Questions for a Highlander

by Angeline Fortin

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  I cannot fix the hour, or the spot, or the look,

  or the words, which laid the foundation.

  It is too long ago.

  I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

  - Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice

  Folkestone Academy for Young Ladies

  Near Ascot, England

  Early June, 1882

  There was nothing for it.

  Moira simply had to take a chance and hope that she wouldn’t be caught. Given the news she’d just been delivered, compounding her current punishment was the least of her worries. She needed help and there was only one person who would have as much of a vested interest as she in the outcome of this particular day.

  Opening her chamber door, Moira peeked out into the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief that no one was in sight before slipping out and closing the door behind her. Her slippered feet swept silently across the wooden floors as she dashed down the hall before stopping at the corner to sneak a peak into the next hallway. She repeated the process until she reached the library door.

  Cracking it open just a bit, she peeked in and spotted her prey curled in a large chair with a book, just as she’d expected. Unfortunately, there were a half dozen other girls engaged in the same pastime… as well as one notoriously strict teacher. “Abby!” she hissed into the room but no one stirred. “Abby!”

  The louder repetition earned Moira the attention of one of the other readers whose eyes widened in surprise. Moira jerked her head, pointing to Abby urgently. With a cautious look about the room, the girl kicked out a leg catching the side of Abby’s chair and her attention before pointing to Moira.

  Abby’s eyes widened as well as she sat up straight and cast a glance at the teacher who was scanning the shelves at the far end of the room. “Miss Michaels? Might I be excused for a moment please?”

  The teacher nodded primly. “Please hurry back, Lady Abygail.”

  “Yes, madam, I will. Thank you.”

  Abby stood, smoothing her skirts and moving with well-mannered grace until the library door was closed firmly behind her. “Moira MacKenzie! For pity’s sake, are you mad?” she whispered to her closest friend as she caught Moira’s hand and pulled her into a small, unoccupied classroom two doors down. “You’re confined to your rooms for the remainder of the week, you know. If you’re caught, this time there will be no…”

  “Don’t lecture me right now, Abby Merrill!” Moira interrupted with a slash of her hand. “In desperate times, desperate measures must be taken.”

  “What desperate times?”

  “I just had a telegram from Papa,” Moira relayed urgently. “Jason is joining the Queen’s army.”

  Abby drew back with a blink of surprise. “He would never!”

  “It seems he would.” Moira shook her head. She was still baffled by the news as well. If the telegram hadn’t come directly from her father, she would have thought it nothing more than another of her brother’s pranks. Surely, her grandfather and father probably thought it nothing but a lark at first as well. She could imagine their surprise and dismay when they found out it wasn’t.

  Realizing that she still held the missive crushed in one hand, she smoothed the crumbled paper and handed it to Abby. “Read it for yourself.”

  Abby took the telegram and scanned it quickly. “What madness. He’s your father’s only son, the only heir to both your father and your grandfather. It’s such an ill-considered course of action.”

  “Ill-considered indeed,” Moira snorted. “But I think you know as well as I that Jason never does anything rash all on his own.”

  “What…?” Abby began in confusion before her eyes widened. “No!” The word was whispered in dread but Abby knew very well that, where one went – it mattered not which one – there were two more who followed. Moira’s brother, Jason, and Vincent and Richard MacKintosh, younger brothers of the Earl of Glenrothes, were inseparable friends.

  Moira was right. Jason wouldn’t be doing this alone.

  “Would you like to make a wager on which one of them developed this brilliant idea?” was her friend’s sarcastic reply. In truth, there was no telling which one of the lads had dreamed up this latest outlandish ‘adventure’ but Moira felt certainty settle deep in her core that it had been her brother who instigated the madness. The letters Moira had received from Jason over the last several months hinted at a young man straining at the bit of his responsibilities, longing for freedom. This was simply another flash of rebellion but Jason MacKenzie simply had no right – no business – joining the army. He was the sole heir not only to their father, Jamie MacKenzie, Earl Seaforth, but to their grandfather, Neill Mercea, Marquis of Landsdowne as well! He had responsibilities no matter how roughly they chafed.

  “I cannot believe they would do something so… well, permanent,” Abby said, finally gaining her voice.

  “They are,” Moira insisted. “Read to the end.”

  “‘The lads are on their way to London now. Stop. Plan to take in Ascot before joining. Stop,’” Abby murmured as she read. “Ascot’s only four miles from here.”

  “And Cup Day is today,” Moira finished. “We need to stop them.”

  “Moira,” Abby shook her head. “You are confined to your rooms for your latest escapade and I am also under some scrutiny for my part in it. If we were caught…”

  Moira waved a hand not waiting for her friend to finish. “Does a little punishment truly matter, Abby? You might not care but I’m not about to let my brother do this without giving him a piece of my mind.” Moira drew in a breath, knowing that it wasn’t her brother’s fate alone that troubled her. The time had come to take a stand. “And Vincent MacKintosh better learn right now that he is mine,” Moira said fiercely. “I’m not about to let him leave England and go God only knows where without telling him once and for all that I love him. Are you going to let Richard slip away from you without doing the same?”

