“Possibly.” He stared down at her for a moment too long, so that Fiona caught her breath. “Sit in the parlor. I will find Maisie,” he said, as he guided her into the room. Then he left, footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Wandering about the room, Fiona looked at two portraits hung over the settee—a man and a woman, the male with a striking resemblance to Dougal—and she sat on an old, creaky chair with a flat cushion. The fire burned low in the grate and gave off a lovely warmth and the sweetish smell of peat, and though she coughed, she felt that she was improving, as if the inviting, relaxing atmosphere of Dougal’s simple home had its own sort of healing influence.
When footsteps sounded again, she looked up to see a young woman carrying a silver tray with tea things on it. She was plump and red-faced, with soft coppery hair spiraling out from under a soft white cap. Her apron was mussed and stained, her dark blue gown patched at the hem, and she did not curtsy, as a Lowland serving girl might have done, but smiled, her expression pretty and bright. Fiona could not help but smile in response.
“I am Maisie MacDonald,” the girl said in Gaelic. “The laird said to fetch you some tea. Here it is, with some oatcakes, butter and jam, all we had this day. Not expecting guests,” she added, and Fiona heard a slight reproach in it.
“Thank you, Maisie.” Fiona peered toward the door. “Where is the laird?”
“Gone to help my cousins with their troubles. Oh, what a terrible fire!”
Fiona agreed, looking again toward the door, feeling disappointed that Kinloch had left. She turned as Maisie filled a blue-and-white china cup with steaming tea and handed it to her. “Thank the Lord, no one was hurt in the blaze.”
“True. But the loss of the building, and so much whisky, is a hardship for them. They have plenty stored away, though.” She frowned. “I heard you coughing, miss.”
“There was thick smoke when we went to investigate the fire,” Fiona said. “It seems to have irritated my throat and chest. I’m sure it will clear.”
“My mother taught me a good remedy for coughs—whisky with honey and hot water. There’s a good store here, as in every Highland home, and it’s a fine quality. Will you take a wee dram? Some ladies think it improper, but whisky is very good for the health of the body. Many Highland ladies take some uisge beatha every evening—some more than that.” She grinned.
“Thank you, Maisie,” Fiona said, stifling the tickling cough. “I remember the whisky and honey remedy from my childhood in Perthshire. It will help clear the rest of this.”
“Perthshire, is it? Very good, miss. I will see to it. Will you be staying the night?”
“I believe so.” She made up mind quickly. “Kinloch extended the invitation, and I am a bit tired. Will someone bring word to Mrs. MacIan, so she will not worry?”
“The laird promised to send one of the lads who help at the distillery to do that.”
Fiona nodded her thanks and sipped some tea; it soothed her throat, which felt sore from breathing smoke, and her voice was a bit hoarse, so the thought of a whisky remedy was not unwelcome. She noticed, then, that her hair and garments smelled strongly of smoke. “I would like to wash up,” she told Maisie.
“I can prepare a bath for you if you like, though it is nothing fancy here, just a plain hot bath with a good soap, which my own mother makes from lavender and heather bells. If you do not mind me saying it, miss, you do smell of the char.” She wrinkled her nose.
Fiona laughed, not used to such frankness in serving girls—her great-aunt Lady Rankin never tolerated opinion in the household staff—but she found Maisie charming rather than rude. When the girl left the room, Fiona heard one of the dogs barking outside. Setting down her teacup, she walked to the window.
On the far side of the acres surrounding Kinloch House, she glimpsed, through trees and distance, a man running at a steady pace. Despite the sunset fading to darkness, she recognized Dougal MacGregor—she was surprised how very familiar the rhythm of his stride, the set of his shoulders, the dark banner of hair seemed to her. And she realized that he was not heading for the slope that led to the distillery and the short route to Neill MacDonald’s burned-out still.
He moved in another direction, heading diagonally up a slope that would take him to the mountainside where she had first met him.
