Read Online Enraptured by Candace Camp - Free Book Online

and collect these debts of yours. But you’d best not be here when I come back tomorrow. Understand?”
    â€œYes,” the other man said grudgingly. “I understand. I’m leaving.”
    Coll nodded and left. A faint smile touched his lips as behind him he heard MacRae slam his erstwhile weapon to the floor, cursing. Coll took the shortcut from the bridge to the ruins, but when he reached the cliffs, he was not surprised to find the place vacant. As that worm MacRae had pointed out, night was falling fast.
    Violet would be fine, Coll told himself as he climbed up to Duncally. She would remember the way they’d come this morning, and she’d have no qualms about setting out on her own. Surely she would not have tried to find the shorter trail through the woods on her own. Still, the knot in his chest loosened when he reached the kitchen at Duncally and learned that Lady Violet had already returned to the house.
    â€œShe had her tea and went up to her room,” Sally McEwan told him. “Are you wanting to see her? I could send Rose up to fetch her.”
    â€œNo. No. No need to bother her. I just wanted to make sure she’d had no trouble.”
    â€œI ken that one can handle most any trouble,” the plump, gregarious cook told him, grinning.
    â€œNo doubt you’re right.”
    â€œI warrant you could use a wee bite.” Sally steered him toward a stool at the kitchen table. “Sit yourself down, and I’ll fetch you something to eat.” She paused, tilting her head. “Unless maybe you’re coming back tonight to eat with her ladyship.”
    â€œNow, why would I be doing that? I’ve no interest in dining at the grand table.”
    â€œAnd no interest in sitting down with a bonny lass?” She quirked an eyebrow.
    â€œOch, Sally, you know I’ve got no eye for bonny lasses. How can I when my heart belongs to you?”
    â€œMore like your stomach, you mean.” She snorted, smiling as she bustled off.
    â€œSally, can you make a poultice for lumbago?” he asked as she set down a filled plate in front of him. “Graeme MacLeod came by this afternoon, wanting one for his grandda. Meg makes him something for it. She made up a few tinctures and such for me to give people, but not that.”
    â€œAye, I could do it if I knew what Meg uses. Do you have her recipe?”
    He shook his head. “I could look in her books. I’ll come back to look in the library tonight.” Later, after he’d had a chance to go home and clean up. Look a bit more civilizedin case he ran into Lady Violet. Not, of course, that that was likely. Not that it mattered.

    As it turned out, Coll waited too long. He could see as he approached Duncally that all the windows were dark. Doubtless Violet—and everyone else—had gone to bed. She had arisen with the birds, after all, and worked at the site all day. She’d be tired.
    He was quiet as he slipped in the side door and made his way to the library. He lit the oil lamps on the table, an imposing expanse of mahogany that would have dwarfed any room besides the cavernous library. The bookshelves lining the walls remained in shadow, the lamps providing only twin pools of light in the darkness.
    Coll didn’t mind. He preferred Duncally at night when its palatial proportions and ornamentation were decreased and softened by darkness. He felt at home in the library, where he often spent an evening. Though grander by far than the one he was used to at Baillannan, it carried the same comforting scents of old books, leather chairs, and burning lamps and offered the same alluring possibilities of hundreds of volumes.
    He strode to the glass-doored cabinet where Meg kept their grandmother’s journal and took it to the table to read, opening and turning its yellowed pages with care. It was all he and his sister had of their grandmother—indeed, of their grandfather as well, since he had given