The Highland Laird's Bride. Nicole Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ stood there incapable of comprehending his actions.

      Worse still, Dog, who never let prey escape, who should have attacked, abruptly sat, canted his head and stared as Bram eased himself through the trapdoor.

      She didn’t know what was more incredible. Her own inability to attack or Dog’s sudden meekness.

      No, she did know. The most incredulous moment was when Bram told her he’d see her today. He expected her to open the gates.

      She might not have attacked, but she wasn’t opening the gates today. His grating laughter had ensured that. If she could shut the gates more firmly, or again, and preferably right in his face, she would. At the idea, satisfaction coursed warmly within her.

      Desperate now to use the privy, she walked out of the room. Dog only lifted his head as he stared in her direction.

      She scowled at him. Bram had laughed, she had almost dropped the knife and Dog had sat.

      Since weaning him from a pup, he had been her friend and protector. More wild than tame, no one dared approach Dog. She’d always thought they had an understanding. She slept in the stables when it rained and outside when it didn’t. He’d never lost the wild side to him and she hadn’t either. But at the moment he canted his head, he had been no more than a weak, useless, domesticated dog.

      She leaned against the wall as dizziness overcame her. A well-fed dog at least, just like the rest of her clan. She ensured that. Or rather, Bram ensured that.

      He had reminded her that it was he who hunted and provided the food. He who discovered the secret tunnel, and her anger at that gave her the strength to stand straight.

      The tunnel was hers, maintained through sheer will. She told no one of it. When she was a child, there had been several of them, but time had passed and the residents either didn’t remember them or believed they had collapsed. But she had maintained one, had cleared and buttressed it for years. It was narrow and precarious, and a way of escaping from her punishments, from her family and what had become of them.

      Simply knowing the tunnel was there kept her calm. And now, with the siege, it allowed her to steal much-needed food. But she hadn’t been stealing. Bram had been leaving gifts.

      She should have known—she had known—but it was a bounty she hadn’t been able to ignore.

      In the darkest part of the night before last, she had left the tunnel to steal, only to find venison hanging in the tree closest to the tunnel. And underneath? A sack of cabbages and onions.

      Immediately, she had recognised it for the bait it was, but she had no caution as she cut it down. Caution didn’t matter when necessity did. Her clan was starving and, even while she resented it, she took the trap.

      So all day she looked over her shoulder, all night she kept herself dressed and pacing in her room. She thought of barricading the tunnel, but a mere day’s effort wouldn’t keep out a determined intruder and she didn’t want to bring attention to the tunnel.

      But she had vowed that would be the last time she stole food. Since it was their last stolen meal, she needed to feed the few people still in the keep; she needed to feed her brothers and sister. What she didn’t do was feed herself.

      It didn’t matter. She didn’t need her energy for much, since she was trapped inside with no way to roam. Trapped, and she knew who to blame for that as well.

      As she left the privy, Dog was waiting for her at the end of the narrow corridor. From there it was a short turn with a few stairs that led to the main Hall.

      She wished she could avoid the central room even though the Hall’s permanently rancid smell was weaker now, which was the siege’s only benefit.

      They had cleaned the keep when the gates were first barred. Old mouldy rushes, thrown bones and rotting food were swept clear to be thrown at the Colquhoun clansmen surrounding her home.

      But even without the old rushes and food, the Hall stank from the rotting wood and stones that hadn’t been scrubbed in years. When she was a child, the Hall had gleamed, the smells had been of home, of a time when her mother and father had been alive and happy. Now it held only mould, stains and regret.

      She resented that she was forced to stay in the keep, forced to walk through the Hall that mocked her childhood memories. Patting Dog’s head, she hurried outside to the low building that was the kitchens.

      Cook, making a soup from the venison and vegetables, gave a cautious, respectful smile.

      Ignored most of her life, Lioslath forced herself to nod a greeting in return. For over a month, her clan had treated her with loyalty, with...respect. Their tentative friendliness continued to startle her.

      It was difficult to change a lifetime of avoidance. With the siege, she was no longer left to roam free. She was forced to acknowledge her clan and her family. No. In truth, it was before the siege that she’d been forced to acknowledge her family...but she didn’t want to think about that now.

      As soon as Dog grabbed the generous bone from the preparation table, they exited out the back of the kitchens. Again, a change. Usually, this area was rife with rotting carcasses. But since the Colquhouns came, this area, too, had been swept.

      She didn’t take any pleasure in it, though. After meeting Bram last night, nothing today would bring her pleasure except his departure. He was all that she hated: conceited, arrogant, jovial.

      Regretting not plunging her blade into Bram’s heart when she’d had the chance, Lioslath walked to the platform that allowed her to see over the gates.

      The structure was a hastily erected disaster they ripped from her father’s stair extension. Stairs he ordered made, even though there were no walls, floor or ceiling to support them. Another impetuous folly of her father’s, just like his marriage to the Colquhoun’s sister.

      She felt the weight of her loss rise and settle in her chest. Her father was dead. It wasn’t the English knight who had killed him who bore the full brunt of her wrath. No, the man she hated above all had better be breaking his camp or she’d throw the first bucket of debris today.

      ‘You rise late again.’

      Lioslath stopped to face Aindreas, the hunter’s son. As usual, Aindreas’s appearance was marred by his thickly tangled brown hair.

      ‘Does it matter?’ she retorted. But it mattered to her; she had never woken late in her life.

      ‘You’re rising later and sleeping in the keep. You’re becoming a lady of leisure. Already the men and I cleared the debris into buckets. They are ready to throw on command. I also checked and reinforced the snares in the back, and re-limed the branches to catch the birds.’

      She snorted in derision, but she envied him his duties. They had given him a purpose. She felt lost in here. ‘You had to wake up early to do the snares because you’ve never been good at them.’

      ‘I’ve improved since we were five, and since you sleep late I’ll be a sight better than you the next time we hunt.’

      Hunting. It was what she lived for. In her childhood, Aindreas’s father, Niall, had been the chief hunter for the clan. When Lioslath’s father had remarried, her stepmother had prohibited her from staying and then sleeping in the keep. She’d followed СКАЧАТЬ