The Devil Wears Tartan Read Online Free

clock.
    He carried on a rambling discourse as they walked, detailing the history of Ambrose. Davina would have much preferred that he speak about her husband-to-be, but a stern look from her aunt kept her silent and biddable.
    This, then, was the true price of scandal: to be forced into doing something she didn’t wish to do because of a few moments of ill-chosen behavior.
    “This corridor was once part of the Great Hall,” he intoned in a voice that rasped like a dry husk, “rumored to have been a meeting place for the clans before the ’45.”
    She caught a glimpse of the fabled Great Hall as they passed. Claymores, broadswords, and dirks were mounted on the buttressed walls. The gray flagstones were worn in spots, the majority of them covered with a Persian rug of muted colors.
    On the sideboard were a dozen pewter frames, each surrounding miniatures of those whose time had passed. Grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts, all bore witness to the strength of the familial link: the broad forehead, high cheekbones, and thin nose were echoed in each successive face.
    The walls of the corridor were not covered in weapons but full-length portraits of the earl’s ancestors, some in court garb, a few dressed for hunting, the requisite hound at the subject’s feet and a brace of hares slung over an aristocratic shoulder.
    She stopped and studied one, startled not only by the family resemblance between the portraits but by the overwhelming sense of command from all these long-dead ancestors. They looked as if they were comfortable with command, with the sense of themselves. Handsome men, and not a little autocratic. Scots, withmore than their share of pride and stubbornness. No doubt imbued with a belief in the continuance of what had gone before, and a certain smug acceptance in the permanency of the Ross family.
    “Miss,” the majordomo said, impatience etched on his features.
    She nodded and followed him, avoiding her aunt’s look. All too soon they were escorted to the chapel and then whisked into an anteroom.
    Was the earl such a hideous creature that everyone was worried she would bolt if she inadvertently saw him before the wedding? Despite all her thoughts of being brave on this most terrifying of days, she didn’t have the courage to broach the question to her aunt.
    What if the answer was yes?

Chapter 4
    T his chapel was an addition to the older part of Ambrose, added when his ancestors had unexpectedly become aware that there was a God and His name wasn’t Ross. The room was small and slightly off-kilter. The wooden floorboards were warped, and tilted at an angle from the arched door to the stained glass windows on the outer wall. The ceiling and the walls had recently been repainted in a blinding white, but the pews dated back two centuries or more, their scarred wooden surfaces now covered in crimson velvet.
    The ceiling sagged a bit in places; the gouge in the wooden floor had been made when a drunken laird had put a sword through the boards during the funeral of his son; the small hole under the window was caused by dry rot, repaired of course, but a bane to all five-hundred-year-old homes. Over the past twenty years, restoration efforts had prevented the further crumbling of bricks on the chapel’s exterior.
    Behind the altar was a stained glass window, depicting not a religious scene but a strange figure resembling a lizard. His mother had always likened theimage to St. George battling the dragon, but his father had countered that it was probably the Fuath, a legendary water spirit with yellow hair and a tail, attired in green and possessing an evil nature. The window was either a wordless challenge to God in His own house, or a message to all worshippers that God can even protect the Ross family from the unnatural.
    Would God protect Davina McLaren from the Devil of Ambrose?
    His bride was late, Marshall had been informed, a fact that, strangely enough, didn’t seem to concern him overmuch.
    He