Rose In Scotland Read Online Free

out his strategy, meticulously plotting each action he would take. In his years in the king’s service he had picked up much of English law from watching his commanding officers, and he knew that if he hoped to even win the court’s ear, he would first needthe aid of a powerful patron. A galling prospect to be sure, but however much it stung his pride, he accepted it nonetheless. Fortunately for him he had just such a patron in his pocket, and upon reflection, he decided it just might be the thing to stop in Bath on his way to London.
    It was approaching evening when Hugh rode into Edinburgh, and he was astonished anew how much it had altered in the years of his absence. The area below the castle, which he remembered as being fields filled with flowers and grazing sheep, was now abuzz with construction, and everywhere he looked he saw evidence of new buildings being put up. The style was much like he had seen in London, all cream-colored stone and elegant wrought iron, and he thought it looked as out of place against the fields of Scotland as a wild Highlander would look in the overheated salons of London or Paris.
    His aunt’s home was the tumbledown wreck he recalled from his days at university, and he felt a wave of nostalgia as he gazed up at the soot-blackened bricks and glass. The creaky butler who answered his knock was another relic from his youth, and he was every bit as dour and disapproving as Hugh remembered.
    “So, it’s home ye’ve decided to come, is it?” he demanded, his faded hazel eyes glaring up at Hugh. “About time, I should think. Ye need to be after keeping an eye on that sister of yours, before she disgraces us all with her hoydenish ways. The mistress tries, but she’s no’ a match for that one.”
    “Are my aunt and sister at home, Gregors?” he asked, trying not to be too alarmed at thegloomy admonishment. The old butler had strong Presbyterian sensibilities, and had once pronounced Hugh on the road to perdition merely because he’d befriended a young Catholic from Ireland who was a student at the university.
    “The mistress is upstairs resting,” Gregors informed him, removing Hugh’s rain-dampened cape with a flourish. “And that devil’s she-cub is the Lord knows where. She doesna tell me where she goes these days, and more’s the mercy, I say.”
    Hugh ignored that, hoping Gregors was but exaggerating. “I would like to see my aunt, if you would be so good as to tell her I am here,” he said coolly, adopting the aloof tone he had heard in his officers’ voices—the tone of master to servant, even as the shells burst over their heads and the air was screaming with bullets.
    Gregors’s thin lips twitched in derision. “Suit yerself, lad,” he said, clearly unimpressed. “But she’ll be in a rare taking, I’m warning ye. Ye know where the drawing room is; take yerself there and I’ll inform Mrs. Sinclair ye’re here.”
    The drawing room was small and dark, furnished with faded pieces that had seen better years—better decades, Hugh amended, shifting as a spring in the sagging settee came into painful contact with his buttock. Looking about him, he would almost have thought his aunt a poor widow but one step from the almshouse. Tight as the devil’s breeches, was Aunt Egidia.
    He cast the darkened fireplace a thoughtful look, and was considering ringing the maid for a bit of coal for the fire when his aunt made herentrance. As he expected, she was already lecturing him.
    “ ’Tis amazed I find myself you’ve even remembered this address,” she said, studying him regally over her great beak of a nose. “Fourteen years gone, and not a word from you did I have. Well, lad, what have you to say for yourself? And speak up, my hearing is not what it was.”
    Hugh opened his mouth to apologize but suddenly he was gathering her up in his arms, depositing a kiss on her cheek as he whirled her in a circle. “Ah, Aunt Egidia, I’ve missed you!” he said, laughing as he