Sarah Gabriel (10 page)

“When the teacher leaves Kinloch, we can work in better secrecy,” Hamish said. His brothers nodded agreement.

Dougal was not keen on that any more than his wrenching decision to sell all the brew they had to hand, even that made by his father and stored away, but he had little choice. “I cannot just order the woman off my land and out of my glen.”

“We will find another way,” Ranald said. “Frighten her off, and she will run like the last teacher. She was a bit mouse, that one. Easy enough to—” He stopped, and the others glanced around as if they were not listening.

Dougal frowned. “Did you three do something that made the other teacher leave Kinloch? I never knew quite why she departed so quickly.” He narrowed his eyes.

“Why would we do such a thing?” Ranald asked innocently.

“She did not like Highlanders, that one. Me, I did not speak to her,” Fergus said.

“Tell him the truth,” Hamish said, and looked at Dougal. “The lady knew there were thieves in the hills, and then Ranald warned her about wicked fairies who would steal her away as she slept.”

“I see. And what did Fergus tell her?” Dougal looked at his brawny uncle.

“Nothing much. I only walked around her cottage at night and whistled.”

“So you deliberately frightened that poor wee woman?” Dougal scowled at the three of them.

“Bah, she was a timid thing,” Hamish said. “Nor was she bonny. We did not like her.”

In part, Dougal wanted to cuff each of them;
and in part, he was amused, but would not show it. “Do not think to do that again. Miss MacCarran is not a timid woman.”

“But she is bonny,” Fergus said. “And curious. It is a poor quality in the sister of a gauger.”

“We have only two weeks or so before we move that whisky,” Hamish said. “And it’s nearly time for the spring ba’ game in the glen. Which side will have you for a player?” he asked Dougal. “Drumcairn or Garloch?”

“Kinloch traditionally stays neutral,” Dougal said. “The laird either plays alternate sides or does not take part.”

“You should declare a side this time,” Fergus said. “If you are there, everyone will come to see. It would be a perfect time for us to safely move so much whisky all at once. We three have talked it over, and we agree. It is a good plan.”

“During the ba’ game is the best time, with everyone in the glen involved,” Ranald said.

“The ba’ game? Interesting. It could work.” Dougal nodded, thoughtful. The annual spring ball game, played between the rival villages in the glen, could provide enough distraction so that Dougal and his kinsmen would be able to move the casks from the upper hills to the loch. “Otherwise the work might require several trips over several nights. A fine suggestion.”

“So you had best send the teacher away before then,” Hamish said, “or else…” He paused. “Or you had best make her one of us.”

“What do you mean?” Dougal frowned. “I doubt she would join us on a midnight trip through the hills with a pistol and a pony.”

“He means that a woman of the glen would not talk of what she knows,” Ranald said. “Not even to her brother.”

“How am I supposed to make her one of—oh no,” Dougal said, holding up a hand as he saw the glimmers brightening his uncles’ eyes. “You want me to seduce the woman? Or marry her, to bring her into the glen and make her kin? I will not.”

“Marry her, aye,” Ranald drawled. “I had not thought of that. Interesting that the laird did.”

Hamish laughed. “It is a good idea.”

“Marriage would be good for the lad, hey,” Fergus told his brothers.

“Get him over the black lovesickness.” Ranald grinned.

“Enough,” Dougal growled. “You rascals do not need another scheme between you.”

“Kinloch, the lady is an outsider, come to the glen at the wrong time,” Ranald said. “She will not leave easily, and you will not permit her to be scared off. But a woman who was bound to us by loyalty…that one would not talk. And a wife would be good for you.”

“You do need a wife,” Fergus agreed. “So does Hamish, come to that.”

“I have one. We disagree with each other,” Hamish grumbled.

“Lucy is getting older, Kinloch,” Fergus said.

“She needs a mother, and the teacher could be that for her.”

“Lucy has female relatives. And I do not need a wife just now. We are talking about managing with the lady over two weeks, not a lifetime. All that need concern us now is moving that cargo through the glen without being stopped.”

Hamish clapped Dougal on the shoulder. “All I intended was for you to gain the teacher’s loyalty, and swear her to secrecy. By whatever method you like,” he added. The others chuckled, while Dougal scowled slightly, skeptically, his arms folded.

