My Heart's in the Highlands

by Angeline Fortin

  Hero sighed happily, reaching up to caress his cheek. “You once asked me why I wanted to come back to Cuilean, and there was much more to my answer than anticipation alone. I always felt, from the moment I saw this place, that whatever awaited me in life I would find here. The anticipation was in waiting for whatever that was. I was waiting for you.”

  Turning his head to kiss her palm, Ian drew her close and bent his head to kiss her gently. The words emerged easily this time, “I love you, Hero.”

  “And I love you.”

  “Now that we have gotten that all straight, I think we should …”

  A pained bellow broke the silence around them and Hero felt a bolt of fear seize her. She looked around her, seeing nothing but peaceful nature. Suddenly frantic, she tore away, spinning from side to side. “Papa? Ian! Where is my father?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Papa!”

  “Harry!”

  Hero could hear Ian shouting in the distance as she hurried up the stairs of the pagoda, searching each floor anxiously while Ian circled the area on foot.

  Where could her father have gone? Oh, she should never have let him out of her sight! How long had they been talking while he wandered away? How far could he have gotten? That yell hadn’t sounded too far off.

  She reached the top floor of the pagoda to find it empty but the small room had windows on all six walls, and Hero rushed to them, searching for some clue from this higher vantage point. Rushing to the northern views, she could easily see through the trees to the northwest where the parklands melted into the great lawns around Cuilean and to the gardens. To the east, she could see Ian striding quickly through the sparse trees where the park merged into the thickening forest of the woodlands. His shouts for her father muffled through the glass as he looked behind trees and up into them, thinking that her father might have climbed or fallen. To the south, the trees would give way to the orchards but Hero could see nothing more than a hundred feet away.

  Directly west, past the tree line, more than a quarter mile away there was nothing but open land to the firth, and with a horrified cry, Hero saw her father hanging precariously from the side of one of their horses as it raced toward the cliffs.

  Dashing down the stairs, Hero screamed Ian’s name and he turned, running back to her. Breathless, Hero pointed to the west, her panting gasps inaudible over the pounding of her riding boots on the wooden bridge as she crossed the creek. “He’s on horseback but it looks like he’s collapsed. Please, Ian. Hurry!”

  But he was already gone, running past her in long strides to where they had left their mounts tied. He was astride and kicking the horse into motion before Hero was even halfway there. She tried to watch what was happening as she ran to her horse but her viewpoint wasn’t nearly as good as it had been in the pagoda. She could only pray that Ian made it to her father before the horse reached the cliffs.

  Gasping for breath, Hero finally made it to her horse, but without a mounting block or groom, she was nearly helpless in the long, trailing skirts of her riding habit. With tears of worry and frustration blurring her vision, she looked around her but found no fallen trees, no stumps to make it easier. Gathering her skirts high around her thighs, Hero shoved her left foot into the stirrup before dropping them so that she could grab the curved pommel on the saddle in both hands. Bouncing for momentum, she swung her leg up and over the saddle with a sob of relief that she had made it.

  Kicking Colleen into a gallop, Hero desperately raced westward, wondering what she would find. Then she saw them. Ian was bent low over his horse at a full gallop in pursuit, his arm extended and reaching for the reins of the other horse. He caught them handily and the horses began to slow. But then her father slid to the opposite side and started to fall. Ian reached for him, but the distance was too far.

  With a cry, Hero saw her father hit the ground. Ian pulled up and leapt from his horse before it had even stopped. By the time Hero reached them, Ian was bent over her father, who was lying prone on the ground.

  Pulling her prancing horse to a halt, Hero slid off the indignant creature and ran to her father, dropping to her knees by his side. His eyes were closed and blood was leaking from a gash on his forehead. “Is he …? Papa?”

  “I fell,” Beaumont whispered crossly, opening his eyes. “Can you even fathom it?”

  Hero blinked at that, taking his hand between hers. “But are you all right, Papa?”

  “Fell from a horse!” he shouted, as if that single point precluded his ability to be well.

  “I think he’ll be fine,” Ian assured her as he wiped his handkerchief across a cut on the duke’s brow. “Just a few cuts. I could find no broken bones, though he may have sprained his wrist when he landed.”

  “Thank God,” Hero murmured, laying her head weakly against Ian’s shoulder. “I was so frightened. I thought for certain he was going to go straight over the cliff.”

  “He might have,” Ian said tightly.

  “I fell from a horse!” Beaumont repeated, his body drawn so tautly that his feet rose from the ground from the effort.

  “Better a horse than a cliff, Harry,” Ian told him as he rocked back on his heels and stood. “Come on, now.” Ian held out his hand. “Let’s get you back home and perhaps Mrs. Potts can see to those cuts. I think the one on your head might need stitching. And perhaps she’ll have a nice treacle as well.”

  Beaumont allowed Ian to help him up though he was still flushed red with anger. Even the lure of dessert could not sway him. “I’d like to say that I need a gun to put that miserable animal down for such a disgrace but I’m not certain if I don’t deserve it more! What wretched humiliation.”

