separately at another of the tables. Margaret’s mood sank when she saw their expressions. Father’s color was high, which meant he and Rignor had been arguing again. Father slammed his fist on the table as the boys approached, not even seeing their startled expressions. He leaned forward, glaring at Rignor.
    “I am weary of yer excuses and yer complaints,” Father shouted. “Ye should have done it before midday, not ask someone to do it for ye. There is no job too small for the leader of a clan! It’s time ye stopped making yer own life easier and everyone else’s more difficult. Ye’d better start learning how to lead, lad, else I’ll be looking at the younger ones to replace ye when I’m gone.”
    “Ye’ll have no say in it when ye’re gone,” Rignor shouted.
    Father’s face mottled. “Say that once more, lad, and I’ll see it done.”
    Rignor stormed out without sparing his siblings a glance. Father shook his head and stared into the distance while Margaret met Nell’s gaze. Would there ever be peace between her father and brother?
    They were alike in so many ways, both tall and dark and powerfully built. Both had quick tempers, but her father’s behavior was usually measured, while Rignor’s was impulsive. Her father put the clan’s needs before his own—most of the time. Rignor rarely did. Her father listened to what he was told, and weighed it. Rignor was exhaustively garrulous and deaf to any comments that did not please him. Rignor rarely pleased his father, but where Rignor was concerned, Father was often unpleasable.
    Her father’s expression lightened as he turned to them and pulled Fergus into his lap. “Into the mud again, aye, laddie?”
    “Father!” Ewan said. “We found a head!”
    Father smiled.