The Black Knave by PATRICIA POTTER Read Free Book Online Page B

pledge meant nothing.
    But then why would he make it? He held all the power. He’d accurately described her position.
    Her hand clutched at her skirt. If only she could have stood beside her brothers on the battlefield. That was true courage.
    Her mind went over the man she’d just left. She could tell little about him with that ridiculous wig. His eyes, though, had been hazel. Or had they? They had been chameleon, the color changing with the subtle variations of light. But they had been cold eyes. She knew that. Cold and emotionless. He had made it clear that his only interest in her was the wealth she could bring him.
    Almost blindly, she stumbled toward the steps. She was completely trapped. At least he said he wouldn’t force himself upon her. Or was that just a lie to make her more malleable? To keep her from fleeing before the ceremony? She had hoped against hope that she could find something worthy in her husband. But there had been nothing. Nothing at all. Not strength, or character, or humor, or understanding.
    “Angus,” she whispered desperately. “I need you.”
    Her wedding day was as cold and bleak and heartless as she’d known it was going to be.
    Despite the number of guests, she soon realized her husband was not held in high regard by either his own clan or the visitors.
    How was she ever going to get through the mockery of a ceremony?
    She had never been so lonely, and so alone.
    Trilby tried to cheer her up. She’d placed flowers in the room, and had chattered endlessly about “powerful folk” attending the wedding.
    “The lord is handsome,” the maid said hopefully, as she smoothed out the silk of Bethia’s dress.
    Handsome ? He did not wear a beard as so many Scots did, but she had been unable to see much under the disdain and vacuousness he had displayed that day of their … interview. Mayhap his features were physically pleasing, but she’d been taught long ago that character created beauty, and this man obviously had little of the former.
    Coward . She had heard that word expressed several times. His clansmen didn’t even seem to care if anyone listened. He’d apparently disappeared during the battle at Culloden, only to appear much later with a slight wound.
    Gambler . He had lost fortunes, according to the whispers.
    Womanizer . He often visited some woman in the woods near the stream that ran through the property. Stayed for days doing God only knew what. Some even said the woman was a witch.
    Husband . That was the worst description of all.
    She also had learned in the week she’d been at Braemoor that his hereditary position of laird was in danger. The only thing that held the clan to him was his ownership of their lands, and they could do nothing about that. The grumbling was loud, however, and bitterness strong.
    She understood why, too, as she listened to Trilby. The late marquis had started to move crofters from Forbes’s lands, buying sheep and cattle to occupy what had been small farms. There had been hope that after the rebellion he would honor those clansmen who had fought with him and allow them to stay on the land.
    They had no such hope for the new marquis, who seemed interested only in his own pleasures. The fact that he’d seldom visited Braemoor before his father’s death reinforced their fears that he would be naught but an absentee landlord. Everyone expected the young marquis to drain his lands of the people who had farmed it for centuries.
    Rory Forbes had done nothing to allay their fears. Instead, he disappeared for days at a time.
    And now all his efforts had apparently gone into providing a great feast—at great expense—for their wedding.
    Three hundred guests or more had made themselves at home in the great hall and endless chambers at Braemoor. She’d heard their toasts and drunken laughter for the past two nights. She’d even had to avoid their overly active hands as she’d tried to move unnoticed the few times she had visited the spacious