  Ian slapped him on the back in an expression of male sympathy and Beaumont limped away shaking his head. “I fell from a horse? Impossible.”

  “Are you sure he’s going to be all right?” Hero asked as she rose. “You never can tell with him when he’s seriously hurt.”

  “He’s fine,” Ian ground out, and Hero looked up at him with surprise. There was a muscle jumping in Ian’s cheek as he ground his teeth. He looked not concerned but angry. Very angry.

  Confused, Hero laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry that Papa has caused you so much trouble, Ian.”

  Ian only snorted irritably. “He is not the trouble.”

  Even more confused, Hero wanted to ask him what he meant, but Ian only stormed off to retrieve the once-riled horse. Gideon’s saddle was sitting skewed to the side, and as she watched, Ian lifted the knee roll and flap to examine the girth beneath. He ran his hand up the billet and gave it an incensed tug with an audible snarl of rage. To Hero’s surprise, the entire saddle tilted and fell to the ground.

  “Ian!” she gasped. “What was wrong with the girth? Was it worn through?”

  “Get your father on his horse and get him home, Hero,” he ground out, slashing his hand through the air.

  “What about you?”

  “Bugger it, Hero, just bloody well do it!” he barked and Hero’s eyes went wide. There was frustration and fury in the command. His eyes, which had held only warmth before, were cold. This had to be the Ian of years past, the captain in the army, the soldier on a battlefield with deadly purpose.

  He looked ready to do murder, and Hero felt a chill of fear—not for herself but for the first groom he saw.

  Reluctantly, Hero called for her father and helped him keep his balance while he mounted the still-saddled gelding Ian had pursued him on. Once Beaumont had control of the animal, Hero went to Colleen, gathering her skirts in preparation for mounting on her own once more.

  “Wait!” Ian snapped tersely and strode over, but not to assist her as Hero thought. In contrast to the ire he had shown moments ago, he now looked unexpectedly rattled. Abruptly he pushed past her and flipped up the flap on her sidesaddle. Running his hands over the straps, Ian released a harsh breath and hung his head. “Thank God.”

  “Ian, what is going on?” Hero asked, confused by
those last two whispered words, but Ian only grasped her around the waist and lifted her easily into the saddle.

  “Please go, Hero,” he said more calmly now. “I will follow and we can talk later.”

  An hour later, Ian returned to his room and dropped into his armchair only to realize that the girth of the saddle was still fisted in his hand.

  His saddle.

  In Harry’s mad escapade to ride off alone, the duke had not mounted his own horse but Ian’s. The damage that was done to him had been meant for Ian.

  And the damage had been intentional. Ian had wanted to believe that these odd incidents were nothing but coincidence, but now there was no doubt. The cut was clean across three-quarters of the girth, leaving the last bit to tear free from the strain and pull of the horse’s effort. Their sedate walks and canters hadn’t been enough to break it away, but Harry’s wild ride had.

  In a way, he was grateful for the episode and what it had told him. First, there had been the incident with Hero in Glasgow, which might have been unrelated. The lamp in the hall outside the music room and the locked dungeon door, if taken as an attack, had included them both. But in the past two days, while Hero recovered from her exposure and fever, Ian had nearly been thrown from his horse, only to find enough burrs on the saddle blanket to incense his horse, and he had nearly taken a potentially disastrous tumble down the long winding staircase when he had slipped on a spill of lamp oil near the top step.

  Only his quick reflexes had allowed him to catch the bannister before he went down. As it was, he had a large, painful bruise on his hip and had strained his shoulder when his own weight had nearly pulled it from its socket. Boyle had been profusely apologetic but could offer no explanation for the spill.

  Those last two were so subtle that they might have truly been coincidence. But the previous night, Ian had awoken in the dead of night to find someone in his room. He had called for Dickson, but the shadow had slipped out the door and vanished before he could make chase.

  And now this.

  Ian slapped the girth against his thigh. It wasn’t his imagination or paranoia any longer. Someone was trying to do him harm. For what reason and to what extent, he had no idea. With the very worst consequences, he might have died from the incidents. He might have succumbed to exposure in the dungeons. Falling just so from his horse or down the stairs might have broken his neck. More likely, he would have been injured in a non-life-threatening manner. So what point was someone trying to make?

  At any rate, it had become clear that he was the target and not Hero. He had that to be thankful for, if nothing else, but today’s incident had shown that the mastermind of these attacks cared little for the collateral damage he might cause.

  These were assaults with malicious intent.

  Bloody hell, Ian thought, he was willing to take the risk for himself, willing to be on his guard and await an opportunity to catch the culprit red-handed, but he would not risk Hero, Beaumont, or the rest of his household to the very real threat lurking within his own walls.

  Someone was trying to hurt him or even kill him. But who? And why?

  As far as he could tell, only Daphne had any motive. But why would she want to harm him if her goal was to marry him? Despite Ian’s rejection of her proposal and what must be his obvious attraction to Hero, she didn’t seem to have given up on her plan to marry him. Over the past two days, Daphne had flirted outrageously, trying to win him over.