  .

  Chapter 2

  My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

  - Ovid

  Richard.

  Just the name was enough to wash away Abby’s misgivings. He was her Richard and always had been… though perhaps he hadn’t yet come to the same realization as she. Abby had known him her entire life. They were friends. She’d always thought she knew him so well.

  Hang it all.

  Surely, the Richard she knew and loved couldn’t possibly be considering such a drastic move. “Richard cannot…”

  “Face it, Abby,” Moira said. “Richard is a third son, after all. He needs to make a living somehow.”

  “And Vin is a second son, but they are MacKintosh…” Abby’s mind swam as denial set in. It was simple lunacy. What reason would any of them have to join the armies? Jason had wealth beyond belief at his fingertips and, younger sons or not, Richard and Vin were MacKintoshs. Everyone knew every single one of the eleven MacKintosh siblings had been left well provided for when their father had died five years before. Neither Richard nor Vin actually required an occupation to support themselves, which really did make this decision of theirs seem more and more of a lark.

  Probably the most idiotic, crackpot move any of them had ever engaged in.

  “This must have been Jason’s idea,” Abby accused with a scowl. “Richard would never…”

  “Aye, your Richard is an innocent angel set upon the earth as a gift from God, to be sure!” Moira cut her off with sarcasm dripping heavily from her light Scottish brogue. “It doesn’t matter whose idea it was, Abby! The fact is, they are doing it even though Pops and Papa tried to talk them out of it.”

  “If your father c
ouldn’t stop them, how do you suggest we might?” Abby leveled an even look at her life-long friend. “I’m assuming you have a plan?”

  “You assume correctly,” Moira grinned wickedly.

  Abby popped her head around the corner and quickly scanned the narrow hallway before her, wondering at the sanity of the plan. Though she and Moira had followed Jason, Vin and Richard about as children, taking part in their fun and attempting to emulate those lads they admired so much, this might be taking things a mite too far.

  With the hallway clear before her, Abby caught up her long skirts with both hands and, lifting them high, approached the hall at a full run. Not ten feet had she gone before a high-pitched voice halted her dead in her tracks.

  “Abygail Merrill!” The voice was full of shock and disapproval.

  Dash it all, Abby thought as she skidded to a full stop nearly tripping over her skirts in the process. Fast, but not fast enough. “Why, good morning, Miss Stapleton,” her sweet voice was laced with innocent surprise.

  The thick, dark brows over the matron’s narrowed eyes snapped together. “Lady Abygail, were you just running down this hallway?” Her voice was heavy with disapproval.

  “Why, Miss Stapleton, I’m shocked you would believe me capable.” Abby tapped her foot impatiently, hoping that the headmistress was not in the mood for a long drawn out lecture as she normally was. After hearing Moira’s plan, Abby had rushed to secure the horses they would need. It was the most visible task in Moira’s tricky plan and given Moira’s confinement to her chambers for their last escapade, Abby had taken the risk, being more capable to talk her way out of a tight situation. Moira always said that Abby could outshine Sarah Barnhart for those skills.

  Innocence in the face of adversity was Abby’s specialty.

  Unfortunately, Miss Stapleton, head mistress and part-time gaol-keep of The Folkestone Academy for Young Ladies was also a fine critic who might have seen Abby perform once too often.

  “You don’t fool me, young lady.” Obviously, no luck was going to shine this day, Abby thought sourly. She was nabbed. “I would think,” Miss Stapleton continued sternly, “that the punishment you are serving now for your last misadventure would deter you from further foolery.”

  No chance of that when ‘foolery’ was all the entertainment to be found at the school that often seemed more penitentiary than prestigious, Abby thought while rocking back on her heels trying to conjure some justification for her behavior.

  Quite frankly, she was running out of plausible excuses.

  Abby shifted from foot to foot once more, knowing that she needed to summon an explanation but, with the urgency of the plan foremost in her mind, she was drawing a blank.

  Sensing this, the head mistress continued her lecture with even more zeal. “At least your American friends have reason for their raucous behaviors, a pair of hoydens from an uncivilized country, but Lady Abygail, one would think better of you, the daughter of an earl! Your little friend, Lady Moira, as well, and she, the granddaughter of a marquis! It must be the Scots blood in you both… wild bunch, indeed! Still, there is no excuse for you, young lady, your mother was a fine English lady from one of the best families in England…” Miss Stapleton’s words drifted along a tangent that had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Her purpose forgotten, as so often happened in recent years. It was a habit of the headmistress’ that often saved Abby and her friends from what might have been even worse punishment when Miss Stapleton forgot her purpose.

  There had been punishments aplenty over the past five years.

  Their history of good behavior at the academy had never been exemplary. At age twelve, Abby had been banished to the school by her new stepmother and, as a true friend might, Moira had begged her father to send her along as well. As the only two Scots admitted to the academy, Abby and Moira were shunned by the highborn, English students for their less than stellar origins, as were the only two American enrollees, Eve and Kitty Preston. As a natural consequence, the four of them had developed the strongest bonds of friendship and relied upon each other to break the tedium of the proper boarding school.

