Clandara Read Online Free Page B

they embraced again, tenderly this time and a little afraid of themselves.
    â€œWhere’s that old servant of yours?” he asked her.
    â€œOver there by the bend in the loch road. It’s a miracle that he’s held his tongue about our meetings. Do you know he nearly shot you once when he saw you take me in your arms! He told me afterwards that he was just about to fire when he saw me reach up and kiss you and realized it was not taking place against my will! Poor old Angus. He’s very good and devoted and he’s so angry with me that he can hardly speak. Can I take him with me to Kincarrig?”
    â€œYou can take what servants you wish, my love. The household will be composed and run according to your pleasure. Come, we must walk back, the sun is nearly over the edge of the mountain there. It will be dark in half an hour.”
    They walked back holding hands, James helping her down the steeper part of the hillside until they came to the two horses which were placidly cropping at the stubbly grass.
    â€œMy darling.” He held both her hands and suddenly went down upon his knee before her. She stroked the black head which was bent over her hand.
    â€œPray that all will go well with us tomorrow. Pray that God will help us to gain our happiness.”
    â€œI will pray,” he promised her. “I haven’t spoken the name of God except to swear by it since I was a child at my mother’s knee. But I’ll pray tonight as never before. Now mount up, Katharine my love. And farewell until tomorrow!”
    â€œGo to the courtyard and see if that’s James returned!”
    The old man sitting in his chair by the open fireplace in the Great Hall of Dundrenan had been listening for the sound of a horse for the past hour. His grey head was thrust round the tall back of the oak chair and he scowled at the servant who ran to obey him.
    Sir Alexander Macdonald was nearly seventy; he was short and thickset, with powerful arms and a trunk like a wrestler. Even at his age, he could break a man’s back if once he managed to lock him. As a young man he had been feared and hated by his enemies and loved by his own clansmen, for there was no one like him in a fight. When James Stuart, the rightful King of Scotland, returned from exile in France and tried to wrest his throne back from the English in the rising of 1715, Alexander of Dundrenan had dragged his men away from their fields and their cattle and ridden out to do battle. He was fortunate in suffering no more than a heavy fine for his part in the Rebellion, for along with his courage he possessed a high degree of cunning, and he had made useful friends among the Scots who governed on behalf of England. While other men lost their heads and their estates Dundrenan remained safe, and its chief confined his activities to harassing the Frasers. But he had never forgiven or forgotten the money he had been forced to pay to bribe his way out of a charge of treason. If he hated anything as much as he hated the Clan Fraser and its chief, he hated King George II of England and the English.
    â€œâ€™Tis the master himself, lord.”
    â€œTell him to come straight to me,” the old man snapped and settled back in his chair.
    His eyes were not black like his son’s; they were a peculiar colour, almost the same yellow as the agates he wore in his dagger hilt, and they had earned him the nickname of “The Lion”. There was an ugly light in them as he waited for his son. Sir Alexander knew where he had gone.
    When he heard James’s step on the stone floor he did not look up or move. He stayed motionless until his son’s shadow fell upon him and then he raised his eyes and glared at him and said slowly: “Come back, are ye? Fresh from courting, I suppose.”
    â€œYou may suppose what you please,” James’s answer snapped back at him. “If you’ve a mind to repeat your insults of last night, I have no