  She was obvious in her ambitions, so why hurt him? Even doing away with the more obvious impediment she had in Hero would make more sense than attacking him.

  Of course, Ian conceded, his death would give her everything she ever wanted.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I heard his grace took a fall from his horse today, Lady Ayr,” Camron Kennedy said that night after dinner while he and Hero played chess in the library while Daphne read aloud from Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. “Is he quite all right?”

  “Yes. His pride was hurt far more than his body,” Hero told him absently as she made her move. The evening had been a long one thus far, with only Robert’s niece and nephew for company. Her father had stayed abed, with Simms ordered not to leave his side, depriving Hero of his good-natured buffer.

  As for Ian, Hero didn’t know where he was at all.

  “I must say I’m surprised our host wasn’t present for dinner,” Kennedy added in an echo of her thoughts.

  Yes, Hero thought, there was that. Ian had left before tea without a word to anyone regarding his destination or his return. Not even to Dickson. Given his anger earlier, Hero could only hope that at best he was blowing off steam. Mandy had been full of gossip of his tirade to the stable master and grooms. Those who had been targeted by the marquis over the incident had been surprisingly tight-lipped regarding what was said, but the general consensus among the remainder of the staff was that Lord Ayr had threatened all their livelihoods if the tack was not kept in better order. One of the laundry maids had said that she could hear the marquis yelling at them through the walls.

  Granted, Hero wasn’t as familiar with Ian’s temperament as she should be, but somehow she didn’t think such a rage was typical of him. She couldn’t picture him yelling at all. Of course, when the safety of the household was threatened by negligence, alarm often resulted in a more emotional reaction. Certainly that’s all it was.

  “I’m sure that after the veritable deluge we’ve had these past several days, Lord Ayr is merely seeing to the welfare of the estate,” Hero offered as explanation. “I have heard that several of the northern fields were flooded.”

  “I would image the marquis’s work is never done on a property this large,” Kennedy said after a few minutes. “I can’t imagine why Daph would want it so badly. Work, work, work all the time. She’d hate it in the end, I think.”

  Hero pursed her lips but couldn’t keep from asking in a low tone, “Then why does she want it so? Does she truly love it so much that she would marry a man she doesn’t care for just to have it?”

  Kennedy raised a mocking brow. “You think Daphne wouldn’t enjoy her duties as Ayr’s wife? Oh, I think she wouldn’t mind that part of it at all.”

  Swallowing back the bile that rose in her throat at Kennedy’s mocking words, Hero pushed her queen into a bad position, anxious for the evening’s end. Of course, Daphne wouldn’t mind that aspect of marriage, especially with a man like Ian. Any woman would feel lucky to espouse such a handsome, virile man. But Hero was certain Daphne would never have truly appreciated Ian—if she ever actually got to know him at all. She wouldn’t have taken his kindness as an asset. More likely she would have seen it as a weakness.

  Mandy’s chatter over the last couple of days of her confinement to the sick bed had provided enough household gossip for Hero to know that Daphne had been a strict mistress during her short tenure at Cuilean. She ruled on the principle of punishment being a stronger motivator for quality of work than reward. If she were to rule by Ian’s side, they would lock horns within days.

  Luckily for the staff at Cuilean, such a union wasn’t in the cards. Ian had asked Hero to marry him. By his own admission, he’d done so without coercion because he loved her. Catching her lip between her teeth, she bit back the emotion that rushed through her at the thought. How had she gotten so fortunate? It had never occurred to her when Robert died that she might ever find real love. Certainly not so quickly. Certainly not a love so consuming.

  Daphne’s voice rose then above Hero’s thoughts and she listened as Daphne read with surprising passion, “‘No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.’”

  Camron groaned loudly. “Bloody hell, Daph,
must you read such balderdash? You are making my head ache.”

  “It is not balderdash, Cam,” Daphne rebuked defensively, clutching the book to her chest.

  Hero had to agree with her niece for once. She rather liked Villette and found the tale’s theme to be far more reaching than some critics thought. The story implied that a person, rather than Fate, was responsible for providing meaning to his or her life. That the power of one’s own will could change that Fate into whatever suited one best. It was a formidable concept that had in some ways influenced Hero’s decision to return to Scotland.

  “I like Lucy,” Daphne continued hotly. “The way she struggles to be free and to take what she wants from life. She even questions whether a man is necessary for such happiness!”

  “It’s thoughts such as those that get you in trouble,” Camron retorted as he rocked back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. “You should listen to Father and be happy with what you have, rather than fighting for something beyond your reach.”

  Daphne followed his gaze to Hero and then looked back to her brother with a sneer, but it was enough for Hero to know that Daphne recognized his implication and that she was none too pleased with her progress at Cuilean thus far. “You’re a fine one to talk! You hate the law and yet there you are, following meekly in Father’s footsteps. Lucy shows that wanting something badly enough and pursuing it wholeheartedly can change your life.”

  The front legs of Camron’s chair thudded back down on the floor. “Like you are changing yours?”

  “Yes!” Daphne said. “I am making things happen, not waiting for them.” She flipped through the pages of the book until she found what she was looking for: “‘While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd.’”