Laird of Secrets (The Whisky Lairds, Book 2): Historical Scottish Romance (The Whisky Lairds Series)

by Susan King

  “You may like to see the study,” he said. He seemed so eager to show her the house that Fiona followed, glad to see the love and pride he had in his home. Up a few stone steps to a snug room with a low ceiling, its walls lined with shelves crammed with an untidy, extensive collection of books. Books and papers were piled on the central table and on a narrow desk in a corner by a window. Two wing chairs held stacks of large ledger books.

  “I do accounts here,” he explained. “Rents, livestock, the distillery and so on.”

  She nodded. “It is a wonderful room. I would like to look at the books in your collection someday, if I may.”

  “Anytime. I believe Maisie is still here, and I smell a good supper simmering in the kettle downstairs. She does not usually cook for us, just cleans, and so we are in luck. You should get something in you.” He led her down the steps to the foyer again. “It is not a large castle,” he explained as they went, sounding apologetic. “Above this level, there are bedrooms and a wee room Lucy calls her parlor. The place is very old, and in places falling to bits. I am sure you are used to finer.”

  “Not at all. I like it very much.” Fiona smiled. The place felt warm and welcoming and somehow just familiar. As they reached the foyer again, one of the deerhounds trotted toward her, nudging at her hand to be petted, and she obliged.

  “Kinloch House began as a castle. A peel tower,” Dougal explained. “Two block towers placed to form an L or a Z—the design provided good protection centuries ago, defense against cattle reivers or enemy clans, and sometimes king’s men. We also have a priest’s hole, which my father converted to a storage room.”

  “How fascinating to grow up in a place like this.”

  “I suppose. We even have a ghost or two, and visits by the fairies as well, so they say.” He shrugged, smiled.

  She lifted her brows, pleased. “Fairies? Has anyone seen them?”

  He shrugged. “As a boy, I thought I saw them now and then. Imagination,” he added with a laugh. “The house is over three hundred years old now, and things always need repair. Some days I think the whole thing will fall down around our heads. But it has always been a good home for our family,” he finished.

  “I can tell,” she said, smiling. Sighing, rubbing her arms, she felt relaxed, reassured, wholly welcome in the house he loved. “I feel at home, and I have only just arrived.”

  “They say the fairies of Kinloch decide who is welcome, and who is not.” He tilted his head, looking at her. “They seem to approve of you.”

  She smiled widely, felt brightened, forgetting the discomfort in her throat and chest. “I would love to know more about Kinloch’s fairy legends. My grandmother wrote books about Highland lore and loved fairies especially. My brothers and I heard many tales.”

  “Then you know more fairy legends than I could tell you. Glen Kinloch has but a few legends.”

  “I think there are more than you let on,” she murmured.

  “Aye so?” He gave her a gentle smile that hid his thoughts. “You are here to rest, so let us see to that. Warm yourself by the hearth in the parlor now, and of course, you may use the library if you like. The collection is modest but excellent. And you are certainly welcome to stay the night in a guest room. And I will ask Maisie to stay tonight as well.”

  “Thank you. But I do not want to be any trouble.”

  “None at all. You should not be out in the glen until the customs officers have gone, and should not walk back to Mary MacIan’s just yet. Even if your brother is with the excise officers, lass,” he added quietly, “I will feel better knowing you are safe here.”

  She caught her breath, wondering suddenly if she was safe near this man. The danger he presented was of a different sort, and she felt too willing, too tempted, to be near him. “I know you are going back to the hill, but will you be returning here tonight?”

  “Possibly not until morning. It depends on the work to be done. Off to the parlor with you, Miss MacCarran. I will find Maisie.” He gestured toward the room and turned away, boots echoing on stone as he went up the steps in search of the housemaid.

  In the parlor, Fiona wandered about, studying the portraits hung on the walls, including a beautiful red-haired woman, and a handsome, dark-eyed man with a striking resemblance to Dougal. She peered closely at a cluster of small, enchanting landscapes and lake scenes in gilt frames. Then she sat, adjusting pillows to lean back on the settee. The fire burning low in the grate gave off warmth and the sweet musky smell of peat. Coughing again, she felt the tickle of it beginning to ease. Kinloch House had a curiously healing influence, as if it were her own home. Closing her eyes, she sighed.

