Read Online Border Fire by Amanda Scott - Free Book Online

had herself under control again.
    Hugh could stir her emotions like no one else. He enjoyed wielding power over her. Indeed, he probably enjoyed it the more knowing that she resented his male authority to order her about. She knew that if her parents had lived, her attitude might be different, and that she might even accept her lot the way other women did. She could not know one way or another, however, for her parents had not survived her early childhood. She barely remembered them. What she remembered most was their voices—one soft, the other booming loud like Hugh’s.
    Remembering that booming voice now, she decided that she probably had answered her own question. Hugh was his father’s son, after all. The late Sir Harold Graham probably would have beaten any rebellious daughter into proper submission to her God-ordained lot in life. That Hugh had not been able to do it was no evidence that Sir Harold must also have failed. Her mother’s portrait over one of the hall fireplaces depicted a pale, pretty woman with downcast eyes. That should be proof enough of Sir Harold’s domineering ways. She could not imagine allowing anyone to paint her own portrait to display such waxen meekness.
    Since glass was prohibitively expensive, the only window in the chamber was unglazed. Nevertheless, its shutters stood open to the wintry outside air in order to admit light. Walking across the stone floor to look out, she stared at the gathering gloom. The wall below formed part of the castle’s curtain wall, joining with the new stone wall of the stockade that Hugh had finished the previous year. Windows on the floors below were no more than arrow slits, but the one where she stood was nearly two feet wide and arched gracefully at the top. She felt the cold, standing there, but the wonderful view calmed her as it always did.
    The sun was low in the sky, but the days were growing steadily longer. To the east, still aglow in the waning light, the landscape formed a patchwork of sun-gilded, snow-dappled farmland set against rolling hills, dotted with isolated farms and hamlets with stone- or slate-roofed cottages. Narrow stone bridges crossed fast-running becks that divided vast, snowy fields punctured from below by coarse dark grass and by the reeds and rushes of scattered bogs.
    Moaning, ever-present wind blew out of the west, sculpting the trees into queer, surrealistic shapes. In the distance she saw a shepherd striding across a field with his flock, and as always, watching his dogs work the sheep stirred a brief fascination. They darted, dropped low, then darted again, moving the muddy sheep as quickly as they would go, driving them from whatever pasturage they had managed to find to the shelter of their pens. The sheep were reluctant, but the dogs urged them on, needing to get them to safety before the increasing chill turned wet ground to treacherous ice. It occurred to her then that ice would force Hugh to travel more slowly than usual when he returned from Bewcastle late that night.
    Gray and white predominated everywhere she looked, but soon spring would visit the Borders again, and wildflowers would paint the rolling landscape with color. Rabbie Redcloak would never see the flowers, though. He would be dead.
    She rubbed her hands together, suddenly aware of their icy chill; but rubbing did no good, for the chill had spread to the rest of her. Remembering the way the reiver had made her feel, the way her body had warmed to his lightest touch, she wondered what it would be like to have him touch more than just her fingertips.
    Unfamiliar, surprisingly erotic feelings stirred deep within her, in places that she had not known could stir so.
    Looking over her shoulder, fearing that such wantonness might somehow reveal itself to a watcher, she saw only the cold, empty bedchamber. She had known that she was alone, of course, and had looked only because her guilt at such wicked thoughts had momentarily overwhelmed common sense. In the