“She will fall for your charm,” Ranald said. “Did she not the other night?”

“Of course she did,” Dougal replied, while they chortled. He wished he knew how the lady regarded him; then he reminded himself that he was thinking far too much about her.

“My wife says no lass can resist the laird of Kinloch, and when he decides to take a wife, girls will knock on his door to offer,” Ranald said. “Plenty of lasses have pined for you, though they have never—”

“Oh, they do,” Dougal said. “They just say that they never.”

Fergus hooted, and Hamish frowned. “Why have you not married one of them?
Tcha!
”

“Am I a fool, with the secrets I have, to marry outside the glen now?” Dougal shook his head. “Besides, each one wanted a lad looking for a wife, and I am not that lad. They have all found what
they desired elsewhere, and are happy. I am happy, too—unwed and free to do as I please.”

“Well, it is true the Lowland teacher will be gone soon,” Fergus said thoughtfully.

“We cannot wait that long. We need the money the whisky cargo will bring,” Hamish replied. “There are new leaks in the schoolhouse, and no coin to help us with repairs.”

“What if we told her the place is haunted by the ghost of a scholar who did not succeed? City women are nervous sorts. She will pack for home.” Ranald nodded in satisfaction. “And we can fix the roof later.”

Dougal frowned. “Wait. Think about this. The roof leaks, the walls are crumbling.”

“Aha!” Fergus looked pleased. “If the school cannot be used, the problem is solved.”

“Perhaps.” Dougal turned to look at the school. “A pity, though,” he murmured.

Hamish shrugged. “We will find another teacher for the glen.”

Dougal nodded, distracted as he glanced toward the school. Behind those windows, behind that worn door with its red, peeling paint, she stood. She had come here to help the children of the glen, including his own niece; he was a beast indeed, as she had called him the night they had met, to scheme for her departure. But his intent, ultimately, was to help the glen.

“I know the children need the glen school and this particular teacher, with her willingness to help,” he
told them. “I know that.” He did not say what came to his mind: that he needed her himself—the strange urgency of it kept returning to him, as if his own heart knew something he did not.

Despite his protests, he wanted her to stay for a while—a lifetime, if he dared dream that far. Instinctively he knew that he could be a better man with her than he might ever be without her.

But the fact of her kinsmen was enough to destroy any dream he had for his glen or himself.

“You have secrets to protect here, lad,” Ranald reminded him. “Not just the whisky that must be moved and sold soon, but the fairy brew to be made as well. The time is coming again when you will have to go up the mountain, and see to starting another batch of the brew. As laird, it is your obligation to the fairy agreement each year,” he said quietly. Dougal’s other uncles nodded.

Sighing, Dougal looked out over the landscape, and the broad flank of the mountain that rose not far from the laird’s tower, looming high over Glen Kinloch. “Too much curiosity about our glen is not good now. A Lowland teacher with a gauger for a brother and kinsmen nearby—one with a tourist hotel—could put us in the worst predicament of all.”

“Ach,” Hamish said, grimacing. “Tourists.”

“Aye, tourists might come to Glen Kinloch for its unspoiled beauty,” Dougal said. “And for its proximity to Loch Katrine, site of the poem that has brought so much attention to Scotland.”

“I never read the thing, and I do not plan to,” Ranald said.

“You haven’t the skills to read that great beast of a poem,” Hamish pointed out. “I have, and did not like it much.”

“Dougal read parts of it to me and mine,” Fergus said. “I very much liked it, all that chasing about and the noble rescues, and all. But this glen will not remain unspoiled and secret for long if the tourists come up here.”

“I still think he could do worse than marry the lass and keep her here, if she makes a solemn promise to honor our secrets, and then sends her kin back to the city, where they belong,” Ranald said. “The girl is bonny, the glen needs a teacher, and the laird needs a wife. One as smart as that one will keep him interested, hey.”

“It is not so simple as all that.” Hamish grunted dubiously. “An educated Lowland lady will not want a poor Highland laird with a small estate and a taste for free trading.”

