Free The Maclean Groom by Kathleen Harrington

already did, simply because she was a Macdonald.
    â€œOch, the Nevilles never accepted her—Joanna being half-Scot and all,” Maude said at last. “They criticized her accent and her uninhibited ways. Even the servants were needlessly cruel. I once overheard an uppity chambermaid call my sweet lassie a mongrel behind her back. I boxed the nasty chit’s ears good for her, I did.”
    Intrigued, Rory sank down in the chair across from the ruddy-cheeked woman. “The Nevilles allowed this kind of treatment of their only granddaughter?”
    â€œJoanna’s grandparents were seldom at Allonby,” Maude explained. “The marquess remained in London until his failing health caused him to retire to the country. He died a few weeks later, and his wife returned to court, only to follow him very shortly to the grave.” She waved her hand in contemptuous dismissal. “Not much loss there. Neither one of ’em was worth a ha’pence, if you ask me.”
    Rory steepled his fingers, his elbows resting on the chair arms, and searched her perceptive gaze. The day the king of Scotland had commanded Rory to marry Joanna, he’d explained that George Neville, Marquess of Allonby, had been a trusted courtier in Henry Tudor’s court, and the marchioness a lady-in-waiting to the English queen.
    Rory motioned for Maude to go on.
    â€œLady Anne loved her daughter dearly,” she assured him, “but her ladyship was an invalid for the remaining years of her life. So the poor dear lassie grew up alone and pretty much forgotten.”
    â€œNo one saw to the future heiress’s training in deportment or the running of a household?” he asked in surprise.
    â€œMy faith. Joanna had tutors, right enough. Mean, pinch-faced men who’d rap her wee knuckles for the least mistake in her recitations.”
    â€œAnd did she make mistakes often?” he asked quietly, though his jaw tightened at the thought of anyone purposefully inflicting pain on the spirited lassie.
    â€œOften enough to reduce her to tears at the sight of them,” Maude replied, her eyes flashing with scorn. “Scholars. Hah! There was no pleasing any of those self-righteous hypocrites. ’Twas no wonder she’d sneak out to the stables, saddle her pony, and ride for hours through the countryside all by herself. The only solace she had was her daydreams and the stories I’d tell her in the evening just before she fell asleep. Mostly, she lived in a world of her own creation, filled with knights and their ladies fair and evil dragons needing to be vanquished.”
    â€œI see.”
    But he didn’t see at all. Knights. Dragons. Ladies fair . None of it made much sense. And Rory was, above all, a sensible man.
    Maude glanced over at the sheets of parchment spread across the library table. “Are you planning to make changes, laird?” she asked with the inherent aplomb of a trusted retainer.
    Drumming his fingers on the arms of his chair, Rory nodded absently. He’d imagined the Maid of Glencoe as a pampered Sassenach noblewoman, given everything her heart desired. The possibility that she’d been mistreated because of her Scottish blood hadn’t occurred to him. His lack of awareness pricked his conscience—he wasn’t generally that obtuse. He’d let the fact that she was a Macdonald overshadow everything else.
    â€œWas her maltreatment the reason Lady Joanna decided to return to Scotland when her mother died?” he questioned.
    Maude smiled reminiscently. “Bless us, milady didn’tmake that decision. ’Twas made for Joanna by her Uncle and Aunt Blithfield.”
    That surprised him. Usually relatives were anxious to hang on to an orphaned lass born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
    â€œThey sent the heiress back to Scotland?”
    â€œNot exactly.” Her gaze on the colorful basket in her lap, Maude smoothed her fingers over the balls of