A Highland Folly (24 page)

“So you wanted to find out if Lady Kinloch truly cares for you as Lucais MacFarlane instead of being eager for your title of Lord Chesterton.” His father sniffed derisively. “Why did you choose now to be such a sawney? And with a Kinloch?” He sighed. “You know such a match may be impossible.”

Lucais's brow lowered. “You are jesting, aren't you? I know we have stayed much to ourselves on this side of the Abhainn an Uruisg while the Kinlochs have kept themselves on the other bank, but the ancient ways are going to be useless when the bridge spans the river.”

“It may take more than a bridge to span the chasm between the two families, depending on what was in those letters.”

“What could be in them that matters after almost two hundred years?”

The marquess's face grew taut. “The truth.”

Anice flinched as she heard the harsh crash of rock against rock from near the Abhainn an Uruisg. Iron bridges might be common in England, but here the road crew was depending on the ready supply of stone that had been blasted from the ridge along the river.

The breeze tugged at the pages in the box on her lap. She had come up here by the cottage to go through them because she knew here she would neither be interrupted nor have to explain what she was doing. Her family might not be pleased to discover that she wanted to find the missing letter Lord Chesterburgh believed was at Ardkinloch. In the past few days, she had read birth records and death records and slips of paper listing how many sheep had grazed on the hill in the early eighteenth century and how much the rents for the houses in Killiebige had been seventy five years before. Nothing had resembled a letter from someone at Chester Hills to someone at Ardkinloch.

Picking up another page, she glanced at it. She flattened it on her lap and squinted to read the faded handwriting. When she saw the date on it was from the mid-seventeenth century, she tried to puzzle out the words that had nearly vanished into the yellowed paper.

“What are you reading, Lady Kinloch?”

She looked up to see Sir Busby. “Just some of my grandmother's old papers.” Looking beyond him as she folded the sheet and put it back into the box, she asked, “How did you get here without Bonito following you?”

“He has been ignoring me lately.”

“I didn't realize that.” She had come to trust the llama's reactions to people. When they had first arrived in Scotland, Bonito had greeted Sir Busby as soon as he stepped onto Ardkinloch land.

As he now did with Lucais.

Lucais! She did not want to think of him and how he had expected her to heed his accusations, which he had made on the slimmest of evidence. Although she would not be surprised if either Neilli or Parlan or both had had some hand in a few of the pranks, she could not believe they had set fire to the camp.

She should be furious at Lucais, and she was. Despite that, she found herself so often thinking of his smile in the moment before his lips slanted across hers as his broad hands swept up around her. Losing herself in that rapture had been exquisitely enchanting, and she wanted it again.

“May I?” Sir Busby asked, pointing to the rock where she was sitting.

“Yes,” she said as she tried to rearrange her thoughts, pushing those tantalizing fantasies aside. “Please do join me.”

“I trust I am not intruding.”

“No, of course not.” Anice frowned when she noted how his hands were trembling. Something was distressing her neighbor. Foreboding sank through her stomach. Sir Busby had been this upset at the beginning of the archery contest. Only partway through did he have to own that it had eased the strain between the Scots and the roadmen. “Is something amiss, Sir Busby?”

“We need to speak.” He kneaded his hands anxiously as if he were trying to get sensation back in them after a frigid winter walk along the high braes.

“If you want to know if I have changed my mind about the road project—”

“No, I wish to speak of something more personal than the road.”

Anice smiled as she saw his nervous expression. He had called at the house twice in the last week and had spent time sharing some tea with her and Aunt Coira. By how he had looked about the house expectantly, she was sure he had been hoping to see Neilli coming to join them.

Setting the box of papers on the ground by her feet, she said, “Please speak frankly, Sir Busby.”

“I think it would be wise for you and me to consider a match, Lady Kinloch … Anice, if I may be so bold.”

“You and me?” Her voice squeaked on the words.