  Soon, hearing footsteps, she looked up to see a young woman carrying a silver tray holding a teapot and porcelain dishes. She was plump and pink-cheeked, with soft coppery hair spiraling out from under a white cap. Her apron was wrinkled and stained, her blue gown patched at the hem, and she did not curtsey or defer, as a Lowland serving girl would have done. She smiled, her expression so friendly that Fiona instantly smiled in response.

  “I am Maisie MacDonald. The laird said to fetch you some tea. Here it is, with oatcakes, butter, and rowanberry jam, all we had this day. Not expecting guests,” she added, and Fiona heard a slight reproach in it. “There is soup in the kettle, should you wish that too.”

  “Thank you, Maisie. I am Fiona MacCarran, the schoolteacher.”

  “Oh aye, Miss, everyone in the glen knows who you are!”

  Fiona smiled “Are you kin to the MacDonalds—who live up the hill?”

  “Thomas and his? Cousins, aye. I know of their troubles tonight. All the glen will work together to help them.”

  “Good.” Fiona looked toward the door. “Is the laird still here?”

  “He just left to help my cousins with their troubles. Oh, what a terrible night, Miss!”

  Fiona agreed, ignoring the pang of disappointment she felt knowing that Kinloch was gone, even though she had expected it. Maisie filled a blue china cup with steaming tea and handed it to her. “Thankfully no one was hurt in the blaze.”

  “Aye, though losing the building and so much whisky is a hardship for them. But they have a good store of it.” Maisie frowned as Fiona coughed again. “Your breathing is still irritated from the smoke, I think.”

  “It was very thick on the hillside, and bothered me, but it will clear soon.”

  “My mother had a good remedy for coughs—whisky with honey and hot water. Will you take a wee dram of it? Some ladies think it improper, but whisky is very good for the health of the body. Many Highland ladies take uisge beatha every evening—and some more often than that.” She grinned.

  “Thank you,” Fiona said, feeling another tickling cough. Her voice was growing hoarse when she spoke again. “Sometimes my nurse gave me a whisky and honey remedy when I was a child in Perthshire.”

  “Perthshire, is it? Very good, Miss. You are part Highlander, for all that you came up from the Lowlands. Will you be staying the night, then?”

  “Perhaps I will.” She made up her mind as a glance out the window showed that the sky was already dark. “Kinloch extended the invitation, and I am a bit tired. Can someone bring word to Mrs. MacIan, so she will not worry?”

  “The laird said he would send a lad to do that.”

  Fiona nodded and sipped, the tea soothing her throat. Noticing that her garments still smelled of smoke, she brushed at her skirts. “I wonder if I could wash up,” she said.

  “I will prepare a bath for you, with a good soap that my mother makes from lavender and heather bells. If you do not mind me saying so, you do smell badly of the char.” Maisie wrinkled her nose.

  Fiona laughed, not used to such frankness in serving girls; her great-aunt Lady Rankin would never have tolerated an opinionated maid in the household. But Fiona found Maisie charming, friendly, and not at all rude. When the girl left the room, Fiona heard one of the dogs barking elsewhere in the house. She set down her teacup to walk to the window to peer
out.

  In the gloaming, looking across the fields surrounding Kinloch House, she saw a man running, and recognized Dougal MacGregor—the rhythm of his stride, the set of his shoulders, the dark banner of hair were etched in her mind. Then she realized he was not heading for the slope that led to the burned-out still.

  Instead, he was going in the opposite direction, taking a slope that would take him to the mountainside where she had first met him.

  She frowned, watching, wondering where he was going.

  Later, Maisie led her upstairs to the guest room on the uppermost floor, following the stone turning stair up to the fourth level, past wide landings that opened on to other chambers. The uppermost bedchamber, small and snug, had a beautiful, aged simplicity in its sturdy poster bed hung with pale brocade curtains, a highly polished table, an ancient ironbound trunk, a threadbare patterned carpet, and a narrow arched window set with stained glass above the lower casement. The furnishings hinted at generations of past wealth come to the genteel poverty common to so many Highland aristocratic families after the years of rebellion had changed life in Scotland in so many ways.