Fiona wandered the hallway, looking in on the dining room and study, exploring the foyer with its large walnut sideboard and oil portraits in gilt frames hung on the whitewashed walls. Then she ventured upstairs, taking the turning steps carefully; the worn stone wedges had been much used over the centuries, and she was grateful for the handhold of a thick rope slung around a central pillar. Each floor, four in all, was marked by a wide landing in the stairs, faced by one or two doors to the rooms on those levels. Most of the doors were open, and Fiona peered into dim interiors, seeing old furniture, walls covered in wood paneling, and sturdy poster beds hung with canopies and curtains. Like the main floor, the rooms spoke of quality and simplicity, hinting at the genteel poverty common to many aristocratic Highland families, particularly since the events of the Forty-five, the year of rebellion that had changed Scotland’s fortunes for generations to come.
Aware that poverty was all too real in Glen Kinloch, she shook her head at the irony of her grandmother’s request that she marry a wealthy Highland laird. Surely there was a more reasonable way to help her siblings to earn their inheritance, she thought; for according to the lawyers, Mr. Browne and Sir Walter himself, the funds would not be released to them until each one of them met the terms of Grandmother’s rather outlandish will.
In her heart, she knew it could be a wonderful prospect to marry a laird like Kinloch, wealthy or not. He was a clear rogue, true—but he possessed qualities that had drawn her from the beginning, a charismatic and mysterious aura that she had even attributed to magic at first. She had been wildly wrong about that, but even so, he had an undeniable beauty and masculine power that she found compelling, attractive, utterly fascinating.
And his kisses, the first night she had met him, were unforgettable. She craved to be kissed like that again, by the same man. She had loved another man, who had kissed and held her often in the months of their engagement before he went to war, never to return.
Yet somehow that dear and much-mourned comfort seemed pale now, compared to the searing, unexpected passion she had felt in Dougal’s arms. Indeed, she thought, if she could speak to her grandmother once more, she would tell her that marrying a man like Dougal, having love and adventure, too, in life, was what she wanted—wealth and wills be damned.
Besides, she told herself as she attained another landing and opened the next door, she was utterly in love with the man’s house—for in that moment she discovered the library.
A few books, he had said. She nearly laughed aloud.
The room was not large, and its ceiling was low, with painted wooden beams; yet the walls were fixed floor to ceiling with oak cases jammed with books. There were a thousand or more books, she thought, interspersed with other treasures—small paintings and figurines, a row of the round, dark bottles and silver flasks that she surmised held brandy, whisky, port, and other spirits. In one corner, she found a small spinning globe of the world. A large table took up the center of the room, scattered with papers and books. A wing chair in faded red, liberally coated with dog hair, was angled by the window.
Fiona explored the shelves with a sense of indulgent delight, surprised and pleased at the contents: old works of Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton; an encyclopedia from the last century, crammed with fascinating topics; scores of books on sciences and agriculture and practical household matters; a row of what seemed to be journals, bound in leather and tied with ribbon, hand-lettered along the spine with dates, and locked up behind a mesh front; more poetry, including Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry, and plenty of native Scottish writers, too—Burns and Hogg, Henryson and MacPherson, and several volumes of Sir Wa
lter Scott’s works, including his narrative poems, his own studies of Scottish song and verse, and some of his anonymous Waverley novels—Fiona knew that Ivanhoe and others were penned by Scott and not publicly owned to by the man himself, yet here the books were grouped with Scott’s poems.
She found a slim red leather volume of The Lady of the Lake, too. The book had been set aside and lay on the table, with the corners of pages folded. Smiling to herself, surprised, she fingered through some of the pages, noting what he had underlined—surely that was the mark of his hand, in pencil lead—the quiet tracks of a man who cared about writing, books, and poetry, and studied so carefully that he wrote in the very books themselves.
