Scotland, Spring, 1823
Dougal MacGregor stopped short, and the girl following him stumbled against his shoulder. He took her arm in a clear signal that he intended to keep hold of her, having found her wandering his Highland property chipping away at rock—or whatever the devil she had been up to, for he had seen her with a customs officer, suspicious in itself. And he, the Laird of Kinloch, should especially avoid customs officers at the moment. Later he would let the lass go, once they had skirted the revenue men out searching for smugglers, and Kinloch high on their list. For now, he would have to take her with him.
Narrowing his eyes, sighting the king’s excise men riding along the loch road, he estimated them to be two miles away or so. Though he could see them, the mist and the folds of slope and rock would obscure their view of the man and woman coming down this hillside. They would not yet see the approaching cart, but the old vehicle’s creaking joints would soon be audible.
Keeping hold of the girl’s arm, Dougal ran with her toward the road.
“Let me go,” she said. “The officers will take me back to Mrs. MacIan’s house, where I am staying.”
“I will see you there myself. You would not be safe with revenue officers.”
“I am hardly safe with you,” she pointed out.
He whistled, a curlew’s soft trill, and the squeaking wheels slowed. His comrades knew his call. Dougal hurried down the slope with the girl in tow and headed for the cart as the vehicle rolled to a quiet halt in front of them, two men riding on the crossbench. Dougal nodded to the driver and the older man beside him, and drew the girl forward.
“Miss, allow me to introduce Ranald MacGregor and his son Andrew. My uncle and cousin,” he said. She was of quality, this girl, and he may as well use his best, if rusty, manners. “And this is—ah—” He did not know her name.
“Fiona MacCarran.” She turned to his uncle and cousin and smiled so warmly at them that Dougal suddenly, keenly wished she would bless him with a smile like that. Instead, she sent him a furious glare. He supposed he deserved it.
“Miss MacCarran, into the cart,” he said. “Now,” he added, low and fierce.
She blinked. He had not noticed before that her eyes were a sparkling blue. For a moment, he felt something essential and intangible within him shift somehow, and become a need, a craving. Frowning, having neither time nor patience for sentiment or softness, he offered his hand.
Ignoring him, she turned to his kinsmen. “Gentlemen, I am pleased to meet you. I have come from Edinburgh to Glen Kinloch to teach at the glen school here.”
She had not introduced herself to him so sweetly as that, Dougal thought, scowling. But he had rather startled her on the upper hill, coming out of the mist as suddenly as he had, and soon enough propelling her down the hillside. But the gaugers had been approaching—and he wanted to know what she was doing on his hill, near the caves and what was cached there.
“The new dominie! A bonny one, too.” Ranald’s rough hand looked like a big paw, closing gently over her slim gloved fingers.
Andrew blushed, at fourteen easily dumbstruck by a pretty lass, Dougal thought sourly, seeing how easily the girl was charming the lad. “We thought you’d be old and ugly, Miss,” he blurted.
“She is neither of those, but a problem nonetheless,” Dougal snapped. “Hurry, all of you.” He took Fiona MacCarran by the waist, his hands fitting her curved, taut shape. “In you go, then.”
He dumped her over the side into the hay and tossed her knapsack, rattling with hammers and chisels and rocks—odd bits for a lass to be carrying about—into the cart after her. Then he set a foot to the hub of the wheel to leap inside. Kneeling beside her, placing a cautioning hand on the girl’s shoulder, he saw his kinsmen gaping at him. “Gaugers on the road,” he explained. “Two of them, a league or so away. The lass and I must not be seen.”
“Och, hide!” Ranald said. “Cover yourselves with that old plaidie back there. If they see the new teacher with old rogues like us, they will want to know why.”
Snatching up a folded plaid in the cart bed, Dougal tossed it over both of them. As the girl gasped in surprise, he pushed her down beside him in the hay, and drew her close under the covering, planning to keep her quiet any way he must….
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