Plaid Tidings by Mia Marlowe

Author:Mia Marlowe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Highland
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

From The Knowledgeable Ladies’ Guide

to Eligible Gentlemen

Chapter Fourteen

It was a damned long night.

Mercifully, Lucinda wasn’t the sort to sob into the coverlet, though she moved restlessly every few minutes and pummeled her pillow into submission more than once. Eventually, she settled, but then her soft breathing was a different type of torment.

Alexander waited for dawn in the Tudor chair, not dropping off to sleep from sheer exhaustion till the darkest watch of the night. He woke with a sore back and a crick in his neck.

He cast a longing gaze at the still form in the bed, but there wasn’t a moment to waste. Escaping the bridal chamber before Lucinda stirred, he made for the kitchen where he took a cold breakfast, breaking all sorts of protocol by eating alongside the help. News of the middle-of-the-night wedding had spread through the Dalkeith gossip mill, quick as a case of the measles. Alexander was treated to stifled giggles and knowing looks from the staff while he pumped the servants for information about Bonniebroch. The Master of Horse seemed the likeliest source of reliable information since he traveled often in search of new stock to keep up the palace’s herd.

“I understand the steward of Bonniebroch is here at Dalkeith,” Alexander said between sips of surprisingly good coffee. It was black and hot and stout enough to cause new hairs to sprout on his chest. “Callum Farquhar by name. Have you seen him?”

The horseman scratched his wire-haired pate. “Dinna know as I have. There be a powerful lot of new folk here the now, both above and below stairs. I mighta met the fellow and no’ known it, but I’ll leave him know ye wish to speak with him an’ I see him.”

“I haven’t time to wait.” One night of sharing a chamber with his new wife was all he could bear. “I need to get to Bonniebroch and I haven’t found anyone who can tell me where it lies.”

Farquhar had tried during their strange conversation, waxing poetic about hills and rivers and declivities, but Alex had cut the man off.

“Weel, in truth, the castle isna so far. Ye can reach it in a long day’s travel,” the Master of Horse said before he crammed a bite of day-old bannock slathered with butter into his mouth and chewed noisily.

Alex lifted a surprised brow. No one had named Bonniebroch a castle before this. He revised his mental picture of the estate. “Castle, you say.”

“Och, aye. Broch being Gaelic for ‘tower,’ ye ken, and as for bonnie, weel, I’ll leave that to yer own judgment since beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, they do say.”

Bonniebroch might not be a croft with sheep on the roof, but a castle could still be a crumbling ruin. Better to keep his expectations low. “You’ve been there?”

“Nae, but there’s no’ many as goes that way, ye ken. The folk what lives in Bonniebroch keeps to themselves. There’s something a might queer about them. Only a few tradesmen venture up the River Tay to bring them goods and news from the outside.

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