Highland Wolf by Hannah Howell Read Free Book Online

afraid or even uneasy about entering any room in his own keep pricked at the rage he tried so hard to control. The fact that it had been a fortnight since he had arrived at Dunncraig and this was his first chance to get into the ledger room only added to his anger.
    Glancing around when he finally reached the door, he saw no one and quickly slipped into the room. Except for new tapestries and a thick rug, the room had changed very little from when he had used it, but there was no ignoring the luxury of those tapestries. The rug had also had to cost MacKay dearly, of that James had no doubt. He shook his head at those signs that MacKay was spending far too much money on his own comforts.
    Everything pointed to the fact that MacKay was bleeding Dunncraig dry. James had seen clear signs of it while he had stayed with Edmund and Ida. Big Marta had also complained about it. It made him almost reluctant to look at the ledgers, for he feared he would discover that MacKay had not only squeezed every coin he could out of the land and the people, but sunk Dunncraig deep into debt.
    Shaking off that sudden reluctance to know the whole ugly truth, James sat down at the worktable and began the tedious work of reading through the ledgers. As he read, he listened closely for any sound that would indicate someone approaching the room. It soon became clear that MacKay was doing exactly as James had feared he was. Worse, it appeared that MacKay was regularly raiding his neighbors, stealing what Dunncraig could easily have provided if the man had simply cared for the land, as a laird should. There would be a lot of work needed to soothe those neighboring clans when he regained Dunncraig.
    James found a small ledger tucked in amongst the larger ones that detailed the accounts. What he read in that small book chilled him to the bone. Edmund had had little news to offer on the fate of the men who had been loyal to James, but he had feared that only a few had survived the change in lairds. Edmund had been right to fear that. In MacKay’s crabbed handwriting James read the fates of his men. A few had managed to flee Dunncraig. The rest had been killed. Too many of those had been brutally tortured by MacKay, who sought information on where James may have fled. Along with that gruesome tally was a careful record of each and every person who lived at Dunncraig, on its lands, or in the village. The notations by each name told James that MacKay kept a close eye on every man, woman, and child he sought to rule.
    Anger and grief over the loss of so many good men blinded James to all else for a little while. It was the sound of someone slowly moving the door latch that pulled him free of that dark mire, awakening him to the danger he was in. He quickly closed the ledgers and moved away from the worktable as the door eased open. James readied himself to give a plausible reason for why he was in MacKay’s ledger room only to gape when Annora slipped into the room, backward. While she took one last careful look up and down the hallway before closing the door, he crept up behind her.
     
    Her heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears, Annora carefully closed the door. She breathed a big sigh of relief. The first step to uncovering the truth had beentaken. She had gotten into Donnell’s ledger room unseen. Now all she had to do was search it thoroughly and not get caught. Annora grimaced and wondered if her curiosity had finally led her into a trouble she would not be able to get out of.
    Stiffening her backbone, determined to find some answers to all the questions she had, she turned to go to Donnell’s worktable and found herself staring at a broad chest. In fact, her nose was lightly touching the coarse linen shirt covering that broad chest. The only clear thought she had was that it was not Donnell or Egan. It was certainly not one of the Chisholms. She would never be able to have her nose so close to one of them without her eyes watering from