Read Online Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero by Anya Karin - Free Book Online Page A

laughter. Someone new , he thought, someone
come to join our little band?
    “Gavin!” Red Ben Black’s voice boomed through the
room and took Gavin off guard. “I thought you’d got lost out on your walk!”
    “Didn’t expect to see you, Ben.” Gavin said with a
smile.
    “Call me Red. Me wife does, and I’ve got used to
it.” He laughed again and slapped himself on the belly before drinking an
entire mug of the tavern’s thick, black beer in one go. “Good,” he said,
dragging the back of his hand across his lips.
    “Red Ben here has come to give us some news that I
thought you’d find interesting.”
    “Oh? Why’s he drinking beer?”
    “His preference, friend. I offered him real
drink.” John held the bottle with two fingers, and poured the amber fire into
Gavin’s hardened clay cup.
    “Red Ben Black,” Gavin said. “What can we do for
you?”
    “Well,” the big man said, “you know how I said
that the lord of the manor had gone north to Fort Mary to fetch his bride? He’s
come back. Or rather, is on the way back. The house got a missive from him this
morning informing us to have a – I quote – sufficient banquet – end quote – for
him upon his return, which should be tonight. Assuming, of course, his lordship
doesn’t break his carriage again.”
    “How would that happen?” John said as he grabbed a
haunch of unidentified burned meat. “Roads aren’t that bad between the Lochs
and here.”
    “They are when you’re as wide as Laird Macdonald,”
Red laughed. “But listen boys, we should go.”
    “Go? Where?” Gavin sat down and took a drink. “I
just got here.”
    “Aye, but there’s something you’ll want to see.
Get up! No time to explain. Oh, and Gavin? Here.” Red Ben tossed a bundle of
something that Gavin grabbed out of the air.
    “What’s this?”
    “We’re going to a party, aren’t we?”
    “Are we?”
    Ben pursed his lips. “Suppose I didn’t tell you
that bit, ah?”
    “Suppose you didn’t.”
    “Well you seemed so interested in the lass that I
thought you might like to see her. And anyway, Macdonald is a nasty, cruel man,
the sort that could stand a chopping down.”
    A grin spread across Gavin’s face.
    “Oh wait, wait, no, no, no, Gavin!” John said.
“You can’t be taking this seriously. You’re going to a party at the house of a man
you just robbed? Twice?”
    “We,” he said. “We just robbed.”
    “Right, of course, that’s what I meant. This is insanity.”
    “And not just me.”
    Gavin grabbed the wadded up fabric and stood. He
stretched it out and held it up in front of John.
    “Do you have another of these for John? I think
he’d look just wonderful wrapped in some of that Macdonald red and green, don’t
you?” He made his hands into a square frame and laughed.
    “Aye, I do. But you’ll both need to be ready. I
doubt getting in will be as easy as it was when the house was empty. You’ll
have to at least be clean enough to pass for nobility.”
    The three men nodded to one another, threw back their
drinks, and gathered their things.
    Red Ben stepped in front of the other two men in
the doorway and turned back to them. “One more thing, Gavin,” he said.
    “We’re to run all the way there?”
    “No, no,” the big man laughed. “Although it might
be just as bad. After tonight, I’m leaving Macdonald’s employ. Tired of the
abuse. Instead, I’m your new man.”
    Gavin and Two-fingers exchanged a couple of cocked
eyebrows.
    “You’re sure about that?” Gavin said. “It’s a
dangerous road we travel. And you’ve got Alice and the children-”
    “Alice,” Red Ben said, “is more dangerous than
Macdonald could ever manage to be.”

Chapter Six
    ––––––––
    K enna’s morning was a jumble of arriving at Laird
Macdonald’s estate in Kilroyston, slightly north of Edinburgh, and almost
immediately being shoved off on the Sheriff, who was to show her around town,
as the carriage rumbled down the rutted