“It is logical.” He sighed. “And it seems it is quite the time for someone to be logical.”

“But you have a tender spot in your heart for Neilli.”

“She is quite resolved to make herself a match with MacFarlane.”

“You know that?”

He patted her hand, and she knew her wince must have been visible. “I know that is not something that pleases you, Anice.”

“No, it doesn't.” She did not say more because she wanted to keep from hurting his feelings when he was being so kind.

“She is all atwitter in believing that he is the man she should wed. With her settled, it seems logical that you and I should—”

“Stop saying that.”

“What?”

“Logical!” She jumped to her feet. “Sir Busby, there should be nothing logical about love. It should be a form of madness, a disease that steals all common sense, a fever that sears the mind of wisdom and dares a soul to try the impossible.”

“Mayhap.” Again he sighed as he stood. Taking her hands, he said, “I am not so sure that is what a lifelong love is. I once thought I knew. Now I am not so sure.” He met her gaze steadily. “What I do know is that our families' lands abut, and it would be good for this glen and our families for a match between us.”

“And for us? Would it be good for us?”

His voice wavered as he said, “I would like to think so.”

“Sir Busby,” she answered, forcing a smile for this gentle-hearted man, “it may be that you are correct. It may be that love is simply a madness that does not last more than a short time.”

“So you will agree to marry me?”

“I will agree to consider your offer.”

He nodded. “That is sensible.”

Anice wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him until he realized that sensible should never be part of a marriage proposal. As he kissed her on the cheek with no more passion than Parlan would have, she mumbled something she hoped he would assume was an excuse for her to leave. She gathered up the box and rushed down the hill to Ardkinloch. For the first time, she sought a haven within its walls, but she could not escape her pain of knowing that if she agreed to the
sensible
thing, it would be because Lucais had left her life forever.

Sixteen

Sound, as white hot as a fired brand, cut through Anice's skull. It threatened to crush her before she was fully awake. Battling with the bedcovers that clung to her like a shroud, she fought to escape. She might have screamed, but her voice never reached her ears. The detonation continued on and on and endlessly on. Clamping her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to protect them, she struggled awkwardly to her knees.

Another crescendo threatened to deafen her. She pulled the pillows over her head, but nothing would halt the cacophony as she quivered.

Or mayhap the whole world quivered. Her bed shook with the concussion of the incredible tumult. Something sliced into the hand that held the pillows over her head. She shrieked again, but her cry vanished into the chaos of a world gone mad.

Silence.

It was as abrupt as the explosions.

Shoving off the pillow and escaping the cloying blankets, Anice stared at the glass sparkling in the moonlight across her bed. Not moonlight, she realized, when the light flickered.

Fire!

She jumped down from her bed, taking care to avoid the shards of glass lying like heated ice on the floor. She found shoes and drew them on and rushed to the closest window. With a moan, she looked up to see flames above the walls of Dhùin Liath. Whatever had happened had happened there.

The door was flung open. “Anice? Anice?”

“I am all right.” She pulled the sash from her wrapper that was draped over the foot of her bed. Wrapping it around her bleeding hand, she edged around the glass that had erupted from the window to shatter all around her bed. Her ears rang so with the concussion of the explosions that she was unsure if she was shouting or whispering. “Is anyone hurt?”

Aunt Coira wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head. “I don't know.”

“We must check. Let me wake Neilli. She can help us.”

Anice was rocked back against a chair as another detonation turned the night sky to a deathly white. Lurching toward Aunt Coira, she put her hand on her aunt's arm. Aunt Coira stood in the middle of the doorway, blocking it.

“Aunt Coira?” Anice asked. “Will you let me out?”

“I don't know.”

“Aunt Coira …” Taking her aunt by the shoulders, Anice shook her gently.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know what?”

Tears rolled down her face. “Gone.”

Anice's breath caught in horror. “Who's gone? Neilli? Parlan?”

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“I don't know.”

