A Highland Folly

by Jo Ann Ferguson

“You must truly hate it here.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  She smiled as his lips quirked. Keeping her hand within his arm, she matched the easy pace he set toward the house. “In some ways, you seem more at home here than I believe I ever shall. Yet in others you have a Town polish that Neilli longs to have her brother obtain.”

  “Such a polish is often gained at the high price of submerging one’s true thoughts and feelings.”

  “Which you seem to have become a master of.”

  He glanced at her and away, but not before she saw his lips tighten. She considered saying she was sorry, but she had no idea what she had said that would cause him to put up this icy wall between them. Even as they reached the front door of the massive stone house, she had not decided whether an unsatisfactory apology or silence would be best.

  Lucais was as taciturn when he lifted the knocker and rapped it twice before stepping aside. When she looked at him, he did not meet her eyes. Instead, he was glaring around, not with curiosity but with some other emotion she could not discern. He was becoming a greater puzzle all the time.

  The door swung open to allow her to enter a magnificent hall. She was sure several of the largest rooms in Ardkinloch would fit within this space that was empty save for a splendid staircase that was so wide, a carriage and four could have driven up it without hitting the banister on either side. The polished wood floor shone in the faint light coming from the narrow windows above. Paintings hung on the walls, but the shadows concealed any hint of what the subject might be.

  “Good afternoon,” said a footman in dark green livery. “May I help you?”

  “I am Anice Kinloch. I wish to speak with Lord Chesterburgh.” She hoped if she could convince the marquess to share his thoughts with her on this project, she would have a better sense of how best to handle the heated tempers in the village.

  When he did not answer, she realized he was looking past her to Lucais.

  “This is Mr. MacFarlane, who is the chief engineer with the road project,” she added. “May we speak with the marquess?”

  The footman gulped, then replied, “Lady Kinloch, Lord Chesterburgh is not in.”

  “Do you expect him to return soon?”

  “He should be back from Edinburgh within the next few days.”

  Anice glanced from the footman, who was still staring at Lucais, to Lucais, who seemed indifferent to the man’s curiosity and obvious disquiet. Mayhap Lucais had called here before. Soothing her curiosity about what he had learned on his visit must wait until they could speak without others overhearing.

  “Please let the marquess know that I have called,” she said. Drawing out a card, she handed it to the nonplussed footman. “I will be glad to call again at his convenience.”

  “Yes … yes, my lady.” The footman stumbled backward a step as Lucais offered his arm to her. “But don’t you want to—?”

  “Lady Kinloch will call again,” Lucais said, “when Lord Chesterburgh is at home.”

  “Yes … of course—”

  “Mr. MacFarlane,” he supplied when the footman faltered. “Good day.”

  Anice kept her mouth shut until the door had closed behind them and they were a few paces along the road back to the gate. Then the laugh she had been trying to restrain broke loose.

  “What is so amusing?” Lucais asked, his voice still rigid.

  “I shall never complain about the incompetence of the servants at Ardkinloch.” She laughed again. “That young man barely could say two words in a row. I suspect he was left behind when the marquess went into Edinburgh because he would be a problem there.”

  “He seemed amazed to see you.” His smile returned as they reached the gate. Untying his horse, he led it along the road after them as he added, “Mayhap the poor chap was simply dazzled by your beauty, Anice.”

  “You need not ply me with useless compliments.”

  “The truth is never useless.” His expression became grim for a moment. “It is pleasurable to speak the truth.”

  “I know you must guard your words in the village.”

  He paused and tipped her chin toward him. “But not with you, Anice? Can I tell you how I look forward to each minute I can steal with you? Can I say how the thoughts of your warm smile ease my frustrations after a hard day of overseeing that crew? Can I dare to speak of how I wish to taste your soft mouth?”

  Slowly her hand rose to curve along his cheek. His skin was weatherworn, offering a myriad of sensations to flow along her. As her quivering fingers swept up through his hair, she whispered, “You dare me to be as honest.”

