Soon enough and too soon, Elspeth sat in a gig beside Struan as they went carefully along the muddy road. He drew on the reins as the coach slowed as it approached. James leaned out to speak to the driver, who stopped as well.
“Good afternoon, Angus MacKimmie!” he called. “And Mrs. MacKimmie! How nice to see you so soon.”
The housekeeper, seated in the coach with a maidservant, leaned forward. “My lord, aye, we’re back. Our daughter has enough help, and with your guests arriving next week, we thought we would be needed here more. This is Annie MacLeod, who is one of our maidservants at Struan. Good day, Miss MacArthur,” she added, nodding, looking a bit startled to see her.
“Mrs. MacKimmie,” Elspeth said, feeling a hot blush. “Lord Struan was just taking me to Kilcrennan,” she went on in a rush.
“Aye,” James said, without offering an explanation. Elspeth sensed the housekeeper bursting to know, her eyes flickering from the viscount to her.
“How are the roads, Angus?” James asked.
“Not very good, sir, depending on where you go. Over to Kilcrennan, you may have some trouble at the bridge.” He peered toward Elspeth. “Good afternoon, Miss MacArthur,” he said, tipping his hat.
“Miss MacArthur had a bit of a mishap and is unable to walk home as she intended,” James said. “I have offered to drive her.”
“Oh dear, lass, are ye hurt?” Mrs. MacKimmie asked. “How good of you, sir.”
“There’s mud gushing doon the hills to swamp the road in some places,” MacKimmie said, “and trees down here and there. The auld stone bridge is nearly washed over. I wouldna go that way, sir.”
Elspeth sat silent as James thanked the ghillie, and when waving farewell, she felt a sense of relief as they rumbled forward. “Thank you for telling them little.”
“No need to explain,” he replied, “nor will they ask, I think.”
“The MacKimmies are good-hearted souls. But Willie Buchanan and the kirk minister will let everyone know our business.”
“I am sure secrets do not stay that way for long in a small glen.”
“The fairies keep their secrets. Humans have a bit more trouble with it.”
“I think you have a few secrets yourself,” he murmured.
“As do you.”
“Have you not sniffed them all out with your Highland powers?”
She lifted her chin. “Everyone but you takes me at my word.”
“I am a cautious sort. Now, I have a question for you.”
“I will not marry you.”
“I only want to ask when you might be able to assist me with my grandmother’s book.”
She looked at him from under her bonnet rim. “When would you like?”
His keen, quick glance told her all his thoughts. Immediately, she saw. He needed her—he wanted her. She caught her breath, feeling the urge herself.
She could refuse his marriage offer, but his request that she work with him meant that she could be near him a little longer. “I could come any day,” she said.
“Excellent. This is Thursday. I will fetch you Monday, how would that be?”
She nodded, heart pounding. “What about your guests?”
“They will arrive next week, but I still intend to work on Grandmother’s papers. I am not touring about with them. I need to complete the work quickly.”
“And then you will go back to Edinburgh?”
“I have lectures to prepare, and other matters to see to, so aye.”
She bounced on the seat as the gig hit a rut. James murmured about the poor roads as he guided horse and vehicle around an upward curve in the road, pausing the gig at the top. The descent looked steep, the road marred by runnels of mud. Drizzle and mist dampened Elspeth’s bonnet, plaid shawl, the lap robe tucked around her, and James’s hat and coat. The road seemed slippery under the wheels, the fog thick.
He slapped the reins, pulled the brake a bit, and guided the horse downward in silence, focused and capable. Elspeth gripped the side support and hung on.
“Devilish weather,” he muttered. “I have yet to see full sunlight. There has been mist, rain, and the deluge of the Apocalypse ever since I arrived. Perhaps your wee fairies brought us together when they sent you down a mudslide into my arms,” he drawled, “but they could give us some sunshine now.”
“They did not arrange the poor weather.” Yet she frowned. Had they? Her grandfather had always encouraged her to see meaning in everything around her. Nothing was as simple as it seemed, Donal MacArthur often insisted.
Ahead, she glimpsed the old bridge through the mist. As they rounded a difficult descending curve, James concentrated on his task and Elspeth watched the water, rushing and foamy, just ahead as the gig approached the bridge.
“Stop!” she cried out, placing her hand on his arm. “The water is too high!”
He drew hard on the reins. “Wait here,” he told her, and leaped to the road.
Not about to wait, she climbed down herself, lifting her skirt hems out of the mud to follow him toward where the bridge spanned a gorge. Her boot heels sank in mud, her walking impeded by her stiff ankle. Her skirt snagged on gorse and she tugged it free, soon joining James at the edge of the wide, heavily flowing stream.
The wooden bridge spanned a gap of twenty feet or so, the stone pylons embedded in earth and rock. The stream gushed through and lapped at the sides of the arched bridge, water splashing over the planks. The stream was the color of milky tea.
“Careful, Ellie,” James murmured in a distracted tone, taking her elbow. His use of the shorter name that her grandfather sometimes used grabbed at her heart. She set her gloved hand on his arm, glad for his strength and sureness.
“The burn is rarely this high,” she said. “Once or twice I remember seeing it like this.” Along the sides of the gorge, tree roots and bracken thrust up out of the water, and fallen branches swept by in the fast current.
Placing his gloved hand over hers, James stepped back a safe pace and took her with him. “Is there another place to cross?”
