A Highland Folly

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  “I can return MacFarlane’s gun to him,” Parlan said with an abrupt grin.

  “Thank you, but I wish to send him a note thanking him for bringing me home.” She watched his smile fade.

  Neilli and Parlan exchanged a glance. Anice did not attempt to guess what they were thinking. Within days of her arrival here, she had learned that they had a way of communicating that shut out everyone else.

  “Parlan could deliver that as well,” Neilli said with another glance at her brother.

  “As soon as I decide what to say, I may ask you to do that.” She hoped her ambiguous answer would persuade them to cease their pestering on this.

  “Add a line or two about how the English road crew would be wise to take their leave posthaste.” Parlan rubbed his hands together. “Or I can simply tell MacFarlane that myself.”

  Anice put Lucais’s gun next to hers and faced her cousins. “You know that everyone in the valley does not hate the idea of a road through here and a bridge over the Abhainn an Uruisg.”

  “Most folks do!” Parlan’s eyes narrowed.

  “Because they are against the idea or because they are against the English government suggesting the idea?”

  Neilli crossed her arms over her full breasts. “Anice, you can say that only because you were not raised here. You have not suffered the shame of being subservient to the English, who think themselves better than us.”

  “But you want to go to London!” She would have blamed her bafflement on her bruised skull if she had not heard this before. “You would be surrounded by English there.”

  “Other Scots will be among those enjoying the Season.”

  “If you are looking for a match with a Scot, you need only pay calls on your neighbors.”

  Neilli’s nose wrinkled again. “Anice, you will never understand, I fear.”

  “She does not share our traditions,” Parlan continued when his sister paused to scowl. “How can she understand if she has not heard the stories that we have since we were young?”

  “About what?” Anice asked.

  “This family’s history.” He let his breath slide out past his clenched teeth. “The Kinlochs were nearly betrayed to the last soul by those who sided against us.”

  “At Culloden?”

  When Parlan looked at his sister, who rolled her eyes, he said, “Of course not. Then, friend and foe united against the English. I speak of the events during the war between King Charles and the Covenanters. There were those who sided against Montrose and the Kinlochs.”

  Anice was ready to concede that they might be right after all. She had no comprehension of how they could speak of an event from the English Civil War, nearly two hundred years before, as if it were important now. King Charles had lost his head, but his son had regained his throne. All that seemed so unimportant now, when the Regent ruled England and a road was being built through the glen.

  “Anice!” came a shout from the hallway.

  Wanting to put her hands to her head and hide beneath a pillow until this ache disappeared, Anice glanced toward the door. She was not surprised when Aunt Coira followed her shout into the room.

  Everyone told her that her father and Aunt Coira, who had been twins as well, had looked as alike as possible when they were babes. Would her father have had silver hair now and worn glasses on the very tip of his nose as Aunt Coira did? She liked to think so, for she had no memories of him. She had been no more than a baby herself when he had died during a hiking accident in the mountains.

  “What are you doing here?” Aunt Coira demanded, glowering at her children as if they were still in short coats. “Neilli, your cousin Sima was looking for you to help her with her new baby this morning. And, Parlan, you should not be disturbing Anice. She was mightily hurt yesterday. She needs to be resting.”

  Anice heeded her aunt’s terse orders to get herself to bed to rest. At this moment, she would agree to just about anything to give her head the opportunity to stop ringing with the sound of everyone’s voices.

  Yet, even when her cousins had been shooed out and her aunt had closed the door, Anice did not seek her bed. She sat in a chair and stared at the two guns leaning against the armoire. Certainly, by now, Lucais had realized that he had left his gun behind. Mayhap he believed it would be wiser to forget about it than to come back to Ardkinloch, where he was unlikely to find much welcome.

  She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. What was keeping her cousins from seeing that the road and the bridge might be for the betterment of the valley? Could it be only that their old traditions had blinded them to this? If she could be sure of that, she would be more sure of her own opinions.

  Curling her feet beneath her on the comfortable chair, she cradled her hand in her lap. She must find out the truth. Was it simply Kinloch stubbornness that had formed their beliefs about the road project? As soon as she was steadier on her weak legs, she would begin to pay calls on her neighbors to obtain their insight.

  And the first would be Lucais MacFarlane.…

  She knew she should silence that thought, but she took it with her into sleep, not bothering to determine why that was the most comforting thought she had had all day.

  The wind teased Anice’s hair from beneath her bonnet. She wanted to shove it back, but she could not when she carried freshly picked flowers in one hand and Lucais’s gun in the other. Somehow, since she had come to Ardkinloch, she had grown accustomed to coming to her grandmother’s grave to talk out her problems.

  Nothing she had heard about Marcail Kinloch had suggested that her grandmother was a woman who would sit and listen. Quite to the opposite, for Lady Kinloch had gained a reputation of issuing edicts to her family and everyone else within the valley split by the river. Still, Anice liked to escape here, where her superstitious cousins would not follow and voice their concerns. Sometimes she found solutions in talking out her troubles here. Often she did not.

  The cemetery was separated from the fields by a stone wall that would keep out the sheep. An iron gate always protested being opened and closed, but Anice ignored its squeak. She leaned the gun against the wall.

