Amanda Scott by Highland Spirits Read Free Book Online

the lass and bend her to my will?”
    MacKellar smiled. “Nay then, sir. The lass will learn what’s good for her soon enough.”
    Sir Renfrew chuckled. “I wouldna mind if it takes a bit o’ time. I enjoy a challenge, MacKellar. I’ll most likely enjoy it more than the wee lassie will.”
    His smile fading, MacKellar said, “Aye, sir, ye will that.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    London
    T HANKS TO THE STATE of the roads throughout Scotland and northern England after weeks of intermittent rain, the party from Balcardane took nearly three weeks to reach London. A retinue of servants riding saddle horses accompanied three heavy traveling carriages bearing Balcardane’s coat of arms elegantly painted on their doors. Pinkie occupied the lead carriage with the countess and Lady Agnes, along with Chuff and the earl on those occasions when the men chose not to ride their horses. The children followed in the second carriage with their nurse and a nursemaid; while the ladies’ personal maids and the men’s valets followed in the third with Fergus Owen, who would serve in London as the earl’s house steward.
    In addition to the three coachmen, others who accompanied the party included four grooms, three footmen, and several men-at-arms to protect them from the highwaymen and footpads for which English, and even Scottish, roads were infamous. Their baggage traveled ahead by wagon, accompanied by more armed outriders. The servants wore Balcardane’s green-and-gold livery, and the men-at-arms wore his colors and carried his banner. All in all, Pinkie decided, they must present as grand a sight as any royal procession.
    The earl and Chuff rode as frequently as they could, one or the other occasionally taking young Roddy up with him as a special treat.
    The earl had traveled to London twice before, but that afternoon everyone else got a first glimpse of the vast city from the top of Highgate Hill, after the lead carriage had passed through an ancient low-arched brick gateway so narrow that but for their coachmen’s skill one or another of the carriages must have scraped its sides. Because there were buildings in the way, their view was not as panoramic as it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, they saw a sprawling metropolis much larger than Pinkie had dared to imagine, and they could see the River Thames to the south, like a silver ribbon binding the city in place.
    Long before the party clattered onto London’s cobbled streets, people had turned out to watch their passing, and the closer they drew to the metropolis, the larger the crowds seemed to be. This was especially true in the village of Islington, which, with all the activity surrounding its passenger and mail coaches, was as bustling a place as any Pinkie had yet seen. The road to that point was not paved, and the horses’ hooves and wheels of passing coaches flung muck all about, so that the ladies had long since put up the glass, and even when they reached the city’s cobblestones, they felt no immediate inclination to let it down again.
    At first, Pinkie thought that the crowded streets in London were the result of curiosity similar to what they had met before. Then she realized that although many did turn heads to watch them pass, just as many paid them no heed. The packed footways were marked off from the roadway by posts clearly intended to mark a boundary for pedestrians, but doorsteps to shops and houses jutted into the footway, making it necessary for the pedestrians to step frequently into the road. And there the rapidly moving vehicles seemed utterly to ignore them.
    Pinkie thought the city resembled nothing so much as a giant, noisy anthill. Carts, wagons, coaches, and pedestrians bustled everywhere along the wide road and the narrower ones intersecting with it, into courts and yards and alleys that twisted away through narrowing and widening lanes into rectangular pockets that seemed to have no outlets. She saw buildings that rose to heights of four, five, and