The Rogues Read Online Free Page B

nights turn chill.”
    â€œIt’s nice,” I whispered, though to tell the truth, my head was now pounding so hard, I could see little of it. There were shelves set in the walls dotted with jars and a window high in the wall. The surprise was that there was glass in it, even in this humble room, which brought in a great shaft of light. At home we had only slits in the stone walls and divots of earth to jam in them when we needed to keep out the wind.
    Josie gave my hair a stroke, which set my fingers trembling, the way Lachlan did whenever he thought of the beautiful Fiona. I had to make two fists to stop them shaking. I don’t think Josie noticed. She was too busy being my nurse. Then she disappeared for a minute, returning with a basin of water and a linen cloth.
    I tried to sit up to look around, but Josie pushed me back down. Dipping the cloth in the water, she gently dabbed my wounded scalp. It stung a bit, but I was determined not to show any sign of the pain. I couldn’t have her think I was a softie, flinching at a wee dab.
    The shaft of light from the window poured down over her, setting up highlights in her hair and casting a sheen of gold over her cheek. She looked like an angel, which we’d heard about in the kirk.
    â€œYe belong in the big house, Miss Josie,” I said. “This crampit place is not what ye deserve.” Small it hardly was, compared with our croft, but I had seen the laird’s mansion many times when the old laird had held the clan games in his far fields. That is, I’d seen Kindarry House from the outside, never from the inside. Kindarry was twenty times the size of the Lodge.
    â€œIf this were but a pigsty, I’d still sooner live here than in Kindarry,” Josie said, a sudden sharpness in her voice.
    For the first time she dabbed my head hard enough to really hurt. I clenched my teeth and didn’t make a sound. It was my own fault for bringing up upsetting thoughts. Still, something needed saying, so when the sharpest pain had gone, I said, “Yer uncle Daniel is not an easy man to live with, even if ye dinna share his house.”
    Josie sighed. “There’ll be few enough people around these parts to object to his company before long.”
    â€œThe old laird would never have let any of this happen,” I said, remembering her father, Thomas McRoy. “Folk still gab about the day the English merchants first came to lease his land for their sheep.”
    â€œAye, on condition he threw the people off it first.”
    â€œHe was too straight a man for that,” I whispered, “too straight by far.”
    I heard her sigh again. “Thanks, young Roddy.”
    I sat up so we were face-to-face. “I’m nae trying to flatter ye. It’s the truth I’m speaking. All the crofters say it.”
    She smiled at me, still dabbing at my head, though very gently. The streaming light hung about her like a golden haze. “I’d be a liar if I said my father wasn’t tempted. There was enough money on offer that he could have spent the rest of his days living like a fine gentleman in a fancy house in Edinburgh. It was the clansmen coming to call that made the difference, that reminded him there are bonds between men stronger than anything money can buy.”
    Even with the pain, I had to smile back. She made the clansmen calling sound like a wee social visit. But I remembered how word had reached the villages that English merchants were coming to take the land for their sheep. And we’d heard enough tales of what had already been happening in villages in Ross and Sutherland to take alarm at the news. Da had raced from house to house with Lachlan and me hammering on the doors with him. And when we were done with our wee town, we rode out to the far glens with the news. Da had a dram of whisky at every house, and we’d had to carry him home across the horse’s back and not a stick of work done for two