  Walking among the stones, she went to a grave set beneath a tree that protected it from the changing seasons. Anice knelt. Even after all her visits here, she still shivered with delight and amusement as she read the curse carved into the stone. She wondered if it had been devised by her grandmother.

  Rejoice and sing, ye good and wise,

  Your rest remains above the skies.

  But “ah!” rebellious sinners know,

  Your portion lies in Hell below

  Unless with speed you sin forsake

  And to the Grace yourselves betake.

  Sitting back on her heels, she laughed. If her grandmother had chosen the words, Anice wished she had had the chance to know her. The austere matriarch described by Anice’s mother might have had a hidden sense of humor. Mayhap someone else had selected them, adding to the puzzles that surrounded Anice.

  She looked up at the castle that was falling into complete ruin. Imagining her mother here was impossible. Her father had brought his new wife here from her home near the Borders for only one visit. It had been enough to persuade her mother never to return, even when she was widowed with a small baby. Instead, she had turned her back on her husband’s family and her own and explored the world.

  “I wish I knew why,” Anice said aloud. “This is such a beautiful place. Even amid all the beautiful places I have traveled with Mother, this is one of the loveliest.” Glancing down at the sparkle of the sunshine on the river, she sighed. “Is that why so many in the family are against the road being built here? Do they think it will change Killiebige?”

  “Do you always carry a gun to a graveyard?”

  At the laugh that followed the question, Anice jumped to her feet and whirled. She stared at Lucais MacFarlane, who had his arms folded on the half-open gate. In the past two days, she had persuaded herself that she was mistaken about her me
mory of the man who had carried her down the hill. She had been certain that his eyes could not be as blue as a Pacific lagoon or that his hair glistened like polished ebony. Her doubts had been wrong, for her recollections had been right.

  “I was bringing your gun back to you,” she said, hoping he did not take note of her trembling voice. Or, if he did, he would believe that he had frightened her by sneaking up on her when she was deep in thought. Picking up the gun, she held it out to him. “I stopped to visit my grandmother’s grave on the way to the road camp.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You didn’t.” In spite of herself, she smiled as she sat on the low wall. “The conversation here was quite one-sided.”

  He took the gun and leaned it back against the wall, but on the far side of the gate. “For a Scot, you have a very prosaic view. Most Scots would believe that a ghostie or two might be lurking about to offer a bit of otherworldly advice.”

  “Scots aren’t the only ones who think there are spirits of the departed surrounding them. I have seen that in every country I have visited.”

  Sitting beside her on the wall, he smiled. “I understand you have traveled even farther than you intimated previously.”

  “You do?”

  “Folks like to talk about the Kinlochs, even to the crew from the road camp, when they are enjoying a pint or two or some whisky. And you should know that they like to talk about you most of all.”

  “And what do they say?”

  “About the Kinlochs?” His eyes twinkled. “Or about you?”

  Knowing that she should not have asked that question, Anice said, “I am glad you happened by. My cousin Parlan was concerned about me going to the road camp alone when there are so many rough men there.”

  “And he is right to worry.”

  “He is?” She was amazed that Lucais would own to even one of the rumors that Parlan had repeated with ever-increasing delight that morning.

  “Yes.” He leaned his hand on the wall behind her and slanted toward her. “For someone who has traveled as far as you are reputed to have, you are too trusting, my lady. I am sure your cousin would be outraged to discover you here with me, when your only watchdog is your grandmother’s ghost.”

  “There are many Kinlochs buried here.”

  “A collection of ghosts would still be, in your cousin’s estimation, a very poor chaperon.”

  “Mayhap you are right.” She came to her feet. “I should bid you adieu, Mr. MacFarlane.”

  “I thought you were willing to call me Lucais now.”

  “You call me ‘my lady,’ so it would seem appropriate—”

  “For me to address you as Anice.” He stood and picked up the gun. “After all, I think you and I shall be seeing much of each other in the coming weeks.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “I cannot believe that you shall simply forget we were shot at on the hill beyond the cottage.”

  “I—” She kneaded her abruptly cold fingers and winced.

  “How do you fare?” he asked as he took her sore hand and cradled it in his.

  She wanted to answer that she was doing better, but her voice seemed to have vanished like a shout down an abandoned well. Gazing down at his broad fingers holding her hand as gently as if it were a newborn lamb, she resisted the temptation to rest her head against his shoulder. She was baffled by her reaction, and, although she wanted to savor it, she drew her hand away.

  “I am healing well. So my aunt Coira tells me.” She shivered. “You are wrong. I do wish I could forget all of this ever happened.”

  “But that would allow the person who fired on us to get away with his crime.” One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Or her crime.”

  Her eyes widened. “You think the shooter could be a woman?”

  Lucais fought his own fingers that yearned to cup her cheek that drained of color, leaving the shadow of the bruise a dark accusation on her forehead. In the past two days, he had asked questions of everyone he had met. Questions about Anice Kinloch. She was nothing as he had expected a daft Kinloch to be. The rest of the family? If what he had seen when he brought her to Ardkinloch was an accurate example, then they were as lost in the past as most of the rest of the Highlands. Anice had seen beyond these hills, so she might be able to understand something other than the traditions that were strangling Scotland, leaving it stagnant as the rest of Great Britain and the world moved forward.