So MacGregor of Kinloch, the smuggler, the man who seemed so mysterious to her for so many reasons, favored poetry and fiction. And—judging by the books on the table, including another volume of Milton and more Scott—he had a taste for the sublime and supernatural as well. Shaking her head a little, bemused, she picked up a piece of paper.
There, in a fat, childish hand, a few lines had been diligently copied in ink 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.
Fiona easily recognized Lucy’s handwriting, which was round and firm, pressing down hard with the nib, as stubborn a hand as the little girl herself. Frowning slightly, puzzled, she set the page aside, and saw that a box beside it had loops of colored threads spilling from it. Flicking it open curiously, she saw a half-rendered embroidery piece with the first line of that same verse stitched in brown on linen weave. Decorative borders with colorful trees, hills, and a castle ran across top and bottom. Painstaking yet clumsy, the needlework probably belonged to Lucy, she realized.
Something touched her deep inside as she looked at the contents of the table. She saw far more than an untidy jumble of books and papers and a child’s half-finished embroidery. She saw the love of a man for words and poetry, and his dedicated tutoring of his niece and ward, even to the point of making sure the girl learned needlework.
No wonder the little girl did not think she needed school, Fiona thought. She had a very competent private tutor, the uncle to whom the child was clearly devoted.
She must not spy further, Fiona told herself, for her natural curiosity had taken over. This was their home and their concern, not hers—though she felt suddenly, keenly drawn toward it, wanting so much to be part of this.
She chose a book from a shelf and settled in the red chair by the window, opening Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany. The collection of verses in song and poetry kept her occupied for a while, though soon she found herself sleepy, and, looking around the library she had already come to love, she began daydreaming, soon imagining herself seated at that large library table with Dougal MacGregor, leaning close, looking over his shoulder as he read aloud to her.
In her fantasy, Dougal read verses written by her family friend Sir Walter Scott, and while he underlined his favorite passages, she imagined him pausing to kiss her brow, her hair, as she leaned on his arm. Lucy sat nearby, stitching her little sampler and humming.
Fiona smiled, eyes closed, and slipped into a dozing state, keeping the warm and wonderful scene in her mind, so that she saw herself produce a letter from Sir Walter himself, praising Dougal’s recent poetic verses, and she read aloud Scott’s promise to visit Kinloch House soon to see the laird and his new wife—
Feeling a deep sense of love and contentment as she sat in that cozy room, she let the dream spin onward.
Seated on a projection of rock inside the cave, Dougal wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm and surveyed the rocky interior, its irregular walls obscured by stacks of the small whisky kegs that he and his kinsmen had produced over many years—some of which his own father had produced when Dougal had been a boy.
Of over a hundred casks of whisky stored in the cave, one keg at a time, for more than two decades, twenty-seven kegs now remained, by Dougal’s latest count. Outside, several more were stacked and ready to be brought inside. For now, he planned to rest for a few minutes and contemplate the next phase of his plan.
That night, he and a few of his kinsmen had moved several casks from the burned-out MacDonald still to this cave for safe storage. And Dougal had sent men and ponies down the mountain twice that night. His comrades had descended the hills like a troupe of ghosts, silent, rhythmic; faces grim, gazes watchful. But unlike ghosts, they carried glowing lanterns ready to be shuttered, and kept their pistols loaded.
Swift as they could, they moved more of the whisky down to the caves by the loch, secret recesses that Dougal knew were known only to some of the residents of Glen Kinloch, and had never been discovered by outsiders.
Standing, he went to the cave’s entrance, looking down over the night-dark landscape. That same hill was where he had first seen Fiona, strolling with her brother, while she looked at the rocks she claimed to study with such fervor. He could only hope that she had not been helping her brother to spy out the area. If the gaugers ever learned the location of this cave, with its hidden cache—let alone found the lower caves, the most guarded secret of the smugglers of Glen Kinloch—there would be hell to pay.