  “And own that you share these thoughts and these cravings?”

  “I am not sure I can be that honest!” She laughed softly. “Not yet.”

  “Because I am the chief engineer on this project?”

  “Partly.”

  “Only partly?”

  She gripped his arms. “Lucais, for now, those who are wavering will speak with me. Those who hate the project trust me to listen to them and consider their points. If it were known that you and I shared more than an acquaintance, I would lose any influence I might have in Killiebige.”

  “I think it is clear from the rumors that have reached my ears that there is supposition already that we are more than acquaintances.”

  “But they still trust me and respect the name of Kinloch.”

  His smile vanished. “And that is what is important to you? Your family’s name?”

  “Yes.” Anice’s eyes grew wide when he snapped an oath under his breath. “Lucais, I have never had much of a family before I came here. Sometimes my mother was married and I had a stepfather. Then she was not.”

  “She seems to have had her share of husbands.”

  “And the misfortune to fall in love with adventurous men who risked their lives foolishly.” She bit her lip, then whispered, “Her last husband risked his life and hers and lost them both. Then I had no family but Pippy and Bonito. The letter from my grandmother’s estate had been following me around the world and found me shortly after Mother’s death. It offered me a family I had never had.”

  “Along with the obligations of supervising it.”

  “That I did not know until I arrived here. What I have is not perfect, but a family is something I never believed I would have.”

  “So you say now. Will you feel the same when the obligations of family become tiresome?”

  Anice was spared from answering when she heard a sharp whistle from above them on the hillside. Before she could look up, dirt and small pebbles rained down on the path. Lucais grabbed her and pulled her away from the miniature avalanche.

  Parlan jumped down to the path, holding his gun easily. He scowled as he looked at Anice. Ignoring Lucais, he said, “I thought my eyes were mistaken, but they were not. What are you doing out here on this side of the river?”

  “I was paying a call,” she answered.

  “On whom?”

  Anice slid her hand out of Lucais’s grip and stepped around the horse. “I have not done Lord Chesterburgh the courtesy of calling on him.”

  “Why are you going to Chesterburgh?” growled Parlan. “Have you no pride?”

  “Pride? What does pride have to do with anything?”

  He jabbed a finger in Lucais’s direction. “Look at him. He’s smiling, so he knows what you, as the head of our family, should. No Kinloch goes offering a petition at the Chesterburgh door.”

  “I was not offering a petition. I was seeking his opinion on the road project.”

  Parlan bristled. “Opinion? If he is not against it, he simply proves that the present marquess is as useless as the rest of his family has been for generations.”

  Lucais’s lips grew straight, but he said only, “I bid you good day, Anice. It has been an interesting afternoon.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, not looking at her cousin. Why did Parlan have to take advantage of every opportunity to offend Lucais? This time Parlan had done Lucais a di
sservice by ignoring him instead of apologizing for sending the rocks and dirt down on them. Seeing her cousin’s smile as Lucais wiped dust from his coat, she wondered if it had been an accident.

  Parlan paid no attention to Lucais, who continued along the riverbank. With another growl he asked, “How many more ways can you shame our family, Anice? I thought you knew better.”

  “About what? If you explain, I might understand.”

  “You do not need to understand anything but that the Kinlochs and those who live at Chester Hills have nothing to do with one another. It has been that way since those traitors sided with the English king in the English Civil War.”

  “That was almost two hundred years ago!” She stared at him in disbelief. “Are you telling me that the two families have not spoken to each other in all that time?”

  “They stay on their side of the river, and we stay on ours. I saw the marquess once when he came riding through Killiebige.” He spat on the ground. “That is what I think of him and his family.”

  “But if the present marquess and his family have done us no wrong—”

  “Memories are long in the Highlands, Anice. Even a single mistake is never forgiven.” He looked toward where Lucais was disappearing around the bend. “Don’t forget that.”

