Page 66 of Laird of Secrets
“It was very thick on the hillside, and bothered me, but it will clear soon.”
“My mother had a good remedy for coughs—whisky with honey and hot water. Will you take a wee dram of it? Some ladies think it improper, but whisky is very good for the health of the body. Many Highland ladies takeuisge beathaevery evening—and some more often than that.” She grinned.
“Thank you,” Fiona said, feeling another tickling cough. Her voice was growing hoarse when she spoke again. “Sometimes my nurse gave me a whisky and honey remedy when I was a child in Perthshire.”
“Perthshire, is it? Very good, Miss. You are part Highlander, for all that you came up from the Lowlands. Will you be staying the night, then?”
“Perhaps I will.” She made up her mind as a glance out the window showed that the sky was already dark. “Kinloch extended the invitation, and I am a bit tired. Can someone bring word to Mrs. MacIan, so she will not worry?”
“The laird said he would send a lad to do that.”
Fiona nodded and sipped, the tea soothing her throat. Noticing that her garments still smelled of smoke, she brushed at her skirts. “I wonder if I could wash up,” she said.
“I will prepare a bath for you, with a good soap that my mother makes from lavender and heather bells. If you do not mind me saying so, you do smell badly of the char.” Maisie wrinkled her nose.
Fiona laughed, not used to such frankness in serving girls; her great-aunt Lady Rankin would never have tolerated an opinionated maid in the household. But Fiona found Maisie charming, friendly, and not at all rude. When the girl left the room, Fiona heard one of the dogs barking elsewhere in the house. She set down her teacup to walk to the window to peer out.
In the gloaming, looking across the fields surrounding Kinloch House, she saw a man running, and recognized Dougal MacGregor—the rhythm of his stride, the set of his shoulders, the dark banner of hair were etched in her mind. Then she realized he was not heading for the slope that led to the burned-out still.
Instead, he was going in the opposite direction, taking a slope that would take him to the mountainside where she had first met him.
She frowned, watching, wondering where he was going.
* * *
Later, Maisie led her upstairs to the guest room on the uppermost floor, following the stone turning stair up to the fourth level, past wide landings that opened on to other chambers. The uppermost bedchamber, small and snug, had a beautiful, aged simplicity in its sturdy poster bed hung with pale brocade curtains, a highly polished table, an ancient ironbound trunk, a threadbare patterned carpet, and a narrow arched window set with stained glass above the lower casement. The furnishings hinted at generations of past wealth come to the genteel poverty common to so many Highland aristocratic families after the years of rebellion had changed life in Scotland in so many ways.
That sense of better days long past seemed everywhere in Glen Kinloch, she thought. Thanking Maisie, she shut the door and turned, brushing a hand over the bedcover, going to the window to gaze out at the lowering night sky.
And she shook her head in silence, wondering how she could ever satisfy her grandmother’s request to marry a wealthy Highland laird. That was an ironic expectation—many Highlanders had suffered in the past few generations, with fortunes lost. Nor would she consider wealth when contemplating marriage. She would far rather have a caring husband and the comfort of a loving home. A home very much like this one, she thought.
But Lady Struan’s demands interfered with her dreams. The inheritance would not come to the MacCarran siblings unless they met outlandish terms. James had been lucky. Chance had brought him exactly what Grandmother had wanted for him.
Fiona doubted she could ever be that fortunate. She would rather marry a proud, humble man like Kinloch, wealthy or not. Despite that he was a rogue and a smuggler, she knew at heart he was a good man—and charismatic, mysterious, fascinating, at times simply infuriating. And she only longed to be in his arms, craved the searing, unexpected passion she had tasted too briefly with him.
If Lady Struan had asked her, Fiona would have said she wanted love and adventure more than wealth and social status and a staid, safe existence. She wanted honesty, vibrancy, passion for life.
Sighing, she turned away from the gathering darkness and went to the door. Not tired yet, keyed from the evening’s events, she decided to go to Kinloch’s little library to read for a while. Heading back down the stairs, she found the door on the second level that Kinloch had shown her earlier. It stood open and waiting.
Had she not already been smitten with Kinloch House and its laird, she would have fallen in love the moment she had seen his library. A few good books, he had said. She laughed softly as she strolled past the full bookshelves. Glad to find a glowing lantern there, and three blazing candles in pewter holders on the table, she turned to look more closely at the books.
The room was fitted with bookshelves, floor to ceiling around the walls and the window opposite the door. The low ceiling had painted wooden beams, peeling and quite old. The shelves were crammed with books—a thousand or more on the shelves, interspersed with small treasures—paintings, figurines, colored glass bottles and silver flasks, even a delicately painted world globe. An oak table took up the center of the room, its surface scattered with papers and books. A wing chair in faded red was angled by a window, the table beside it piled with another untidy stack of books.
The room seemed to echo the presence of a man who was highly intelligent and curious, and not particular about orderliness. Fiona smiled to herself, dragging her fingers along the shelves, delighted with what she found: Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton; an encyclopedia series; scores of books on science, agriculture, practical farming and domestic matters; handwritten journals bound in leather and tied with ribbon, marked with dates along the spines, likely household accounts. There were works of poetry, too, including Spenser’sFaerie Queeneand Percy’sReliques of Ancient Poetry, tucked alongside novels, nature studies, and travel narratives.
He had said the collection was modest; it was also excellent. Works by native Scottish writers filled a few shelves, including Burns, Hogg, MacPherson, even an old edition of Blind Harry—and several of Sir Walter Scott’s works as well, poetry and novels. The author had not yet publicly admitted to writing those anonymous books, although Fiona and her family, being good acquaintances, knew the authorship. YetIvanhoeand others were grouped with Scott’s well-known poetry as if the library’s owner either knew or suspected what else Scott had written.
One end of the table had a stack of paper with pens and inkpots, along with a slim red leather volume ofThe Lady of the Lake, several of its pages marked with torn slips of paper. Fiona flipped through the pages, noticing pencil lead underlining phrases: the quiet tracks of a thoughtful man who claimed disinterest in his own education, yet clearly cared about writing, books, and poetry.
So MacGregor of Kinloch, smuggler and rogue, very much favored books, poetry, fiction, and book-knowledge of every sort. Smiling to herself, bemused, Fiona noticed writing on one of the pages, and picked it up.
A fat, childish hand script had earnestly copied some lines from one of Scott’s collections of old Scottish verse:
O hush thee, my babie, thy sire was a knight,
Thy mother a lady, both lovely and bright;
The woods and the glens, from the towers which we see,
