Free Dreamer (Highland Treasure Trilogy) by May McGoldrick, Nicole Cody, Jan Coffey, Nikoo McGoldrick, James McGoldrick

you’ll give me a few more moments, I’ll come up with more.”
    Catherine’s hands were fisted at
her sides, but she forced them open, laying them flat on the bedclothes as she
tried to calm her temper. “M’lady, I still...”
    “‘Tis you, child! Don’t you understand?
You are the one I’m thinking of, now!” Lady Anne untangled one hand from her
rosary and reached over, placing it on Catherine’s. “You! The one with no
dowry. The one whose home now belongs to that baboon, Henry of England. You,
lass, the one with a price on her head!”
    Lady Anne motioned toward the cup,
and Catherine brought it again to her lips.  The old woman began to take a sip,
then curled up her lip in distaste and pushed the cup away.
    “I want you to tell me what
cardinal, what bishop...what lowly curate even...will go for you to the pope?
None that I know. I’m telling you, Catherine, you wouldn’t be able to get even
a poor-mouthed friar, his bony arse showing through a threadbare robe, to take
such a frivolous document to Rome.”
    “Everything you say, about my
family, my worth...‘tis true for one who is in search of a husband.” Catherine
heard the sound of her voice rising in the stuffy room, but she had no desire
to restrain it. She would get her point across, if she had to shout it from the
towers. “But the truth is that I have no need for one and never wanted one. I
have always desired a life of study, and I would be quite prepared to retire to
some convent if I cannot open a school, as my mother wrote to you and the earl.
So even if what you say is true--about no one being willing to carry my request
to Rome--I shall still defy your son’s wishes. I shall never be a wife.
If I have to lock myself in that chamber that you’ve assigned me until the Lord
sees fit to take my spirit, I’ll stay there until the earl of Athol forgets he
even made that horrible mistake.”
    There was that rasping, airless
sound again. That mortifying croak of a laugh no doubt intended to make
Catherine feel a bit insecure in her position.
    “Well, my dear. You are in for a lesson,
and it won’t be in Greek, I’m quite certain. But it will surely prove more
useful to you than anything the Ancients have to teach you.”
    “And may I ask what this lesson
might be?”
    As Catherine stared at the dowager,
the older woman’s eyes glistened with a light that suddenly made her look much
younger in age. “Nay, lass, you may not ask anything more. Now be on your way,
and send those useless women back.”
    Lady Anne closed her eyes,
dismissing Catherine, who turned away from the bed. As she crossed the chamber,
she considered the dowager’s last words. She was almost to the door when the
raspy voice again cut through the darkness.
    “Catherine!”
    “Aye, m’lady?”
    “I take back what I said before.
You may do, after all!”

CHAPTER 6
     
    He knew it. It was just a matter of
perseverance.
    John Stewart watched his bride slip
quietly into the darkened Great Hall. She would not see him sitting in the
shadows by the wall, he was quite certain of that. Only the flickering light of
the dying fire behind the dais illuminated the Hall, and he smiled as she
directed a quick and somewhat nervous glance toward the empty laird’s seat. 
Two dozen men were sleeping on the benches, but none even stirred when one of
the dogs lifted his head and growled at the intruder before yawning and laying
his head down again.
    She turned and hurried into the
passage leading toward the kitchens.
    Well, she would find little to
sustain her there, Athol thought. He’d made certain of that earlier, directing
the cook and the steward to lock away everything after the meal was cleared
from the long trestle tables. And she was not to be fed. That had been his
command. If she did not find his company--or for that matter, the company of
his people--good enough to join them down in the Hall for meals, then she could
damn well starve.
    He’d arrived at Balvenie