Page 18 of Highland Fire

There were two Miss Randals of Glenshiel. Which one had been in David’s mind when he had begged him to come into Scotland? This question occupied Rand’s thoughts.

“It must be Miss Fiona,” he mused aloud.

“I could not agree with you more,” responded John Murray, in a bored tone. The subject of Miss Randal of Glenshiel was one that had been explored ad nauseam in his opinion.

The gentlemen were taking a last turn around the grounds before turning in for the night. For November, the weather had been splendid. No huntsman could have asked for better, and Murray was regretting that he could not linger at Strathcairn for many more days.

Across the river, the lights of Balmoral Castle could be seen, and close-by, the lights of the Mill of Balmoral. Even as Murray watched, the lights of the mill were extinguished, and he wondered what could be keeping Robertson, the miller, so late from his bed.

“Caitlin Randal and David? I just can’t see it,” said Rand.

“Frankly, neither can I.” To Murray’s way of thinking, Rand was creating problems where none existed.

He had met both Miss Randals in the last weeks, and it was patently obvious to him that only one of them had the power to attract a gentleman of discriminating taste.

Miss Fiona was a beauty. Her manners were delightful.

Miss Caitlin, on the other hand, was a dowd whose manners verged on the deplorable.

They’d met the girl quite by chance outside the apothecary’s shop in Ballater.

As was to be expected, Rand’s address was flawless.

He made no impression on Miss Caitlin Randal.

The girl had all the finesse of a frozen fish.

Her dog, a monstrous creature, had shown more warmth.

The hound had taken one look at Rand and had turned pure coquette.

There was no other way to describe it. Eyelashes batting, whimpers indistinguishable from simpers, tongue lolling, the dog was a hilarious spectacle.

“Rand has this effect on females,” Murray had said humorously, trying to crack the ice that encased the ill-favored old maid. He’d made to scratch the dog’s ears, as Rand was doing, but the hound had suddenly turned nasty, and he’d quickly withdrawn his hand from those ferocious fangs.

“Upon my word! What’s got into her?” he had asked, cautiously backing up a step or two.

“That dog,” said Miss Randal, looking daggers at the object in question, “is as thick as a plank,” and so saying, she’d turned on her heel and left them.

Murray shook his head as if to clear his thoughts of the provoking chit and gazed reflectively at his companion. Before Rand could continue with the boring subject of Miss Randal of Glenshiel, he adroitly changed the direction of their conversation. “I’m onto you, Rand.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The game we have bagged this week past? I know that most of it has been distributed to the tenants who were cleared from your lands.”

“What of it?”

“Only this. It seems to me you would do well to allow them to return to their homes.”

“I may yet, but not before certain parties have come to understand that there is a principle involved here.”

“What principle is that?”

“That I will be master in my own house.”

Murray understood. Rand was set on demonstrating to the young Highlanders who had waylaid his coach that such tactics could not persuade him to do their bidding. In point of fact, such tactics were more likely to achieve the opposite of what they intended.

“What of the boy? Are you any closer to finding him?”

Rand shook his head. “It’s my guess that he went with Daroch to Aboyne. If I were in the boy’s shoes, it’s what I would do. He knows what will happen to him if ever I catch up to him.”

Murray was thinking that if he were in the boy’s shoes, he would not be satisfied until there was an ocean between himself and Rand. What he said was, “When is Daroch due to return?”

“No one seems to know.”

“Aha! With that one, it has to be a woman.”

Rand smiled and said quizzically, “ Cherchez la femme? Yes, the ladies make fools of all us poor men, don’t they?”

This observation led Murray to say playfully, “It’s a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht the nicht.”

“Quite,” said Rand, not even attempting to get his tongue around that old twister.

“A night when a young man’s fancy turns to a bit of sport with the lassies,” added Murray meaningfully.

“What?”

Murray let out a long sigh. “Rand,” he said plaintively, “I am the first to admit that you are an excellent host. The hunting could not be better. Your chef is an artist, and that is no exaggeration. The small dinner parties with like-minded gentlemen, the conversation, the walks, the scenery, the splendid weather—you have arranged everything admirably.”