  That sense of better days long past seemed everywhere in Glen Kinloch, she thought. Thanking Maisie, she shut the door and turned, brushing a hand over the bedcover, going to the window to gaze out at the lowering night sky.

  And she shook her head in silence, wondering how she could ever satisfy her grandmother’s request to marry a wealthy Highland laird. That was an ironic expectation—many Highlanders had suffered in the past few generations, with fortunes lost. Nor would she consider wealth when contemplating marriage. She would far rather have a caring husband and the comfort of a loving home. A home very much like this one, she thought.

  But Lady Struan’s demands interfered with her dreams. The inheritance would not come to the MacCarran siblings unless they met outlandish terms. James had been lucky. Chance had brought him exactly what Grandmother had wanted for him.

  Fiona doubted she could ever be that fortunate. She would rather marry a proud, humble man like Kinloch, wealthy or not. Despite that he was a rogue and a smuggler, she knew at heart he was a good man—and charismatic, mysterious, fascinating, at times simply infuriating. And she only longed to be in his arms, craved the searing, unexpected passion she had tasted too briefly with him.

  If Lady Struan had asked her, Fiona would have said she wanted love and adventure more than wealth and social status and a staid, safe existence. She wanted honesty, vibrancy, passion for life.

  Sighing, she turned away from the gathering darkness and went to the door. Not tired yet, keyed from the evening’s events, she decided to go to Kinloch’s little library to read for a while. Heading back down the stairs, she found the door on the second level that Kinloch had shown her earlier. It stood open and waiting.

  Had she not already been smitten with Kinloch House and its laird, she would have fallen in love the moment she had seen his library. A few good books, he had said. She laughed softly as she strolled past the full bookshelves. Glad to find a glowing lantern there, and three blazing candles in pewter holders on the table, she turned to look more closely at the books.

  The room was fitted with bookshelves, floor to ceiling around the walls and the window opposite the door. The low ceiling had painted wooden beams, peeling and quite old. The shelves were crammed with books—a thousand or more on the shelves, interspersed with small treasures—paintings, figurines, colored glass bottles and silver flasks, even a delicately painted world globe. An oak table took up the center of the room, its surface scattered with papers and books. A wing chair in faded red was angled by a window, the table beside it piled with another untidy stack of books.

  The room seemed to echo the presence of a man who was highly intelligent and curious, and not particular about orderliness. Fiona smiled to herself, dragging her fingers along the shelves, delighted with what she found: Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton; an encyclopedia series; scores of books on science, agriculture, practical farming and domestic matters; handwritten journals bound in leather and tied with ribbon, marked with dates along the spines, likely household accounts. There were works of poetry, too, including Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry, tucked alongside novels, nature studies, and travel narratives.

  He had said the collection was modest; it was also excellent. Works by native Scottish writers filled a few shelves, including Burns, Hogg, MacPherson, even an old edition of Blind Harry—and several of Sir Walter Scott’s works as well, poetry and novels. The author had not yet publicly admitted to writing those anonymous books, although Fiona and her family, being good acquaintances, knew the authorship. Yet Ivanhoe and others were grouped with Scott’s well-known poetry as if the library’s owner either knew or suspected what else Scott had written.

  One end of the table had a stack of paper with pens and inkpots, along with a slim red leather volume of The Lady of the Lake, several of its pages marked with torn slips of paper. Fiona flipped through the pages, noticing pencil lead underlining phrases: the quiet tracks of a thoughtful man who claimed disinterest in his own education, yet clearly cared about writing, books, and poetry.

  So MacGregor of Kinloch, smuggler and rogue, very much favored books, poetry, fiction, and book-knowledge of every sort. Smiling to herself, bemused, Fiona noticed writing on one of the pages, and picked it up.

  A fat, childish hand script had earnestly copied some lines from one of Scott’s collections of old Scottish verse:

  O hush thee, my babie, thy sire was a knight,

  Thy mother a lady, both lovely and bright;

  The woods and the glens, from the towers which we see,

  They are all belonging, dear babie, to thee.

