The Duke by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page B

a soft magenta blossom and tucked it over her left ear. “I would offer ye one, Brandy, but it would fall out of yer skinny braids.”
    That was probably true, but Brandy held her tongue. She looked at the fluted turret, once the housing for the now rusted cannons that lay in a heap, forgotten, in the grass-filled moat. She fancied she could hear the strident call of the bagpipes, daring the enemy to approach. She remembered the oft-repeated ballad of the Earl of Huntly, whispered by Marta in her blurred singsong voice:
Wae be tae ye, Huntly
    And whaur hae ye been?
    They hae slain the Earl o’Moray
    And laid him on the green.
    She hummed softly, lost for a moment in a strangely romantic past. But it was, she thought, a past plundered and lost forever after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s bloody defeat. She remembered tales of the hatedDuke of Cumberland, the Englishman’s avenging devil. She stared hard at the proud old castle and a knot of anger grew in her stomach. Penderleigh Castle, her birthplace, her home, now belonged to another duke, another Englishman.
    â€œDo you hear the roar of the sea battering the rocks just behind the castle, Connie? All right, so you don’t. Did you say something?”
    â€œI said I saw Bertrand and Uncle Claude crossing from the dower house to the castle. Bertrand is such an old stick. Odd that he is so prissy prim when Uncle Claude is reputed to have tumbled many a young maid when he was young.”
    Brandy couldn’t imagine Uncle Claude tossing a rock, much less a maid. Surely she should try to convince her younger sister not to talk that way, but she knew it wouldn’t work.
    â€œHa, Brandy, ye don’t have to say anything. I know what ye’re thinking. Ye’re as prissy prim as Bertrand. What a perfect match ye two would make—both old, stuffy sticks. Why, in one winter ye’d bore each other to death.”
    There were some things a person just couldn’t let pass. She grinned at her sister, and even she had to admit to the touch of malice in her voice. “Bertrand old? He’s younger than Percy, ye know, Connie, by at least four years.”
    That brought a blink and a thankful pause, but it didn’t last. “Old is as old does,” Constance said, and tossed her lovely black hair.
    â€œWell, that certainly put Bertrand and me in our place,” Brandy said. She kept her head down, Fiona’s small, dirty hand held in hers. She struggled to understand her sister. It was as if Constance wanted to hurl herself into womanhood, to scoff at all the pursuits Brandy still held pleasurable and dear. She refused to go out in Brandy’s small boat to fish,turning up her nose at the strong fishy smell and deploring the sticky, damp sea spray on her gown. If attaining womanhood meant spending all one’s time on how one looked and openly flirting with the likes of Percy, she wanted none of it. She didn’t want it for Connie either. Perhaps it was just a phase she was going through. Maybe Brandy had gone through it too. Maybe it had been so short that she just didn’t remember it.
    She hunched her shoulders forward, pulling her shawl more closely about her. At least Constance didn’t have to worry about going through life with the deformity Brandy had to endure. She couldn’t even take deep breaths for fear of popping the buttons on her gowns. What a dreadful jest nature had played upon her—a skinny body supporting a cow-like bosom.
    She thought again of Percy, and found herself wondering why he looked at her with that disgusting, knowing look in his hooded eyes. There was certainly nothing about her appearance or her behavior to give him any encouragement. He was probably just bored here, and could find naught else to do but torment her in that loathsome way of his.
    Brandy looked up to see Fiona astride one of the old cannons, yelling at the top of her lungs, which had always been healthy, “Giddyup,