Fairy Tale by Jillian Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

“She’s no exactly laughing with pleasure either.”
    Cook’s face fell like one of her egg souffles. “That’s a bad sign then.”
    “He’s ridin’ her horse too,” Johnnie added, clucking his tongue.
    “That’s the worst sign,” Cook said grimly. “It can only mean the wee bastard is every bit as wicked as the day his puir papa sent him off to the wars. A lion canna change his stripes, I always say.”
    “He doesna look at all like a good-natured man,” Johnnie was forced to agree, handing the spyglass back to Suisan, who was fairly dancing with impatience for another look at the MacElgin. “To think he hasn’t seen the worst of it yet. He’ll no be pleased.”
     
     
    A knife-throwing contest was well under way by the time Duncan penetrated the middle bailey. In the confusion—the drinking, the cheering, the furious betting—no one paid much attention to the lone horseman who approached, his face a dark mask of displeasure at the evidence of total disorder.
    A buxom blonde serving wench, blindfolded and with an apple on her head, stood flattened against the dog-kennel door, knives whizzing toward her with a careless accuracy that chilled Duncan’s blood. Before he could interrupt the sport, a band of scruffy-looking boys and girls came charging at him from the direction of the dovecote.
    He grinned unwillingly at the innocence of their play, the toy crossbows and arrows they aimed straight at his heart. Then from the corn er of his eye, he saw Marsali streak past him as if running for her life, his clothes and sword clutched like a shield to her chest. An arrow sailed over his head. That was when he realized that the little buggers charging at him with Indian war whoops were armed to the teeth with real weapons. He spurred the horse into a canter toward the safety of the stables, reaching Marsali’s side and swooping her up across his lap. She landed rump first on his massive thighs. He caught her in a crushing grip and rode with his arm clamped around her ribcage as if their lives depended on it. Which they possibly did.
    “Thank you,” she said breathlessly, wriggling to wedge a position for herself between his legs. Duncan’s body stiffened at the not unpleasant intrusion of her bottom squashed against his groin. “Children will play their games, won’t they?”
    “Those aren’t children, Marsali,” he said tersely. “They’re undersized monsters with murder in their ugly wee hearts.”
    She dared to lean back against his chest, feeling protected by his strength as another arrow whizzed over their heads. “Everything is going to change now that you’re here, isn’t it?” she called up in a hopeful voice.
    “Yes,” he said, and he frowned at the flicker of doubt that entered his mind.
    He slowed the mare to enter the stables, surprised that it at least appeared to receive regular attention. A startled undergroom tumbled out of his bed loft to take the horse.
    Duncan nudged Marsali off his lap, watching her drop to the ground as agile as a cat.
    “How did the ambush go, Marsali?” the young boy asked excitedly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Did ye humiliate the bastard?”
    Marsali cleared her throat, trying to avoid Duncan’s sharp gaze as he dismounted. “Well, we tried our best, Martin. But sometimes the best of plans go awry. The worst ones apparently do too.”
    His red hair sticking up in tufts at various angles from his head, Martin looked over shrewdly at Duncan. “So I see,” he said, his voice low and curious. “Is this the bas—is he the captain, Marsali?”
    “This is Duncan MacElgin, Martin,” she explained solemnly, lowering her awkward bundle to the floor. “He is our new laird and chieftain. I humiliated him on the moor, and now he’s going to make an example of me.”
    The raw-boned boy, a few years younger than Marsali, stared at Duncan in suspicious silence as if she had just introduced him to the Devil. It was clear he’d made the association in his