Free Amanda Scott by Highland Princess

her attention to his grace, but she had thought it would do him good to study patience.
    Turning to him now, she said with polite dignity, “I trust you find our meals to your liking, sir.”
    “They are excellent, my lady, as are his grace’s minstrels.”
    She had not heeded the minstrels, because they played wherever her father dined, but she glanced obediently at the little gallery halfway up the east wall. A narrow stairway in the wall led up to it, she knew, for as a child she had often sneaked up there to listen while her father and other men discussed kings and princes in faraway lands and wars that one or another wanted the Lord of the Isles to help him win. She did not approve of war, for although her father was not combatant, the politics of war often took him from home for long stretches of time.
    Niall Mackinnon had caught her eavesdropping once when she was eight or nine, and had spanked her soundly before bearing her to MacDonald and telling him what she had done. But although he had scolded her for slipping away from the women without permission and thus worrying a number of people, and had
not
scolded his high steward for her humiliating and painful punishment, MacDonald had always, patiently, answered her questions. He had also, in time, taught her to play chess, explaining that much of the game’s strategy imitated war.
    Realizing that Lachlan was sitting quietly now, watching her, she said, “Will you tell me the story now that your brother related to my parents?”
    “Another time, perhaps,” he said. “Your lady mother is nearly ready to depart, and I warrant you and the lady Elizabeth will go with her.”
    “Aye, but there is time enough for you to explain what you meant,” she said, mildly annoyed because a true gentleman would have complied with her request.
    He looked puzzled. “What I meant by what?”
    “Good sir, you know perfectly well. You said you are interested in marrying, and you said it in such a way that I’d have to be a noddy not to take your meaning. But surely you know that my father would never permit such a connection even were I to consent to it.”
    “Would you consent?”
    His gaze had intensified, and every fiber of her body threatened to betray her as she gazed back. It took enormous strength of mind to say calmly, “You must not ask me such a thing. ’Twould be most improper under any circumstance, but to ask when we know so little of each other . . . Faith, to ask me at all when neither you nor your father has approached mine. You step beyond all the bounds, sir.”
    “Aye, I do that, and often,” he said. “I have found it is the best way.”
    “The best way for what?”
    “To get what I want, of course. Necessity acknowledges no bounds.”
    Lady Margaret chose that moment to stand up, and Mairi, stunned by his casual attitude toward such an important topic, felt only gratitude that she need not continue the outrageous conversation. That she would have liked to continue it confused her, for she had never had such an experience before and knew not how to cope with it. Indeed, she had never known a man like Lachlan Lubanach and had no idea how to cope with him.
    He fascinated her at the same time that his behavior outraged and appalled her. Often had she heard troubadours sing of men who fell hopelessly in love in the face of all opposition, and rode off in triumph, the ladies of their desire riding pillion behind them. Mairi had long believed those tales to be apocryphal, for what possible end could such defiant couples meet but disaster.
    Obediently she returned with her mother and Elizabeth to the laird’s hall, knowing that MacDonald and his councilors, including the sons of Gillean, would be busy all afternoon with the business of the Council of the Isles. If her thoughts frequently slid away from her duties, she nonetheless performed them and did not protest when she learned that the family would take supper privately, for by then she was exhausted.