At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle Book 3) by Laurel Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

much of him without remembering how he had also been present when the laird deflowered me. How he had watched, with lust in his eyes. How I had wondered if he would take a turn with me—not hating the idea, at the time. The memory made me blush, which caused my sister to misinterpret my embarrassment entirely. “Well, then I’ll say nothing against him, Heather. Is he a bad teacher? Does he bellow every time you get a word wrong?”
    I turned away. “He doesn’t love teaching me, but he’s been surprisingly patient. We’ve found together a love of books.”
    “ Books ,” Arabella said, dreamily.
    I sighed, too, for I loved them. Ever since I’d learned to read, I’d found great solace and escape in their pages. Books seemed to me a magical thing. Murmuring softly to myself as I puzzled out the words, I was sometimes transported to other times and places. Sometimes I marveled at the poetry of a phrase. Sometimes I learned things that I longed to put to use somehow.
    And I owed that, in part, to Ian Macrae.
      So I was feeling entirely charitable toward the man when I found him out in the wintry cold by the gate, where he had his sword drawn against two terrified villagers. “Out you go,” he barked at them. “And be glad you’re not being dumped over the walls into the cold loch.”
    At the sight of the villagers’ tear-streaked faces and the sound of these harsh words, I came to a dead stop, my hand curling around the jar. Ian couldn’t mean to send villagers out of the castle, defenseless against the enemy.  
    “T’was just a misunderstanding!” one of the villagers cried, and I could see that he was bleeding at the nose. “There’s bound to be brawling when tempers are so high.”
    “But it’s not the first time between you two, is it?” Ian snapped. “I warned you last time you took to each other that you’d be thrown out of the castle, and the cook now tells me that you broke her crockery and busted open a cask of wine.”
    “T’was an accident!” the other villager exclaimed, his beady eyes darting to me in desperation. “We’ll starve out there, or be beaten, or worse, lass. The laird wouldn’t want that for his people would he?”
    Before I could speak, Ian put the blade to the man’s throat. “Better you starve than all the law abiding folks inside these walls do. You made your choice to behave like ruffians, now this is the price. You can leave by the door or we can push you from the top of the walls—your choice.”
    “Ian!” I cried, the jar in my hand forgotten. I knew what the Donalds did to our people in the countryside. They’d held my own family hostage, kidnapped my sister and quite nearly raped her besides. “You can’t send them out there.”
    My laird’s warrior whipped his head around to glare at me, as if he couldn’t decide if I was merely a half-wit or a complete madwoman to interfere with him. “This is none of your affair, woman.”
    It wasn’t my place; of course it wasn’t. But my heart had started to pound in fear for the two villagers. “The laird has offered the clan his protection.”
    “Under his rules,” Ian barked. “These two can’t seem to abide by them. They’ll have to take their chances.”
    “You’re not the laird , Ian Macrae,” one of the villagers cried. “You can’t eject us. We want to talk to the Macrae!”
    Ian punched that one in the mouth, then put the blade to the throat of the other. “Well, you’re not going to. Out, you bastards, or I’ll run you through myself.”
    “Ian!” I cried again. And this earned me a look so ferocious that I retreated a step. Then I vowed, “I’m going to find the laird myself to put a stop to this.”
    I turned, hurrying as fast as I could back inside, searching for the man who ruled this castle and everyone in it, my fury rising more and more as I ran. Ian caught me in the hall, just before I started up the stairs to the tower.  
    Ian’s big hand closed over my forearm and