  “Nothing has persuaded me that the shooter was a woman. However, we would be unwise to overlook anyone or any reason for the gun being fired at us.”

  “You are enjoying this mystery!”

  He was about to retort that she was mad, then he smiled. “In a way, you are correct. Mayhap it is because of my training as an engineer, but I believe there is a solution to every problem.”

  “And you take great pleasure in finding that solution.”

  “That is true.”

  “As you will in completing the bridge across the Abhainn an Uruisg.” Her laugh was as lyrical as the song from the birds overhead, a countermelody to the creaking gate when she latched it.

  He matched her steps across the field, but, for the first time, he found his gaze drifting from the ridge where the bridge would emerge. If Anice sensed his stare, she gave no sign. She laughed as a bark showed where her dog was racing across the ridge.

  “There,” she said, pointing to a ruddy flash. “There’s Pippy.”

  “Where is your other pet?”

  “Bonito? He is wherever the sheep are.” Scanning the hill, she said, “Near the lower rubble of the castle.”

  “So I see.” That was a lie, because he could not pull his gaze from her lustrous smile, save to admire how the light breeze teased him with a hint of the curves hidden beneath her demure gown.

  “No, you do not see.”

  His eyes met hers, and he knew he had been short-witted to think that she was unaware of his regard. From the first words they had exchanged, he had noted how she easily countered each comment he made.

  “Excuse me?” Lucais asked.

  “You do not see the trouble brewing here with the beginning of the road project or a way to resolve it.”

  “I am quite aware of the problems we may face. I am not oblivious of it. I intend to rectify it. As I told you, I like finding solutions,” he replied, abruptly as serious as she was.

  “So do I, because I do not want to see this glen erupt into anger.” She paused and faced him. Her hands were clenched at her sides. “There are so many rumors rushing about. To find out what is really being said, I am going to speak with the neighboring landowners.”

  “Do you think that wise?”

  She smiled icily. “Do you think I should speak only to those who were allied with the Kinlochs in the English Civil War? Or maybe only with those who fought with this clan against Edward the First and his son back in the thirteenth century? How about those who refused to dye their faces blue and battle their fellow Picts? Mayhap I should refrain from speaking with them.”

  “You do not need to go to absurd lengths to prove your point.”

  “No? I find that being absurd is a valid custom, celebrated with the greatest glee, here in the Highlands.”

  Lucais laughed. He could not halt himself. “I have never heard the peculiar ways here described quite like that, but you are right.”

  “I would have thought that you had discovered that already yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “You seem familiar with other quaint customs here.” Pausing where the path branched to go down toward the river or back toward Ardkinloch, she asked, “How long have you been here?”

  “On this trip, I have been here only a pair of fortnights.”

  “So you’ve been to Scotland before?”

  He looked around at the mountains that were gathering the clouds around them as the sun was swallowed by the gray mist that would soon rea
ch them. He looked anywhere but at Anice, because he did not want her violet eyes to perceive what he was thinking. He did not want to speak of Scotland and the past. “I spent time here as a boy.”

  “Then what advice do you have for me?”

  “Advice? For you?” Lucais wondered how she could have missed the tension in his voice when she had been so insightful before.

  “On dealing with the Scots in this area.”

  “One thing I can tell you. You shall never change a single Scot’s mind. To think otherwise is pure folly.”

  She shook her head, her wry grin brightening her luminous eyes. “That I know already. My cousin Neilli is headstrong and unshakable in her belief that she should have a Season in London.”

  “So she wishes to escape Scotland?” He had not guessed that any of the Kinlochs would be so wise. Nothing he had ever heard would have suggested any of them had an ounce of wit. Having met Anice, he had had to own that she was not like all those tales. Yet her family had been silly when he brought her home after she struck her head.

  Although Miss Kinloch’s wish to leave Killiebige was something he could commiserate with, he wished her better fortune than he had in Town. Dash it! He did not want to recall a second of the last ignoble weeks he had spent there.

  “No.” Dimples he had not noticed before punctuated her smile. “She simply wants to make an excellent match with a titled lord who also is a Scot.”

  Lucais needed all his willpower to bite back his curse. A title! Were all women focused only on what a man was called rather than what was within him or what he had achieved? His fury seeped into his voice as he said, “I wish her every bit of luck in her quest, although it would seem that if one wished a Scot for a husband, one would seek in Scotland.”

  “Lucais, what is amiss?”

  There was the intuition he had anticipated before. Her eyes were wide, and he saw dismay in them. Knowing that his voice must have been sterner than he had intended, he forced a smile. “I wish you the best of luck in finding the truth, Anice.”

  “I am sure you do, because you must want to hear it as well.”

  “No, I do not need to hear it.” Bowing his head in farewell, he said grimly, “I know all of it already, but, I can assure you, Anice, and you may share my words with whomever you wish, this road and bridge will be built here.”