Mistress Mackintosh and the Shaw Wretch by Rose Prendeville EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Rose Prendeville
- Language: English
- Genre: Scottish Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
MOY, INVERNESS-SHIRE, 1725
Jory hoisted her skirts and clambered onto the slick stone embrasure,
looking out across Loch Moy. The autumn air was brisk, scented with
forest musk: hints of pine and moss and freedom. If she jumped from
this height, she could probably clear the island, but how far would
she plunge before thrusting back to the surface? How deep was the loch?
And, fettered by the trappings of feminine fashion, could she really make it
to dry land on the other side? Would even a stronger swimmer make it,
weighted down by skirts and stays?
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The stays, at least, she could do something about. And the skirts, for
that matter. If she was going to break with her family and leave propriety
behind, she might as well do it in her shift. Better that than being bartered
or sold off to whatever horrid clansman her uncle would find to take her off
his hands.
She huffed at that. She could take herself off his hands, no man
required. Hadn’t she proven so, earning the better part of her dowry by
herself? But still, he thought it his sworn duty to find someone to take her
off his hands, and he’d been telling her as much since the day she stabbed a
Gordon at the age of thirteen.
At least if she left now, whilst everyone was distracted in the Hall, she
could make her way home to Inverness and collect her dowry before he had
a chance to promise it away. How much might her uncle offer, above and
beyond what was hers, with two daughters of his own still to wed?
Jory took a deep breath to settle her nerves and then was start led by a
flash of movement as a rider galloped towards Castle Moy.
They took the guards by surprise, the Clydesdale’s hooves thundering
across the bridge like rumbling war drums. The soldiers raised their swords
defensively, and the rider slowed enough to flash his clan badge, so they
stepped back and allowed him into the bailey yard unimpeded. In one, fluid
leap he dismounted, tossed the reins to a stable lad, and then charged into
the keep without a backward glance
Only once he disappeared inside did Jory dare to breathe.
Moments later his boots slapped the bastion stairs, and then he stepped
out onto the parapet and stopped, as though Jory were a doe he didn’t want
to frighten away.
“Feasgar math,” he gasped.
She blinked and burst out laughing.
“Is it? A good afternoon?” Jory asked him. “One would think not, and
you riding up like the hounds of hell were at your heels.”
He must have known she’d observed his arrival, but her reminder
brought a pleasing flush to the tips of his ears even as a shadow fell across
his moss-colored eyes.
“Come down from there at once,” he ordered.
Jory turned back to face the forest across the loch.
She’d recognized him immediately—not when he startled her nearly
into slipping as he barreled across the bridge, but the moment she saw him
on the battlements—Finlay Shaw, the younger brother of the Tordarroch.
For half a moment she thought, disgraced in battle or not, if he was the
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