The Border Trilogy Read Online Free Page B

to her father or to anyone else. Douglas and the others having obviously failed in their efforts to save the Scottish queen, the incidents at Critchfield now seemed remote and her knowledge, in view of the manner by which it had been obtained, somehow a thing better left unmentioned.
    Her social life dimmed during the fierce winter months and was slow to improve even when it began to look as though spring had not forgotten the highlands, because her father continued to insist that the roads were too treacherous for travel. Though Mary Kate found many pastimes to amuse her at home, she longed for the gaiety and excitement of the house parties; however, such treats were denied her until the latter end of April when a misunderstanding involving herself and the son of one of her father’s tenants finally caused big, gray-bearded Duncan MacPherson to change his mind about keeping his daughter close to home. Angrily he packed her off to visit her Murdoch cousins ten miles to the north, and since he sent her on her way with the ominous warning that she was not only to behave herself but also to put the thought of marrying anyone straight out of her head for the present time, it came as a profound shock to Mary Kate to be greeted upon her return with the news that Duncan himself had found her a husband.
    Being neither a tactful nor a diplomatic man, he blurted out his announcement less than half an hour after she entered the house. Though Mary Kate had changed from her traveling dress into a simple light-green woolen gown before joining him in the little parlor that had been her mother’s favorite room, she had not yet taken a seat, and upon hearing his words she went perfectly still, staring blankly at him, her hands tightly gripping each other at her waist. Although the room was lit by only two branches of candles and the dancing orange-gold flames in the small hooded fireplace, her pallor would have been noted by a more observant man.
    “I say I’ve found ye a husband, lass,” Duncan repeated more belligerently when she remained silent.
    “I heard you, Father.”
    “Is that all ye can say tae the purpose?”
    “I know not what to say,” she replied in a calm tone that surprised them both. “Not a fortnight since, in this very room, you declared that I was too young to be contemplating bridals, and now I find myself on the brink of betrothal. ’Tis enough to rob Demosthenes himself of speech.”
    “Aye,” he growled. “Trust ye tae fling me own words in my teeth. God’s wounds, daughter, surely ye niver believed I’d marry ye wi’ a farmer’s son! I thought a visit wi’ yon Murdochs would cure ye o’ such foolishness.”
    She lifted her chin. “Since I’d never had the least notion that Robin MacLeod wished to wed with me, I never thought about it at all. I do not love Robbie as I would wish to love my husband.”
    “Love’s got naught tae do wi’ marriage. Such thinkin’s nobbut rubbish. And, by the rood, ye’ll no find a finer match than this one I’ve made ye, look ye how hard.”
    “You speak as though I am already a spinster, Father, although I am not yet a hopeless case by any means. I shall no doubt meet a host of good and proper gentlemen in June when my Aunt Aberfoyle takes me to Edinburgh.”
    “Weel, ye’ll no be going tae Edinburgh,” he stated on a note of triumph. She understood his tone if not his reasoning, for his sister Sarah, Lady Aberfoyle, had ever been a thorn in Duncan’s side when it came to his daughter’s upbringing. But Mary Kate had no time to reflect upon the matter, for Duncan went on at once. “Have I no said I’ve accepted the mon’s offer? I’ve given Sir Adam me word, lass.”
    She had a sudden, swift vision of herself looking up into a pair of impudent brown eyes, a vision that was followed by a kaleidoscope of even more vivid, albeit less welcome mental pictures that caused her to regard her parent with no little dismay. He could not mean what she began to