Thinking of Fiona now, he crossed his arms as if he could resist the temptation of her, and gazed toward the dark, sparkling loch beyond a fringe of trees, far below. From certain windows in Kinloch House, Fiona would have a view of the loch, too, and of the hill where he now stood. He wondered if she was still awake; he wondered if she thought of him.
A rush of desire sank through him, hot and heavy, at the awareness that she slept in his house tonight. In part, he hoped she would be waiting for him. What a rare joy that would be, he thought, to find the woman he cared about waiting in his home when he came back at night; what a delight if she were there to talk with him, listen to him. What a privilege and a comfort if she opened her arms to him and accepted his around her, giving and accepting what he had to offer her.
The woman he cared about. He sighed out, rubbed a hand over his face. What the devil had happened to him in the fortnight since her arrival? He did not need a woman in his life, certainly not now; he had settled for the loyalty of kin and friends, and his own love and loyalty for the glen. At Kinloch House, he had the exuberant affection of his dogs and the hearty, gruff greetings of one or more of his uncles, and in the last three years, the delight of a little girl eager to share stories of her day, or her latest poem or drawing.
However unusual the family that surrounded him, he had been content enough. But now he wanted far more—he wanted his own family, wanted that passionately, though it might unsettle the balance of his life. But he had no time to sort out the desire in thought or heart. Not now.
Footsteps crunched on rocks nearby, and Dougal turned to see a tall man approach.
“Kinloch!” Hugh MacIan came toward him. He gestured toward the stacked kegs near the cave’s opening. “How far have you gotten with this, then?”
“A good portion of the MacDonald kegs saved from the fire have been moved into the cave,” Dougal said. “These kegs are the last of Thomas’s stored whisky, which we’ll store here until he can rebuild on another site. I will give him a plot of land in the valley between those two hills, there,” he said, and pointed outward, toward the mountain where foothills of the glen nudged along its base. “He and Neill can start again, and hide another still there.”
“It is good whisky they make, and should continue. What of the rest of your cache?”
“I’ve sent some men down to the loch side again. Twice is enough for one night.”
“More than enough. Going down there too often poses a great risk in more ways than one. We cannot afford to have the lower caves discovered. How much is left up here?”
“Over the past two weeks
we’ve moved a good bit of it to the loch, ready to be shipped out when the time comes,” Dougal said evasively. Much as he trusted Hugh and his kinsmen, he was reticent by habit to give accurate numbers to anyone but his uncles. He kept count of his whisky in his head, and in the journals hidden among the ranks of books in his library. And he never kept his whisky all in one place, but kept moving it around—some in the upper caves, some in the lower, some hidden under the floor of his house and in other places around the glen. Mary MacIan had been particularly helpful in that, as had Helen MacDonald.
“Moving it efficiently. Good,” Hugh murmured. “The sales will be made soon, and the glen will have the benefit of it.” He took a leather flask from his pocket and offered a drink to Dougal, who swallowed quick and handed it back. “MacDonald whisky,” Hugh said. “Not bad. More of a smoky taste than I generally like in a whisky.”
“Thomas and Neill add peat from the north glen side when they toast the sprouted barley over the peat fires,” Dougal said. “It adds a fine flavor, to my mind.”
“You’ve perfected a more delicate taste for Glen Kinloch stuff,” Hugh said, and took another long swig from the flask.
“Flowers,” Dougal said. “We added primroses with the heather already in the water this year before we filtered it through. Should be excellent in three years’ time, and if we keep it longer, it will be the more excellent yet. Generally the heather gives it the honey flavor that Glen Kinloch has been known for, but the primroses will add something subtle.”
“The heather whisky—the twenty-year batch that your father made. Have you set aside the casks for Eldin?”
“I have not yet decided if I will sell it to him,” Dougal answered.
“The fellow can be unpleasant to deal with,” Hugh said. “Yet he has a basic decency despite his cold manner. The money he is offering could help rescue this glen from the devastation that other regions have suffered.”
The Highland Groom Page 19
