Heir of Danger by Alix Rickloff Read Free Book Online

if it were any of his concern why she wore the pendant. Leave it to Brendan to assume she carried a
tendre
for him after all these years. That she wore the pendant as some sort of memento to a lost love. Just showed what a conceited, arrogant, vain, ridiculous man he was.
    Still some small corner of her worried that Brendan was right. Was she fickle? Did her continuing to wear his pendant signify something she wouldn’t even admit to herself? No. It was absurd. Brendan meant nothing to her, and his pendant even less. She’d prove it. She’d wear Gordon’s necklace tonight. Make a great display of its opulence and expense.
    Much heartened by her decision, she listened with equanimity to Fanny’s recital of her last visit to Dublin. “We had dinner no less than three times at Dublin Castle. Once with the Viceroy himself.”
    Her children’s superior intelligence. “Not yet four and little Bernard is reading.”
    And the bargain she’d haggled on the last gown she’d had made. “Ten yards of beaded brocade for four and six. I couldn’t pass it by.”
    It took turning into the iron gates at Belfoyle to breakinto her cousin’s monologue. And only long enough for her to draw breath and declare as they crested the final hill to view Belfoyle’s tangle of towers and battlements. “What a great heap! It must cost a fortune to heat.”
    Elisabeth had always loved the ancient stronghold of Belfoyle. It seemed to drift among the fog-shrouded cliff tops like a fairy castle. And the Douglas family had seemed like kings and queens. The old Lord Kilronan’s imperious dignity, his wife’s ethereal beauty. Their children, no less regal than their parents. Aidan’s confidence, Sabrina’s quiet gentility, and Brendan’s smug charm. She’d counted the days until she could be one of them. As if marrying into the family would make her brighter, smarter, more clever.
    With the old earl’s terrifying murder and his wife’s death following, that glittering future had shattered. Aidan had withdrawn to a hermit-like existence, Sabrina had departed for the sanctuary of the order of
bandraoi
priestesses, and Brendan—
    Brendan had vanished. The implications and accusations of his disappearance swirling round both Belfoyle and Dun Eyre for months following.
    Now he was home. A lit fuse. A primed pistol.
    It only remained to be seen how many innocent casualties he took with him when he blew.
    The courier arrived just after sunset. A bloody sky cast the walls of the study in crimson light and crawling shadows as Oss showed the man in.
    Máelodor offered no food or drink. Nor asked after the state of the roads or of the man’s health. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, heaving his false leg onto an ottoman toease the pain, steepling his fingers as he regarded this latest messenger from Ireland.
    He felt the man’s discomfort in his shuttered sidelong glances at the glassy, expressionless features of Oss, the wetting of his red lips, and the destruction of his hat, which he scrunched in his hairy, sausage hands but made no move to ease his tension. He fed off the apprehension and thrilled to the fear. It had always been thus. And as his body’s strength waned, it became all the more important to cultivate men’s terror of him. It served to bind them to him when all other enticements failed.
    “You’ve news?”
    “Aye, Great One. Men in Cashell spotted Douglas heading west toward Limerick.”
    “I knew it. The stone is hidden at Dun Eyre. Just as his father’s diary hinted. Did they lay hands on Douglas?”
    “No. He evaded them.”
    “Never matter. It’s the Sh’vad Tual that’s important. Once we have it in our possession, Douglas will follow. I’m certain of it.”
    “And if the stone is hidden? The estate is a large one.”
    “The woman will know where it is.” He directed the full power of his gaze onto the messenger, a taste of what failure brought as its reward. “She will be made to reveal it.”
    Well