Page 6 of Laird of Secrets
“No one else wanted to come up here,” he pointed out.
“But it is a lovely place,” she murmured, glancing around. “I do not want to end up another spinster in Edinburgh, attending charity meetings and social gatherings, and finding dull ways to fill time. I do find the charitable work interesting, as long as I can travel a bit and do something useful.”
“You will never end a spinster, I guarantee it,” her brother said. “What does your group call itself—ah, the Edinburgh Ladies’ Society for the Betterment of the Gaels. Haughty as it sounds, you do good work.”
“The ladies are genuinely dedicated to helping Highlanders.”
“And delighted to find a lady fluent in Gaelic who is willing to go up into the remote hills, thus allowing the rest of the ladies to stay home.”
“Some do what I do. The Deputy Lord Provost’s daughter, for one. Miss Graham—well, not unattached now, since she found her Highlander. That same notorious smuggler that you mentioned earlier.” She smiled, thinking of her friend Ellison Graham, who had indeed made a good match to a fascinating, and quite devastatingly handsome, Highland man. “If not for the distraction of the charity work, I might have given in to grief…after Archie’s death.”
“Not you,” he said. “You are too strong.”
Fiona shook her head. She had come close to being a widow rather than a bereaved cousin. Archie had been everything to her, and they had talked of marriage, even elopement, being third cousins. But she had been young, and now she was determined never to make the mistake again of loving someone so completely that she would give up her life for him—only to lose him so suddenly. She should have learned to avoid hurt when her parents had died, and she and her brothers so small. Well, now she knew to steel her heart against loving too much.
“Patrick, do go and meet your boat,” she urged. “I promise to return to Edinburgh by summer, with or without fairy drawings.”
“What about the required wealthy Highland husband?” Patrick lifted a brow.
“Is that a contradiction in terms these days? There will not be one here in this poor glen, as you say. I consider many other qualities far more important in a husband than wealth. Though I may yet resign myself to spinsterhood.”
“You are a lovely, intelligent lass. And you have rejected every suitor so far.”
Not Archie, she thought, glancing away. “They were interested in what I might inherit from Lady Struan. Truth is, we all lack a fortune until her will is satisfied.”
“Nonsense, however well meant, is still nonsense.”
A breeze stirred her bonnet ribbons. “It is so beautiful and mystical here, I think I could believe any legend in this place.”
“Not I,” he said. “How much longer will you be?”
“A little while more—it seems a good area for fossils. They could help prove a new theory that a catastrophic flood brought primeval waters as high as these very mountains.”
“No more talk of ancient marine insects,” he groaned, then sobered. “Be careful, Fiona. Glen Kinloch is not all pretty legends.”
“Aye, sir.” She kissed his cheek, and he turned to descend, waving a hand.
Retrieving a small hammer and chisel from her canvas knapsack, Fiona knelt to angle the chisel point against a rock, smacking the handle with a hammer.
Her grandmother’s intentions were not entirely demented, she thought as she wrapped the dislodged stone chunk in a cloth and tucked it in the canvas sack. She would not mind finding a Highland husband with a title and fortune if he was a good man with a good heart.
But her grief over losing her fiancé, Archibald MacCarran, her distant cousin, lingered still. Eight years earlier, he had died a hero on a bloody field of Quatre Bras, just before Waterloo. Her brother James had been injured in the same battle. And she had her own wounds, carrying hidden scars of the heart.
But she had learned to accept her situation, accept losing her dreams of a husband, family, and a home in the Highlands. Grandmother may have wanted her granddaughter to find happiness again. But no magical solution would bring that bliss to her again. Love’s magic was surely gone. She hefted the hammer and chisel again, resuming her work.
Moments later, she stopped as a strange prickling ran along the back of her neck. She felt as if someone was watching her. Then she heard a sound like a crisp footfall.
“Who’s there?” she called, looking around. “Patrick?”
Her voice echoed softly. Shivers ran down her back. Though she breezily dismissed such things, she secretly believed in the possibility of haunts, bogles, and fairies. She was not always the practical, calm, capable—and dull—girl most thought her to be. She still had a bit too much imagination, though she had tucked dreams and hopes away.
The hillside suddenly seemed eerie and deserted. Fiona shivered, thinking of Patrick’s stories of rascals in the hills. Seeing a glint among the rocks, she gasped. But it was just the glitter of quartz crystal, so common in deposits of limestone and sandstone.
She had work to do. Lifting her knapsack, she walked upward.
Chapter 2
The woman moved like a dream through the mist, like a fairy queen in her fog-colored gown. Just a glance told him she was graceful and beautifully made, with a mysterious allure he could sense from where he stood. With such a woman as that, his days, nights too, might be filled with the happiness that eluded him.
