The Last Wolf in Scotland E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

"near the ancient Scots Pine, a remnant of the great Mirkwood, that dense Caledonian Forest that once strode these lands, he passed the wolf stone, a large irregular granite boulder where the inscription told of the death of the last wolf in Scotland. Here under the description of the kill was a more modern inscription in Gaelic with the translation below.
,
"Though you may take my life, the spirit of my she-wolf still runs on the land of the Mackenzie."


"and there she stood, striking as ever in white lace.
As she walked before him into the library, he unknowingly followed a scent trail of Eau De Forêt. Her housecoat clung to her, revealing her shapely figure, her hair lay loosely on her shoulders. As she turned to let him past into the library he brushed against her, sensing the heat from her body"

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

The Last Wolf in Scotland

"the problem with being the last wolf is that you have no pack and you are unable to bring down large prey, unless, that is, you are exceedingly cunning. Finding a mate is also nigh impossible" BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

The Last Wolf in Scotland

“The problem with being the last wolf is that you have no pack and you are unable therefore to bring down large prey, unless you are exceedingly cunning.

Finding a mate is also nigh impossible.”

He stood like a Highland bull, large, contemplative, stoic, equipped with horns for dangers that were no longer there. Wolves, after all, were exterminated in Scotland in the sixteenth century.

For him, though, there were dangers - relationship dangers.

Lady Ylfa Mackenzie of Strath Roy House for one. Rich, elegant, divorced. He was beginning to find out why. She had just called him, demanding that he visit her.

A robin sang in a nearby birch. He cast his eyes over the farmland to his left, then beyond, over the Wildwood Spinney to the gap in the headlands where the inlet of the Cromarty Firth cut in, then widened into an estuary. The Black Isle was on its far side and just visible, as a strip by that shore, was the little town of Cromarty.

He looked at the sky. The clouds said snow and the air was beginning to dry as it does just before a fall.

The cattle in the field behind him had spaced themselves out and were sitting down.

He continued to walk steadily along the drove road - to his right was the forest; here stood birches, and at regular intervals beeches, planted by a long gone laird. Behind these edge trees were Sitka spruce. Near the ancient Scots Pine, a remnant of the great Mirkwood, that dense Caledonian Forest that once strode these lands, he passed the wolf stone, a large irregular granite boulder where the inscription told of the death of the last wolf in Scotland. Here, under the description of the kill was a more modern inscription in Gaelic with the translation below,

“Though you may take my life, the spirit of my she-wolf still runs on the land of the Mackenzie.”

He pushed on. Brown water, added to by rivulets from off the hill, ran freely in the ditch. Gorse still green, and broom, with its raggedy black seed pods, clumped together on his left side, close in to the old, bouldered boundary wall.

There were no large birds amongst these trees. Small ones, blue tits, coal tits, the robin, all flitted through the slender birch branches calling in trills and cheeps to each other. No sign of deer, nor of fox or otter or pine marten. They were here, somewhere, curled in their dens, awaiting the darkness. Fear of man had made them wary. From the scrub woodland beyond the farmland, a cock pheasant barked out its alarm call.

The footprints in the wet grassy track before him told of a horse, of the walking boots of men, and of dogs.

He looked up.

There was a stillness in the air. Below him, just a field away, smoke curled up, then down, from a farm chimney. He quickened his pace. The track dropped into a dell; here were more beeches, the ground thick with their once golden leaves, some still clinging, in their colour, to fine twigs that branched from smooth muscular limbs.