Pushing past her aunt, Anice ran along the corridor. She threw open the door to Neilli's rooms and went into the bedchamber. As she had feared, the bed had not been slept in. She ran along the corridor to Parlan's rooms. They were as empty.

She shouted to Webber to check on the household and find out who was hurt. “Have you seen the twins?” she asked over the banister as she came down the stairs.

“No. I have been looking for them, too.” He glanced toward the wall where the light from the fire was silhouetted. “They do not seem to be in Ardkinloch.”

“Keep looking for them.” She rushed out of the house.

Smoke burned in every breath she took as she raced to the barns and grabbed three buckets. The sheep in the fold were massed in one corner, huddled together in fear. Seeing Bonito among them, she hurried past. He could offer them as much comfort as she at this point.

Pippy came running, yelping in excitement, as she went out through the gate. Behind her, shouts let her know others had seen the fire at the old castle and were following.

Turning, she called, “Bring all the buckets you can.”

The pails she carried banged against her legs as she leapt up the brae. She was knocked from her feet when a spiral of fire soared from within the tower. Rock crashed to the ground and rolled down the hill toward the river. Great pieces of stone bounced like a child's ball.

In horror, she stared at the road camp below the ridge. The motion of lights warned that Lucais's men had already abandoned the camp and were farther along the river toward Chester Hills.

The road on this side of the river had vanished. In its place, a mound of dirt and rocks, many the size of a full-grown sheep, divided Killiebige from the half-built supports of the bridge. She frowned when she realized that even the river had been altered, dammed by trees that had been uprooted, their branches groping helplessly across the ground.

“Watch out!” came a bellow from behind her.

“Pippy!” she cried, jumping into a stand of trees.

The dog raced after her and leaned against her as she knelt behind a rock at the base of the trees. She clung to the dog and the buckets as a boulder rolled past, crashing into the cottage farther down the hill. Pippy whined fearfully, then sat up, his ears perked as his tail wagged.

Anice looked up, knowing who she would see. Flinging her arms around Lucais, she said, “Thank heavens, you are alive.”

His answer was sealed to her lips as his mouth captured hers. Her fingers swept up through his hair, holding him to her. She did not want to let him go again. She wanted to be in his arms, where she could make believe that there were no unspoken truths that seemed eager to doom this ecstasy. All the longing that had been denied for the past weeks burst to life, as hot and uncontrollable as the fire in the old castle.

At the thought of Dhùin Liath, Anice drew back and gasped, “How did you get here? The road is gone between your camp and Killiebige.”

“I climbed over those rocks.” He held up his scratched hands. “What are
you
doing up here?” He tugged her back to the ground as another hunk of stone rolled toward them and past. Shouts came from below as more people sought to get out of the way of the rocks falling down the brae. “I could not believe my eyes, Anice, when I came up to Ardkinloch to make certain everyone was safe and I saw a stream of people pouring out of its walls. Why aren't you staying inside them, where you'll be safe?”

“Neilli and Parlan are missing.”

“And you think they are up at the castle?” He glanced down the hill. “They could be in Killiebige.”

She looked at the village. Peering through the darkness, for the smoke was swallowing the thin moonlight, she gasped, “There is the kirk! Reverend Dole must have lit a lantern in the steeple to let us know the village is still there.”

“Except for its windows, when I passed it, the kirk seemed to be unscathed,” he said quietly. “Everything in the center of Killiebige escaped much damage. Some of the houses closer to the river may have to be torn down, because I doubt if they are steady any longer.”

“The people?”

His lips tightened in a caricature of a smile. “One would think they had been forewarned, because no one was in the houses by the Abhainn an Uruisg. Who do you think told them to get out? Your cousins?”

“I don't know!” Realizing her voice sounded as panicked as Aunt Coira's, she added, “Someone has been up at the castle again in the past few nights. I have seen more lights up there.”

Again he swore. “Why didn't you tell me, Anice?”