  This was Lucy’s handwriting, she realized, as intent and stubborn as the girl. Also on the table was an open wooden box with a half-finished piece of embroidery showing stubby trees, brown hills, a gray castle all rendered in threads, and a few words partially stitched. This had to be Lucy’s work too.

  Something stirred inside of her, touched her heart, as she looked at the things, seeing more than a jumble of books, papers, inks, embroidery and needles. She saw love, sensed patience, companionship, love, and dedication. The uncle and niece spent time here quietly, peacefully learning, reading, sharing.

  No wonder Lucy was convinced that she had no need of school. She had a caring and competent tutor in her uncle.

  Realizing she was letting her curiosity take over, Fiona stepped back. Comfortable as she felt here, this was their home, not hers. But she wished, suddenly and keenly, that she could be part of it.

  Taking a few moments to choose a book from a shelf, she settled in the red chair by the window and opened Ramsay’s Tea Table Miscellany. The collection of songs and poems was interesting, but after the long day, she soon felt drowsy. Closing her eyes, she sighed, imagining herself sitting at the library table with Dougal MacGregor, leaning on his shoulder as he read aloud to her.

  And she imagined touching his hair, feeling his kiss on her brow. She daydreamed that Lucy was there too, seated nearby, stitching on her little sampler and listening while her uncle read.

  Smiling, eyes closed, Fiona felt such love and contentment that she let it spin onward, onward, into sleep.

  Inside the cave, seated on a rounded boulder, Dougal wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm and surveyed the interior. Lantern light flickered over irregular rock walls, and shadows angled from stacked whisky kegs that had been produced over many years. Some held whisky his own father had made when Dougal had been a boy. Those, the most valuable, were set apart from the others.

  Not long ago, over a hundred casks had been stacked together in this cave, carried in groups and batches over two decades to add to the store. Twenty-seven kegs remained, with twelve more outside, waiting to be brought in and added to the rest. For now, Dougal sat to catch his breath and contemplate his plan.

  Tonight, he and his kinsmen h
ad moved casks from the burned-out MacDonald still to the cave for safe storage. He had sent men and ponies down the mountain three times that night. His comrades had descended the hills like ghosts, silent, rhythmic, grim, and wary. Unlike ghosts, they carried glowing lanterns ready to be shuttered, along with loaded pistols.

  Swiftly they had moved some of the MacDonald whisky to the upper cave, while also moving some of the older Kinloch whisky to caves closer to the loch. Those secret recesses were known only to a few residents of the glen.

  He went to the entrance and stood looking out over the night-dark hills. Here he overlooked the same slope where he had first seen Fiona MacCarran strolling with her brother while she collected rocks for her studies. Dougal was still uncertain if she and her brother had been innocently exploring, or spying out the area that day. If the excise men were to learn the location of this cave and its hidden cache—let alone find the lower caves—there would be hell to pay.

  Thinking of Fiona, he crossed his arms as if to shore himself against the temptation of her, and fixed his gaze on the dark and sparkling loch visible below a fringe of trees. From west-facing windows in Kinloch House, one could also see the loch and the hill where he stood. If Fiona was awake, if she looked out a window just as he looked out of this cave, they would be watching each other without realizing it. He wondered if she thought of him now, as he thought of her.

  A rush of desire sank through him, hot and heavy, as he thought of her in his house tonight. Part of him hoped she was waiting up for him. What a rare joy it would be to have a woman at home who waited for him, prayed for him when he went out at night, who loved him. What a delight and a privilege if she would be there to talk to him, to listen, to care. And what a deep comfort and passionate reward if she willingly opened her arms to him, to his love.

  Sighing, he rubbed a hand over his face. What the devil had happened to him since Fiona MacCarran had come to his glen? He did not need a woman in his life just now. He had chosen loyalty to kin and friends over personal happiness, and he was content. He had the affection of his kinsmen, the friendship of his tenants, and the honor of raising a wee girl who loved to share stories and drawings with him.