“But if she appreciates the Highlands, as she seems to, she could not find a finer Highland lad or a finer place to live,” Fergus replied defensively. “But after a while, she might be more than ready to leave our glen.” He sighed.

Listening, Dougal glanced at the schoolhouse door again, and heard laughter coming from inside. He nodded, part regret, part resolve. He turned to face his uncles.

“Tell her about the roof,” he said quietly. “The
school must be closed. But first give her a few days to enjoy our glen.”

Fiona sat back on her heels and studied the sketch she was making. The delicate outline of an ancient arthropod, a tiny animal with no backbone, had left its imprint in limestone eons ago. She squinted, corrected the pencil drawing here and there, and then rolled it up firmly to stash it inside her knapsack. She took another small bit of paper, torn from a larger page, and laid it over the stone, rubbing it with the soft graphite to capture the impression of the minuscule animal remains.

Satisfied, she put her things away again, and stood to resume walking across the brow of a hill that overlooked the glen and the loch. The weather was misted and cool that afternoon, and she had let the students out earlier than usual, since several of them said they had chores at home. She understood from Hugh MacIan that many of the glen children had a good deal of responsibility in keeping homes and byres, some of them tending flocks and herds as well. Having no desire to interfere with that, at times she was willing to let them go after morning lessons.

The extra hours gave her a chance to walk the hills in search of fossils for her collection. She had promised her brother James that she would look for certain varieties of rock and take notes on her observations, to assist with a paper he was preparing on the geological nature of the antediluvian earth in the Scottish Highlands. Her knowledge of
fossil remains was equal to his, and her ability to sketch them superior, so that her twin often relied on his sister to provide sketches.

But in this and other hours she had walked over the hills in this glen, she had never seen a trace of fairies. She sighed at the seeming impossibility of it. But armed with her knapsack, containing a notepad and a few Conté pencils, she had set out, again hoping to find something of value.

Wanting to look in an area she and Patrick had passed through when she had first come to the glen, she had headed that way, keeping the loch to her right, so that she could easily return to Mary’s house in a reasonable amount of time.

Seeing a cluster of graywacke rocks ahead, she climbed that way, and knelt to study them. She bent forward, tapping with the hammer in the knapsack, and turning them in her gloved hands, looking for signs of fossils and the different sorts of rock and minerals that might be mingled in the outcrop. The boulders had thrust out of the ground of the hills, and most of the surroundings were covered with grassy turf and heather, the plants still greening and not yet in bloom.

“That is one devil of an insect you found there,” a voice said behind her, and Fiona shrieked, turning to see Dougal MacGregor standing behind her on the hill, studying one of the drawings that had tumbled out of the knapsack.

“Oh!” She set a gloved hand to her chest. “You startled me.”

“Pardon, I did not mean to do that,” he murmured, and dropped to one knee beside her, looking at the drawings, which had spilled out, unrolling. “Very nice. What are these?”

“Arthropods,” she said. “These two are trilobites—the devil of an insect you mentioned, though they were very tiny and probably peaceful enough, just little creatures floating about and eating, procreating, and dying, leaving their impression in forms of mud, which became rock, and preserved them forever.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen these sorts of things before here, but know very little about it.” He glanced at her, his eyes a piercing green, very inquisitive. “Floating about, you say?”

“Some geologists believe that much of the earth was covered with water and oceans, eons ago. Scotland was one of those areas—and when one finds marine creatures, fish impressions and so forth, there must be truth to the theory. It is one of the matters my brother James is dedicating himself to studying. He is a professor of natural sciences in Edinburgh,” she explained. “When I find things like this, it is sometimes a help to him, and so I make a sketch of it.”

“If you cannot walk off with the rock altogether,” he said, hefting her knapsack. She laughed a little, nodding her admittance. “Fish on a Scottish mountain—a curious thought,” he said.

“This one here,” she said, picking up another sheet, “shows the impression of a shrimp.” She
handed it to him. “And here, a whole row of arthropods, left in limestone. I found this on another hill, and made a rubbing of it with the pencil over paper.”

He studied them, turning the page around, and laughed. “Miss MacCarran,” he said as he handed the paper back to her, “in the Highlands, we sometimes call these fairy tracks.”