Page 14 of Highland Fire

“Oh yes, they work. But they don’t register the correct room.”

“I don’t think I follow you.”

“It’s simple. This is the library. The bell in the pantry, however, has just summoned a servant to attend me in my bedchamber. It’s an infernal nuisance.”

“Oh, quite.”

Moving to the door, Rand flung it wide and bellowed for someone to bring him a fresh bottle of whiskey, preferably one that had arrived in the coach with Mr. Murray.

This was soon done, and both gentlemen were settled on either side of the blazing grate, each reverently nursing a tot glass of the finest vintage malt whiskey. When conversation resumed, it naturally turned to recent events in Strathcairn.

“These tricks remind me of the high jinks we used to get up to when we were undergraduates,” murmured Murray at one point.

“I don’t think they had ever met with our like before at Oxford…

a dozen of us or so, all fast friends from school days, and education the furthest thing from our minds.

If we weren’t thinking and talking about women, we were up to some deviltry or other.

Laughing powder in the masters’ pillows, sugar in the salt bins and vice versa; yes, and that was the least of it.

When I think of the dueling we got up to, I wonder that any of us survived. Whatever happened to Parker?”

The next few minutes were taken up retracing the subsequent careers of their various friends.

It was no surprise to Murray to learn that Rand had kept up with them all, or rather, everyone had kept up with Rand.

As he remembered, it was Rand who had held the group together.

It was Rand’s friendship that each boy had felt himself privileged to enjoy.

Nothing had changed in the intervening years.

A chance remark prompted him to say, “By the by, what was in the decanter?”

“Believe me, John, you don’t want to know.”

“Nasty!” said Murray, and choked back a laugh. Observing his friend’s straight face, he said, “You are not forgetting, Rand, that we pulled the very same stunt on our tutor, old What’s-his-face?”

“Dobson.”

“Yes, old Dobson. And there was hell to pay. God, it was worth it! Shall I ever forget his expression when he discovered that what he was dispensing in the senior common room was not, as he supposed, his prize sherry?”

“I remember,” said Rand noncommittally.

Grinning, Murray went on, “If Dobson could see you now, he would say it was a case of poetic justice. These pranks are scarcely hanging offenses, Rand. You should be laughing them off.”

“And so I would if I thought that they would stop there. I am not forgetting, you see, the boy who tried to lure me to my death. That is a hanging offense.”

“I understood you to say that you might have been mistaken there?”

“Possibly. I shall never know for sure. I went back to the quarry in daylight, did I mention it?”

“Yes. Something about a scree slope where the boy made his jump. Doesn’t that let him off the hook?”

“It may, if he took that into account.”

“I think he did.”

In the process of bringing his glass to his lips, Rand’s hand stilled. “How can you be so sure?”

Murray shrugged. “I’m not sure. But you are here. That must weigh in the boy’s favor. Look here, Rand, you’ve no idea who he is?”

Rand smiled unpleasantly. “I’ve made inquiries.”

“And?”

“And…I have reason to believe that he is kin to one of my neighbors whom I have yet to meet, Douglas Gordon.”

“Daroch?”

“That’s the one. Do you know of him?”

Murray made a sound that was not quite a laugh, not quite a snort. “The whole of Deeside knows of him. He fancies himself a Lothario. ‘The bad boy of Deeside,’ they call him. No woman is safe from him. My advice to you is to keep a close watch on your sisters when they come into Scotland.”

“I think I know how to protect my sisters,” said Rand dryly.

“What? Your reputation as a duelist? Rand, that was all of five years ago, before you went to Spain. You are quite the sobersides now. Besides, your reputation with foil and pistol won’t deter Daroch, quite the reverse.

He fights duels at the drop of a hat. All the Gordons of Daroch have been tarred with the same brush.

” To Rand’s questioning look he answered, “Their weakness for women has been their ruination.”

“Point taken,” said Rand. “At any rate, I have no desire to remove my family to Strathcairn until I can be sure there will be no repetition of the attack on my coach. And the only way I can be sure of that is to find the culprits and punish them or, at the very least, frighten them off.”

“Hmm. Hence your determination to find the boy.”

“Quite.”

“What about the garrison at Braemar? Have you enlisted their help?”

“What can they do but stir up a hornets’ nest?”

