Once Upon a Highland Autumn Read Online Free Page A

on.”
    Megan put a carful hand to her upswept hair, carefully curled and pinned and primped until she felt like screaming. Sorcha clutched her braids as she cast a horrified glance at her sisters’ coiffures. “For the rest of their lives?” she asked. “It takes hours!”
    Devorguilla squinted at her youngest daughter, and Megan wished she were still Sorcha’s age. Megan looked out the window wistfully, at the purple heather on the hillside, and the blue sky, and watched an eagle coasting on the warm wind. He could probably see all the way to the sea, to the islands shining in the sunlit waves, to Eacha—
    “Margaret McNabb, are you listening?” her mother demanded.
    “Of course. We were speaking of hair,” Megan murmured. She thought of the old tale Arran McNabb had told her about the lassie with the lovely hair, and how she used it as a silken snare to capture her true love and rescue him from the arms of a false lass.
    “We’ve gone on to dancing,” Alanna murmured.
    “Monsieur Le Valle arrived yesterday,” Devorguilla said. “He will teach you to dance. Miss Carruthers will ensure you speak proper English, and know English manners.”
    “But surely Caroline can teach us that,” Megan said.
    Devorguilla frowned. “I would prefer to oversee your instruction myself. Caroline is married to your brother now, and busy with Glenlorne.”
    “She made me promise to write to her every day—I’m to write in English, and she will reply in Gaelic, so we both learn,” Sorcha said, but Devorguilla ignored her.
    “Are there other rules, Mama?” Alanna asked.
    “We will speak together in English,” Devorguilla said. “And we will dine on English food. I have hired an English cook, and an English butler. Your future English husbands will want to know you can rule over their household with proper grace and dignity.”
    English . Megan had grown to hate the very word in the two days they’d been at Dundrummie.
    Would a Scottish husband not expect the same dignity and grace in his wife? Megan knew better than to ask the question aloud. She glanced out the window again, watched the clouds crest the hills and disappear over the other side. Her heart was here, in the Highlands, and no English lord would ever win her away.
    Of that, Lady Megan McNabb was very certain.

 
C HAPTER F OUR
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    K it woke with a start as something heavy was dropped on the floor above his bed, and a trickle of dust fell on his face. Well, not his bed —he’d made do with the aged settee in the study of Turnstone Abbey. The rest of the house was uninhabitable, in various stages of being torn down or built up, plastered, painted, or bricked over. He could not walk from one room to another without ducking under scaffolding and Holland cloth.
    He wiped a hand over his face and glared up at the ceiling. He hoped his mother, brother, and sister were all quite comfortable in his homes. He hunched deeper into the blanket, rescued from his coach late last night.
    “Mornin’ milord,” said a cheerful worker as he carried a box past the settee, as if it was not an extraordinary thing to find an earl sleeping rough. He hadn’t bothered to knock, but then the doors had been removed to facilitate moving the furniture into this part of the house, and there was nothing to knock on.
    “What’s that?” Kit asked, his eyes on the man’s burden. He was about to place the box on the floor, amid the rest of the abbey’s displaced treasures. Paintings leaned against the walls, statues huddled in corners, and tables and cabinets and desks from all over the house were piled high with books and trays, barrels and boxes.
    Those boxes were inlaid with ivory, silver, and mother-of-pearl. This one was plain battered leather.
    The workman looked down at it. “This? We found it upstairs in the attic, my lord. In the suite of rooms that overlooks the garden. We’re taking the ceiling down today. It had to be moved.”
    Kit rose and came forward, wearing the