Read Online Highland Seer by Willa Blair - Free Book Online

to his students, “help Miss Jenny with poor Micheil there while I go have a talk with Bram. And remember what I told ye.”
    “Aye,” came the soprano chorus as the lads scrambled from their seat to run to their prostrate clansman.
    Jenny smiled and followed them, hushing them when they started to tell Micheil he was “stupid to be angry.”
    Donal hoped Micheil still slept or he’d have worried the lads would make him angry again. But Jenny would settle them all down. She’d seen the trouble she’d caused and would not let more be started on her account.
    But this made twice in two days the Lathans had embarrassed the young MacKyrie warlord. Which wouldn’t sit well at all.
    On top of that, Micheil’s message had been clear. MacKyrie women were not to be trifled with. Donal worried lest his interest in Ellie become apparent—or hers in him. Then Micheil would likely start a brawl the likes of which the MacKyries hadn’t seen since before the massacre at Flodden killed off their fighting men. And the last thing Donal wanted to do was add to the carnage these people had already suffered.
    ****
    Standing by her high table seat in the great hall, Ellie MacKyrie looked down on the big men she’d called to her presence. She put on her best “Laird MacKyrie” face and glowered at the tops of their downturned heads.
    She’d remain on her feet for this meeting, hoping to accomplish with her elevated position and irritation what she could not with her own lesser height. Jamie, Donal, Bram, and Micheil stood, too. She would not give them leave to sit.
    She’d just come from Fergus’s sickbed. The old man hadn’t made as much progress toward recovery as fast as she’d hoped, so she was in no mood to deal with more trouble right now. “Brawling in my hall? This I willna tolerate.”
    “Lady, I’m sorry,” Jamie replied, contrite and lacking his usual cheerful demeanor.
    Surely he had given Bram a lecture fit to pin back his ears once he’d heard of the disturbance, and would not spare Donal the same for allowing the fight to go on—even as a lesson for some of the MacKyrie lads. Though it had been as clever an attempt to make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear as she’d ever seen, she had to put a stop to such displays in her hall.
    And Micheil. Had he lost all sense? Aye, she’d expressed her displeasure already, and thoroughly, too. She had no objections to the Lathans talking to the MacKyrie people, women included. Knowing Jenny as she did, Ellie suspected any flirting taking place had started with her, not that Ellie could blame her. These Lathans were a braw lot, big, muscular, and pleasing to look upon. Even Donal, the fiercest and most battle-scarred, who never failed to draw her eye. MacKyrie women would look upon them with favor even if they hadn’t already done the clan an important service. What would Micheil think of that? Now was certainly not the time to find out. Micheil so wished for the MacKyries to recover on their own, he looked for slights from every stranger.
    Well, perhaps he had given her an unlooked-for advantage. Jamie would feel he owed her something for the unseemly disturbance in her hall.
    Micheil stood before her, head down. How it must gall him to be shoulder-to-shoulder with these Lathans, facing her wrath, instead of at her side, lording over them.
    She forced back a smile of satisfaction. Aye, because of this, the Lathans’ sense of honor would demand they make amends. Jamie’s determination to get her signature on the treaty made her doubly certain her bargaining position had just gotten stronger.
    Donal picked that moment to look up and meet her gaze—squarely, with no hesitation in his light eyes. How like him, so sure of himself, never backing down. His dark blond hair gleamed in the rays of sunlight slanting through the clerestory windows high in the outer walls of the hall. But his eyes looked like chips of ice in winter. A chill ran down her back. Did they reflect