“True. To involve redcoats would forfeit you the good will of all your neighbors.” There was an interval of silence before Murray went on, “You must have given some thought as to why you have been singled out in this way? Or are all your neighbors plagued with similar petty annoyances?”

Rand settled himself more comfortably into the depths of his high-backed armchair and allowed his thoughts to wander to two separate and unconnected conversations which had taken place in this very room.

The first was with Jamie MacGregor after church services.

The second was with his factor when Serle had returned from Aberdeen after a fruitless two days’ wait for his master to appear.

Though both men had taken a different tack, the one respectfully reproachful, the other indignantly self-justifying, their views agreed in essentials.

It seemed that Rand’s desire to turn his estate into a chase had enraged the crofters who had been cleared from their homes.

Rand was coming to see that his choice of factor had not been a happy one.

Serle was a lowlander. He did not understand Highland sensibilities.

Though he was an able administrator, he lacked tact.

Nevertheless, Serle had acted on Rand’s instructions, and Rand would permit no man to dictate how he would manage his estates.

When that principle was understood and accepted, and only then, he might be willing to listen to the grievances of his tenants.

Rand rolled his head against the cool leather upholstery of his chairback and gazed at the blaze in the grate through drowsy, half-lidded eyes. “You know very well the answers to those questions, John.”

“Aye. That I do.”

Rand waited. When Murray said nothing, he smiled. “No words of advice? No caveats, John?”

Murray made a small sound of derision. “What would be the good of that? To my certain knowledge, you have never taken anyone’s advice unless it was what you wanted to do in the first place.”

“You’re wrong, you know. Sometimes I do take advice, but only when I ask for it.”

“Are you asking for my advice?”

“No.”

“Fine,” said Murray, and folded his lips together.

A log in the grate collapsed, sending sparks shooting up the chimney. The wind rattled the window panes. By and by, the clock on the mantel struck the hour. The silence lengthened.

Murray unfolded his lips. “What about the girl, Miss Randal?”

Rand pulled a long face. “I’ve exchanged no more than a few words with her. What can I say? She seems unexceptional.”

“Do I detect a note of disappointment?”

Grinning, Rand countered, “Show me the woman who has never disappointed a man’s hopes.”

This observation got Murray started on a catalog of paramours and flirts who had played both gentlemen false over the years, provoking much raillery and good-natured laughter. By the time they had exhausted the subject, they were both in a mellow frame of mind.

“What about David?” asked Murray at one point. “Was he in love with the girl?”

Rand shook his head. “He denied it emphatically, and I have no reason to doubt him.”

“Poor David.” Murray let out a long sigh. “I wish I had taken the time to get to know him better when he was last here. He seemed such a good sort. I don’t recall—did he ever go hunting with us, or fishing?

“On the odd occasion, but very infrequently.”

“Ah, he was spending his time with Miss Randal, was he?”

Rand thought carefully before he answered. “So I presume. I think she was trying to make a convert of him.”

“A convert? What does that mean?”

“A Scotsman!” answered Rand succinctly.

Murray’s eyebrows rose. “And did she succeed?”

“I think she must have done. On the eve of Waterloo, his conversation was all of Scotland and her problems.” Rand allowed himself a small smile. “In his own way, I think David was trying to convert me.”

Murray allowed that thought to revolve in his mind.

He was beginning to form a much clearer idea of why his friend had come to Scotland.

It seemed that David had succeeded where he had failed.

At long last, Rand’s prejudices respecting Scotland were susceptible to change.

Inwardly, he cursed the young Highlanders who had set upon Rand’s coach.

By that injudicious act, they had jeopardized all that David had achieved.

Rand never allowed anyone to force his hand.

Suddenly aware that he had come under Rand’s scrutiny, he raised his glass and gave the Gaelic toast. “ Slainte mhaith , good health to you.”

After this, nothing was said until Rand topped up their glasses. “By the way, John, I’m indebted to you for your advice respecting Glenshiel, advice which I did solicit.”

Murray looked perplexed. “What advice?”

“‘Act like the chief of Clan Randal,’ you told me. And I did. And it worked. Glenshiel called on me yesterday morning.”

“Did he, indeed! And?”

“We are hardly bosom friends, but at least we are on speaking terms.”

“That’s something!”

“Yes, isn’t it? The feud is not turning out to be the insurmountable object I presumed it would be.”

“So now you have the entrée into Glenshiel’s household and access to Miss Randal?”

“Precisely,” said Rand.