  Not that they deliberately went in search of trouble! It would be accurate to say that they wanted to have a banging good time of life and the trouble just naturally followed. Consequently, they had spent the better part of their incarceration at the school serving the punishments the headmistress, Miss Stapleton, continued to heap on them each time they decided to have a little fun, and as a result, held the distinct honor of being the most frequently punished students in the history of the school.

  At present, Moira was confined to her room practicing her golf swing… in the gardens and at midnight. The fact that she had shanked a drive and broken a window, waking a large portion of the students and teachers, hadn’t helped in keeping their outing a clandestine one. For Moira, there was no chance of parole from her confinement, while Abby had merely been banned from Moira’s company – a testament to her superior acting skills.

  Eve and Kitty were enjoying their freedom merely because they had managed to avoid being caught in the act by making a mad dash into the laundry building. Their American friends were far more fleet of foot than either Moira or herself.

  Miss Stapleton located her train of thought lurking in distant corners of her mind and picked up the threads of her lecture more vehemently, while Abby’s mind drifted aimlessly, thinking of her friends.

  Moira was seventeen, the same age as she, and possessed of a vivid imagination and a natural need to cause trouble. A fine quality, she claimed proudly, instilled in her by her brother, Jason. Jason, along with the MacKintosh brothers, including Richard, Vincent and the oldest brother, Francis, as well as Abby’s brother, Jack, had a long history of troublemaking. Together, the lads had honed their skills in the halls of The Royal Edinburgh High School and Cambridge with pranks of a juvenile nature that usually led from one fiasco to the next, spelling trouble along the way.

  Still, there was no group of lads Abby and Moira had ever admired more.

  Jace, as Moira liked to call her brother, was twenty-two and flirted outrageously with all the girls when he came to visit Moira at school. Many of the faint-hearted would fall into incoherent giggles or dramatically swoon as they peered up into his handsome face. He was very handsome, Abby conceded, with his dark auburn hair and warm brown eyes, his lean body showing off the fine tailoring of London’s latest fashions.

  But then, he was certainly no more handsome than Abby’s own brother Jack, who had come to visit Abby occasionally at the school. Jack was like a dark angel in appearance. He was extremely tanned from his years on the coast of Scotland, his hair was as dark as mahogany with little shimmers of bronze, his eyes were so light brown they also shone like gold. Jack Merrill, whose true name was actually John but was called Jack by all, was twenty-three years of age and an acknowledged rake.

  The students generally hid when he came to visit and merely peeked around corners. They tittered nervously, rather than giggling.

  Absently, Abby wondered how the other students would react if any of the gorgeous MacKintosh brothers came to Folkestone for a visit. Abby bit back a grin of amusement and turned her focus back to her headmistress to gauge whether the woman might be winding down her lecture.

  No such luck.

  Miss Stapleton droned on and Abby itched to slide away, just to see if the headmistress would note her absence as her lecture moved on to the importance of maidenly behaviors. She needed to get back to Moira and let her know that Eve and Kitty were going to help them.

  Eve Preston, at eighteen, was the oldest student at Folkestone Academy. She should very well have left the previous year with the rest of her classmates. She should have returned to New York, had her debut and by engaged by now to the son of some wealthy and prominent New York family. But Eve had stayed on an extra year, refusing to leave without her sister, Kitty, who was seventeen like Abby and Moira.

  Abby was glad that her friend had stayed o
n. These three girls were more a family to her than her own. If she had to live in this veritable prison to keep them together, she would. Either way, this strictly scripted life she led here was certainly better than the circumstances of her home life.

  Her father, Angus Merrill, the Earl of Haddington, had simply become a mean old man in recent years. For sure, he’d never been a soft or affectionate father, but since Abby’s mother died five years ago, he’d gone from gruff to downright nasty. Abby thought it was his own fault. For some reason, just weeks after her mother’s death, he’d scandalously married again. This third wife was a woman more than thirty years the earl’s junior who made his life miserable, and Abby’s as well.

  After just two months of constant battle, that woman, Oona Seton Merrill, had insisted the earl ship Abby off to boarding school. Whether the demand had been meant as punishment or retribution hadn’t mattered to Abby in the least. She had been glad to go and hadn’t been home since.

  Quite frankly, she was hoping she’d never have to go back again, if it meant avoiding Oona. As for a London Season or even a Season in Edinburgh, those daydreams had been quashed long ago. Abby sighed, she would love to have a Season. She and Moira thought the prospect to be highly appealing, but Abby knew her father would never foot the expense of such an adventure. Oona nagged him constantly over their available funds, something Abby’s two sisters shared regularly in their letters. Besides the only young son of a noble family that Abby would ever dream of marrying was Richard MacKintosh. Her Richard, Abby amended and sighed more dreamily at the thought.

  Miss Stapleton, interrupted by the second sigh, interpreted correctly that her errant student was not paying attention to her words. A very sharp “Lady Abygail!” brought Abby back to the present and, with a disarming smile, Abby patted the women on the arm with a meek smile.