Free FLAME ACROSS THE HIGHLANDS by Katherine Vickery Page A

through her cloak of dark hair, Jeanne giggled.  "But I'll make certain Alastair doesna pine long.  Aye, that I will."  She sauntered off with a toss of her head and a swish of her long woolen skirts.
    "Marry a MacLeod?"  Glenna  worriedly tossed her head.  Brianna had made a sacrifice, had given up her own freedom so that Glenna could follow her heart.  She would not allow her sister to have made such a gesture in vain.  She would marry Alastair or be damned for a coward.  "It will be Alastair," she murmured, feeling a sense of urgency rise like a tide within her.  Oh where was Brianna?  How she needed her wisdom, her advice.  Looking around for her , she saw to her dismay that her sister was nowhere to be found.  Indeed it seemed the pattern of the day lately that Brianna was spending a good deal of time by herself.  She would have to use her own intuition then.
    Glenna would have liked to wait until Alastair made the first move in the matter of arranging a marriage , but now Jeanne's words sparked a recklessness in her heart that she had never felt before.  Laughing softly, she thought that perhaps when it came to important matters she might not be so very different from Brianna after all. Her hands began to tremble at the thought that she must be the one to initiate the wooing.  She must encourage the bard to ask her father for her hand now, before another decision was made as to her mating.  Lachlan would be preoccupied with matters of Brianna's nuptials and might very well be manageable.  Hopefully she would find that to be so, for though Brianna withstood his rages with a smile, Glenna always trembled.
    Crossing her fingers for luck, Glenna crossed the hall in silent strides, coming up behind Alastair before cautio n could take hold of her mind. With a nod of her head and a quirk of her brow she artfully spelled out her message so that none in the hall was any the wiser, that she wanted to meet with him by the old gnarled oak tree.  Would he?  Could he?  The smile that he gave he answered yes.
    Wind whipped at Glenna's hair, sending the strands flying about her shoulders as she stepped out the door.  Carefully she adjusted her arasaid , a long length of material draped  around the waist, and covering her head like a shawl. Making her way to the appointed place of the rendezvous, she tried to calm the rapid beat of her heart.  A tight stirring in the pit of her stomach coiled at the very thought of what she was about.  How should she bring up the subject? What should she say?  How should she act?  Just how did a woman instigate a proposal of marriage?  Oh, if only for just one moment in time she could become Brianna.  Brianna would have little trouble.  She would merely say bluntly what was on her mind, come right to the point.  Why then shouldn't she?  Over and over again she rehearsed in her mind just what words she would utter.
    "Glenna!"  His voice startled her, for she had not seen nor heard his footstep as he approached.  Now that he was here she wondered if she had been foolish in supposing that matters of the heart could be so simple. What if she was wrong? What if he did not feel for her what she felt for him?  Her fears were dispelled as he took her hand.
    "Alastair....."  Depite her heart's prodding, words failed her and all she could do was to look into the depths of his sea-blue eyes.  Nervously she tugged at the fabric of her blue arisaid .  Alastair pulled it down, leaving her hair to blow wildly in the wind.
    "I like yer hair flying free as it is, unplaited."  The warmth of his fingers gently caressed her hand.  "Ye look bonnie wi' the fury of the breeze stirrin' the flame.  It makes me wish...."  His voice was low and held the same rippling  baritone as when he sang.  "It makes me long for things I canna have..."
    "What things, Alastair?"  Somehow she found her voice, but it came out in a croaked whisper.
    "You..."  He shook his head, pulling his hand away as