“There’s a level place two miles or so that way, at the head of the gorge. But the burn is very wide there and one must step from rock to rock to cross. There is no bridge. It heads us the other direction, and would make the journey even longer.”
“We have little choice unless we return to Struan House and wait for the water to subside. Is there no other access?”
“Not close by. Some people jump the gap,” she said. “Downstream there’s a leap, where one side of the gorge is higher than the other.” She pointed in the other direction.
He laughed. “I will not chance that, and you should not either, though I would not be surprised if you have given it a go in the past.”
“Intuition, sir?” she asked, amused.
“Logic, Miss MacArthur, knowing you.” He inclined his head.
She smiled. Learning more about him with each moment, she knew there was true warmth and heart beneath his cool exterior and staunch skepticism. “True, I did try the Leap with friends when I was younger. They made it, but I fell. I could make it now, I think, now that I am taller.”
“And not very tall at that. Out of the question.”
She remembered his leg. “Of course,” she murmured.
“You have a turned ankle, and what of our horse and gig?”
“Perhaps we could walk the horse over the bridge.”
“Possibly.” James went forward to step tentatively on the bridge, jumping up and down to test its soundness, then walking toward the middle.
Elspeth heard the low groan of wood and iron. “No, stop!”
He moved back to the grass. “It might hold, but the water could wash over at any moment. We must go upstream to cross, or return to Struan.”
“The bridge will hold for me. I can get across from here. You return to Struan with the horse and gig. You need not escort me all the way home.” She did not want to say farewell yet, but did not want him to take any risk for her.
“The viscount keeps you alone at Struan, and then tosses you out of his gig to walk home on a poor ankle over an unsafe bridge? My girl, they write ballads about cruel lovers like that,” he said. “Your grandfather would be after me to hang me.”
Lover, she thought, thrilled at the casual way he said it, accepted it. “He would bring a reverend, not a rope.”
“Which one would be worse, to Miss MacArthur’s thinking?”
She did not answer, walking back to the gig beside him. He lifted her inside, his grip firm on her waist, then leaped up and took the reins to turn the placid mare. He guided the horse along the earthen track beside the gorge in the direction of the other crossing. Below, the water rushed and brimmed nearly to its sodden banks.
Soon the sides of the gorge disappeared to flatten into moorland, and Elspeth saw then that the run-off had flooded the grassy, rocky meadow to either side. “There is a place to cross on foot,” she told James. “The rocks are flat and it is usually easy to walk across. But the water is too high for that now.”
James stopped the horse. “I see it. But it is not an easy hop and step across just now. If we come closer to the banks, our wheels will bog.”
She nodded. The burn had overflowed to create a swampy area to either side, and the crossing rocks were mostly submerged under swift, brownish water.
“How deep do you think it is over there? Are there sizeable rocks?” He pointed downstream.
“Not very rocky, and not very deep usually, but far more than that now.”
“I think the gig can make it across. If the horse will not falter, we will do all right. Hold on.” He set the horse forward before Elspeth could protest.
Under his skilled and certain hands, the horse plodded on carefully, pulling the rattling gig steadily across the boggy ground. Elspeth clung to the seat, grabbing James’s sleeve occasionally for fear of bouncing out.
Then they were fording the burn, the horse moving through the flow, the gig following. Elspeth gasped at the swirl and rush of the current but tried to be calm.
“We will be fine,” James assured her. Within moments, the water swirled to the hubs, then nearly the tops, of the wheels, splashing over James’s boots and soaking Elspeth’s hem.
“Turn back,” she said, clutching the seat.
“Do not fret, lass.” He slapped the reins gently to encourage the horse as it stepped through the surge. Water sluiced over the floorboards. Elspeth shrieked.
Halfway across, the horse paused, pulled, paused. The wheels seemed stuck, the gig shuddering in the current. Water slopped higher, wetting Elspeth’s shoes and skirts, sloshing over Struan’s boots. The horse pulled again, whinnied, stopped.
“Stay here,” Struan said, and stepped down into water that surged around his legs. The tail of his frock coat floated behind him as he surged ahead and took the horse’s bridle. He spoke quietly, patting the mare’s nose, then moved forward, the horse following. Within moments, the gig lurched free.
Elspeth drew her legs up to the seat as muddy water washed over the floorboards. The horse gave a hesitant whicker but plowed steadily onward in response to the man, whose calm and caution emanated a sense of safety. Elspeth breathed out slowly as the vehicle, horse, and man moved ahead.
Holding the bridle, James guided the horse carefully, only once slipping in the swirling water, soaked to his chest, his hat tipping off as he rose up. Elspeth leaned down and snatched up the hat as it swirled past.
Finally the gig surged out of the water, wheels and body dripping, to roll onto the bank with a lurch. James sloshed back and climbed inside.
“Well done,” Elspeth said. “Your hat, sir.”
“Thank you.” He placed it on his wet hair, water running from its brim. Elspeth laughed, wringing out her skirts.
“Kilcrennan is that way,” she said, and pointed northward.
“There is something to be said for funding new roads and bridges here,” said Struan, as the dripping gig rolled along the rutted, muddy road.
“As laird of Struan, you do not have to wait for the Crown to fix the roads if you have the funds for your own estate. They are very slow about such things in the remote Highlands.”
“I imagine so.” He was quiet the rest of the way to Kilcrennan. Chilled and damp, Elspeth wondered what to tell her grandfather when the time came.