Rand laughed.

“But where are the girls? Oh, don’t misunderstand.

I know there can be no repetition of the entertainments we indulged in when I was last here.

No need to tell me that you are trying to establish your credit with your neighbors.

But dash it all, Rand, we are two lonely bachelors with time on our hands.

What’s to stop us, if we behave discreetly, from enjoying the fleshpots of Deeside? ”

“The fleshpots of Deeside?” repeated Rand, momentarily diverted. “To my knowledge, there are no fleshpots between here and Aberdeen.”

“Now that is where you are wrong, my friend. I have it on excellent authority—”

“Whose authority?”

“That fellow you hired on as a groom or whatever.”

“Jamie MacGregor?”

“Yes. He’s the one. Mr. MacGregor was so kind as to put me in the way of a snug little change-house, a little off the beaten track, where the barmaids are not precisely barmaids, if you take my meaning.”

When Rand said nothing to this, but merely smiled in a deprecating way, Murray burst out, “I knew it! You’ve fallen for the chit! Oh, don’t try to gammon me, Rand! Yesterday, all during church services, you were practically eating the girl with your eyes.”

It was the truth. For a whole hour, he had scarcely been able to pry his eyes off her.

He still could not see what the attraction was.

She wasn’t pretty. By no stretch of the imagination could she be called that.

But “pretty” had long since come to bore him to tears.

This girl was arresting. There was strength of character in her well-defined features.

She had presence, or she would have, just as soon as someone knowledgeable took over the dressing of her.

Her figure was perfection itself, and all her contriving with the shapeless plaid shawl had been unable to deceive his experienced eye.

It was madness to let his mind dwell on her like this.

There could never be anything between himself and the girl.

In the first place, he was not ready to shackle himself to only one woman, and with Caitlin Randal, it would have to be matrimony.

In the second place, when that unhappy day arrived, he must choose a girl from his own milieu, someone who could preside gracefully over his various establishments. Caitlin could never fit into his world.

In the week since he had come upon her in her uncle’s office, he had learned as much as he could about the girl’s circumstances.

What he had learned had convinced him that she was totally unsuitable.

It wasn’t only a question of her birth. He knew of many men who had married beneath them.

But this girl was a law unto herself. She lived in her own cottage with only a hound for a chaperone.

Her grandfather exercised not the slightest restraint upon her.

She was a dowd. She was eccentric. No man in his right mind would give her a second look, and it irritated him that he was proving to be the exception.

Not that Caitlin had done anything to pique his interest. Far from it.

On the few occasions they had come face to face, she had looked through him as if he were a plate-glass window.

And when he had cornered her, forcing her to converse with him, she was abrupt to the point of rudeness.

Completely reversing his former opinion, he decided that he envied the man who would take her to wife, for that man would have the schooling of her.

The pictures began to flicker behind his eyes. He was stripping her naked, but this time he was tumbling her over his lap and bringing the flat of his hand down smartly on her bare backside.

Observing Rand’s odd smile, Murray’s jaw dropped, and he exclaimed incredulously, “So it is true! You have fallen for the chit!”

Rand’s brows rushed together. “Are you insane?” he demanded. “The woman is impossible! I would not have Caitlin Randal for all the flax in Flanders.”

Murray’s look of incredulity gradually changed to one of awe.

A moment later, he burst out laughing. Between gasps and wheezes, he got out, “Who said anything about Caitlin Randal? It was her beautiful cousin I had in mind. So that’s the way the wind blows!

Oh Rand, this is rich! The dowd and the dandy! Who would believe it?”

Rand’s blue eyes regarded his friend coolly.

When the laughter was finally under control, he said calmly, “A snug little change-house where the barmaids are not precisely barmaids? I think that’s a capital idea.

I’ll have my groom saddle our horses, shall I?

” And he strode off in the direction of the stables, leaving Murray convulsed in a fresh bout of laughter.

Under cover of pulling her cap down to her eyebrows and fussily adjusting the plaid at her shoulders, Caitlin stole a sidelong glance at the young man who sat beside her on the box of the dogcart.