  Six

  Lucais wiggled his toes in the grass as he climbed the hill above Killiebige. He could not remember the last time he had been barefoot out of doors, but his boots needed to be repaired after a rock had sliced into one yesterday. As the soft blades teased his feet, he smiled. During the years of work to become an engineer, he somehow had forgotten the lush sensation of such a simple pleasure.

  But you wanted to forget everything about the Highlands. The thought taunted him. He had wanted to put this place behind him. This job should have taken him to the Pennines to work on a tunnel there, but his superiors had sent his team here. They had cited his familiarity with the Highlands and its people.

  And here he was. How his father would laugh to see him now! When Lucais had stormed out of the family seat, vowing to put Scotland behind him, he had not thought he would have any obligation to return. He was born the second son, the one who could live as he decided.

  He had chosen to study in England and build a future there. Welcomed among the ton, he had enjoyed Seasons in London, flirting with the lasses and tipping back a bottle with his tie-mates. That all had changed when his older brother Birk had died, and Lucais became the heir to duties he had never wanted in these accursed Highlands. Everything had changed, even friends’ perceptions of him.

  He had agreed to return home after his final assignment was completed. It had been the greatest irony that he had been told that this last job would be here in the glen of Killiebige.

  Mayhap it was just as well, for he could bid his farewell to Gwendolyn without hurting her with the truth. He’d left her to her pursuit of a titled husband who could give her the prestige she longed for while he turned his thoughts to his work, the very work that would come to naught if the sawneys in the village banded together to cause trouble.

  Rumbles of that had reached his ears just in the past hour, which is why he had left his gashed boots behind to hurry up the hill to Ardkinloch. He must make sure that Anice knew rumors were brewing again in the village. Her help might ease the tension that was building between his men and the villagers. That would allow him time to concentrate on making certain Potter did not create another near disaster as he had earlier that day.

  Potter tried his best, but the sorry truth was that the man had no competence in handling a crew of men or a barrel of gunpowder. The last detonation that Lucais’s assistant had overseen had ended with nothing of the hill moved. Instead, the bed of the road had been scattered, destroying long hours of work. The men had complained to Lucais, but talking to Potter had gained him a halfhearted apology. Nothing else. Not even a vow that Potter would make every effort to ensure that such bungling would not happen again.

  Lucais expected that someone would greet him and demand why he had come to Ardkinloch when he entered the small gate in the wall surrounding the manor house. But no one was in sight. He walked toward the house on the far side of a barn. The barn needed whitewashing, he noted, but the roof was sound. As he continued across the sloping yard, the shadow of the building climbed over him, cooling the grass beneath his feet. He would have walked past except that he heard a familiar curse in a voice he had not expected to hear say it.

  What was bothering Anice so much that she snarled such an unladylike oath? Smiling as she repeated it, he went into the barn.

  The baaing of the sheep always reminded him of someone being ill. A window beneath the rafters was open to allow air in. On the stream of light, dust bobbed on an invisible current. Warm and stuffy, the barn threatened to bring forth more of the memories he purposely had smothered amid the noise of the city.

  Lucais leaned over the closest stall door and looked at a wobbly-legged lamb trying to nurse. The witless sheep had no trouble conceiving, but often acted after the birth of their lambs as if they had no idea what the small creatures were.

  Hearing Anice’s soft voice from farther in the shadows of the barn, he looked past the low wall of the closest birthing pen to see her in the next one. She was crouching by another lamb. Her hand was under its stomach as she held it close to its mother. Weak, the lamb could not manage to stand. Her gentle urging seemed to comfort the mother, who was watching with skittish distrust. The sheep sniffed at the rear of the lamb and seemed satisfied enough not to edge away. When the lamb began to suckle, a smile inched across Anice’s lips, brightening her eyes even as it was revealing her fatigue. He wondered how long she had been trying to get this lamb to nurse.

