Read Online The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) by R. L. Syme - Free Book Online Page A

short and glanced down the river banks toward the road. He could see tiny gaps in the light covering of trees that were undoubtedly cut for the road, or where the road was placed around their already existing scarcity. Apart from small copses, the landscape was almost bare, brown and barren from the edge of winter.
    There was an inn, he recalled, at the road fork just outside Lowich. Perhaps if he could find a traveller, he would be able to verify at least some of the story the Sheriff had told him.
    He steered his horse left and followed the river to the road, stopping at a nice, flat inlet to allow his horse a good drink. The poor animal had been ridden hard for most of the morning and deserved a refresh.
    From the inlet, Aedan could see the road, just where the river curved back in on itself and went alongside the road for a bit, before jogging back. There was a slow-moving cart pulled by a squat ox, with a farmer walking beside. Something covered well in the back of the cart would no doubt provide a good living for the man and his family.
    Aedan wondered what that would be like. To have a living, a place of his own which would provide the sustenance or substance of his life. Instead of killing, instead of chasing, instead of belonging to another. He could imagine himself taking up land rental and working with his hands.
    It wouldn’t be quick enough work to make the one hundred pounds he needed, but once Brighde was seen after, perhaps.
    He re-mounted his horse and rode for the road. Once on the smoothed dirt surface of the road, he no longer had to take quite so much care for his horse, and set about taking in all his surroundings.
    A ways ahead was the slow-moving farmer with his ox cart. Farther ahead even galloped a pair of men who could have been soldiers. Aedan took a deep breath. While soldiers wouldn’t mean complete detention from his trip, they would likely question him, a Scot, being so far into England without business he could discuss. If they did not leave him to his work, Aedan had only to mention the Sheriff’s name and they would likely allow him to pass, but he couldn’t take that chance.
    In a few minutes, he’d come upon the old farmer and the man steered his cart farther to the side of the narrow road, giving Aedan a worried look.
    “Excuse me, sir.” Aedan’s English carried the heavy Scotch burr, just like all his countrymen, but he tried to soften it as much as he could, to engender the trust he needed.
    “Be on your way, boy.” The man was old, gray-haired and wrinkled, but not weak. He stood straight and proud as he walked. He wasn’t afraid of Aedan, just wary.
    “Allow me to introduce myself.” Aedan inclined his head. “I am Aedan of Donne, son of Randall, tenth Baron of Wall, of Scotland.”
    “I don’t care who y’be.” The man slowed and Aedan’s horse, holding his pace, walked right past him. “Now, on with you.”
    “I just need a moment of your time.”
    The man pulled a knife and the blade flashed in the sunlight. “Don’t make me use this, boy.”
    “I promise, I only have a question.”
    Warily, the man replaced his knife. He continued to slow his pace so that Aedan had to pull up his horse in order to keep any sort of consistent speed with the man. “Ask away, then. And don’t you unseat from that horse.”
    Aedan held up both hands, his reins in his left hand. When he did so, he turned fully to the man and the hair that usually covered the left side of his face fell back, out of his eye. Undoubtedly, he feared, revealing the whole of his scar to the man. Or at least as much as was vis ible before it disappeared down his neck.
    The man recoiled. “Good God in heaven, what is that?”
    Aedan pulled his hair back down the side of his face, covering the scar and half his vision. He tried to smile, but the man jumped around the head of his animal and shielded himself with the hulk of the beast.
    “I promise, I mean you no harm.” Aedan pulled more hair over