Page 11 of Laird of Secrets
She blinked. He had not noticed how blue her eyes were, like a sparkling lake. He felt something intangible within him shift, become a need, a craving. He frowned at himself, not her, as he offered his hand.
She ignored it and extended her gloved hand to his kinsmen. “Gentlemen, I am pleased to meet you. I am Fiona MacCarran, come from Edinburgh to Glen Kinloch to teach at the glen school.”
She had not introduced herself to him so sweetly as that, Dougal thought, scowling. So she was the teacher. He had not even asked, he reminded himself.
“Ah, our new dominie! And such a pretty lass too. Not like the last one, hey.” Ranald’s big paw closed over her slim hand.
Beside him on the crossbench, Andrew nodded. At fourteen, swathed in plaid like a Highlander and trousered like a Lowlander, intent on acting like a man, he was easily dumbstruck by a pretty lass. “We thought you’d be old and ugly,” he croaked, blushing.
“Young or old, she’s still a problem,” Dougal snapped. “Hurry!” He took the girl by the waist, his hands neatly fitting her taut curves. “In you go.”
“No,” she said, as he dumped her over the side into the hay.
Dougal tossed her knapsack after her, set one foot to the hub of the wheel and leaped inside. His kinsmen gaped at him. “Gaugers on the road,” he explained. “Two, coming this way. Hurry, lads.”
“Och!” Ranald said. “Hide, then! Cover yourselves with that old plaid back there. If they see the new teacher in our cart, they will want to know why.”
Dougal snatched a rumpled plaid lying in a corner of the cart and tossed it over himself and the girl. She gasped in surprise as he pushed her down beside him in the hay, pulling her close under the musty tartan covering.
She shoved at his chest. “What are you doing! Let me go!”
“Soon. You are safer with us than with those gaugers.”
“Even if one of them is my brother?” She pulled away.
Just as he thought. “So your brother is the new gauger down the loch.”
“Aye, and you will regret holding me against my will.” She shoved at him. Dougal caught both her hands in one of his. He peered out from under the blanket.
“Do either of you know the gaugers up ahead?” he hissed at his kinsmen.
“Too far away,” Andrew answered. “Does it matter who?”
“Her brother is the new excise officer.”
“Och, that’s trouble then,” his uncle growled.
“What sort of trouble?” the girl asked in Gaelic, the language the MacGregors had used, a quick and fluent mix of Gaelic and English. Dougal sighed. He should have known that the teacher would understand every word they said.
“Hush,” the men said in unison.
“Hide her, and yourself as well,” Ranald said. “I see them now. Andrew, take the reins.” Dougal felt the cart lurch as the horse stepped forward.
He yanked the blanket over his head and over the girl’s too, settling beside her under its darkness. “Hush,” he reminded her again, his face close to hers in the shadow of the woven covering.
“I will not hide from my brother or his men.” She began to struggle, and the blanket slipped from their heads.
Click.Hearing a gun latch, Dougal glanced up to see a glinting barrel poke through an opening in the folds of the plaid. Ranald held the pistol. “No word from you, lass. Do as the laird says.”
“What the devil, Ranald,” Dougal muttered.
“Mr. MacGregor,” Miss MacCarran said crisply in Gaelic, “put that pistol away.” She reminded Dougal of a teacher he once had: a stern and handsome woman whom he, a small boy, had unabashedly adored.
His big, beefy, fearless uncle hesitated. “Begging pardon, Miss, but you must do as the laird says, or we will have trouble.”
“I need not hide. Those officers of the law are colleagues of my brother. And you, I now realize, are scoundrels,” she added.
Dougal sensed the snap of anger in her voice, saw indignation spark in her eyes. Impressed with her ire—and her deft command of Gaelic—he was not going to debate the worth of gaugers versus smugglers with her. She was disposed to like one and not the other. And his idiot uncle waving a pistol about did not help. “Ranald, set that thing away,” he snarled.