  His gaze slipped along her as he folded his arms on the boards, which reeked of dust and hay. No one would guess that she could claim the title of lady when she knelt here in the barn, her red curls clinging to her face with perspiration. She brushed them back with an indifferent motion. With her slender fingers supporting the lamb, she cooed silly words of encouragement.

  He smiled when he heard her curse again in English and again in Gaelic. She wiped her hand against the hay, and he knew exactly what had happened. Yet she did not abandon the lamb. In spite of himself, he compared her easy acceptance of this earthy life with the befeathered ladies he had known in London. Not one of them would have stepped foot in a barn that was redolent with droppings and dirt. Instead, they would have chided their stablemen for dusty boots when the carriage was brought about for another ride through the park.

  Curiosity teased him. Anice Kinloch clung to what was hers with the tenacity of a Scot. Mayhap it was impossible to leave this heritage behind no matter how far one traveled or how completely one tried to forget. That was a grim thought, and he did not want it while he was here with her.

  Yes, Anice Kinloch was nothing like the women he had met in London. Her honesty was so different from the affectations of those women. He tried to imagine her making small talk with Gwendolyn, who was flustered by something as insignificant as someone who failed to leave a carte des visites during a call. Although Anice’s plainspoken ways might leave her ostracized in Town, her loveliness and vivacity would draw many callers.

  He frowned. Her fresh spirit might be stifled by that stiff Polite World, or she could find a welcome among those who wanted to escape the ennui of yet another assembly or another night of wagering at a club. Her title as Lady Kinloch would grant her a warm welcome into the Beau Monde, where family name was the greatest asset.

  He shifted, and the door creaked beneath his arms.

  Anice glanced up. Her dismay faded as she smiled at him. “What are you doing out here?” She did not rise.

  He chuckled softly. “Don’t worry. I do not plan to disturb your new mother by moving quickly.”

  In a whisper, as if the sheep could understand, she said, “This is not her lamb. Hers died at birth, and this lamb’s mother has two others to feed. I thought
I could convince this yowe to nurse this lamb.”

  He smiled. “‘Yowe.’ I haven’t heard that word in—” Dash it! Why was he being sentimental about something he had wanted to forget? Not bothering to answer his own thought, he asked, careful to use the English term for a female sheep instead of the Highlands one, “How is the ewe taking to the lamb?”

  “I am hopeful, but the lamb is growing weaker.”

  “It appears as if the ewe is not too distressed by the whole thing.” His eyes narrowed as the ewe sniffed at the lamb. “Mayhap the ewe is uncomfortable enough to want the lamb to suckle.”

  “Mayhap.” Slowly Anice slid her hand out from beneath the lamb. It wobbled on its stick-thin legs and leaned against the ewe. “Or mayhap the vanilla is helping.”

  “Vanilla?”

  Standing, she took a cloth off the door of the cramped lambing pen and wiped her hands. “Haven’t you heard of using vanilla to convince a ewe to take a lamb?” She opened the door and slipped out.

  “I thought the best way to get a ewe to take a new lamb was to rub the replacement with the dead lamb’s pelt,” he said as she picked up a bucket.

  Apparently unaware of his admiration of her legs that were bare nearly to her knees beneath her kilted skirt, she hung the bucket on the peg near the door and shook her head. “Putting a dead lamb’s pelt over a new lamb can be the best way to kill it if the dead one was born with some horrible affliction. That could sicken the living one. Vanilla works well. A daub on the ewe’s nose and a dab on the lambkin’s back end, and the ewe is convinced the scent means the babe is hers.” Turning to him, she added with a laugh, “If that doesn’t work, I bring Pippy in here to sleep by the pen.”

  “The dog and not your llama, who seems to think he is one of the sheep?”

  “A dog nearby always seems to rouse the maternal instinct in the most recalcitrant ewe, because she fears a predator will steal the lamb.”

  “You seem to have a knack for dealing with sheep.”

  “We had some when we lived in South America.” She smiled as she wiped her hands on the stained cloth. “In the East we had goats.”