Page 21 of Highland Fire

That very night, when Murray had trooped off to bed, MacGregor came under a hail of questions respecting the boy who had been with him in the change-house.

MacGregor was no coward, and he had his fair share of Highland pride.

If Rand had raised his voice or had tried to intimidate him in any way, he would have been equal to the occasion.

But his lordship’s benevolent expression and affable manner completely unnerved him.

He had a flash of déjà vu; two of his mates in the army of occupation had been dragged before the Randal and their own commanding officer on charges of rape and looting.

They were lucky to have escaped with their lives.

He replied to Rand’s questions in the vaguest of terms, not merely to save the boy’s neck—indeed, MacGregor flashed a heartfelt prayer to the Deity that he wasn’t standing in Dirk Gordon’s brogues—but to protect them all.

Smuggling was one thing. There was a certain glamour attached to it.

Every man in Deeside was involved in it one way or another, even the rank and file in the garrison at Braemar.

He did not think, however, that the Randal would be very forgiving if he ever discovered the identities of the highwaymen who had attacked his coach the night he had come into Deeside.

Men had been transported to the colonies for less.

MacGregor was not a man who was prone to regrets, but he was now sorry that he had ever had a hand in that puerile misadventure with the Randal’s coach.

At the same time, he was thanking his lucky stars that Daroch had had the good sense to abandon their plan to make life difficult for the English laird.

The Randal, he was thinking, was more than a match for the lot of them put together.

Besides, he really admired the man. It was Serle, the factor, on whom they should have vented their spleen.

He was the one who had cleared the cotters from their crofts.

The Randal, after arriving on the scene, had clipped his factor’s wings.

A few of his cotters, by slow and devious means, were drifting back to their empty cottages, and their laird turned a blind eye to it.

Oh yes, MacGregor was thinking, he truly admired the Randal, but at the moment he feared him more.

“So it amounts to this,” said Rand in summation. “The boy’s name is Dirk Gordon. He is Daroch’s kinsman. You and he were delivering a load of…peat, and on the spur of the moment stopped in at The Fair Maid for a wee dram?”

MacGregor swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Aye.”

“How often do you deliver peat?”

“Rarely! Hardly at all! Almost never!”

Rand smiled at the eager tone, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that appealed to MacGregor.

In an effort to recover the ground he thought he had lost, he began a long and involved explanation of how he had contracted to deliver peat to a number of change-houses all around Deeside.

He concluded by saying, “When I came home frae the wars, it was all I could find to gie me a livin’. ”

This time Rand’s smile was more natural. “Ah, yes. I wondered how long it would be before you harked back to the war, or to your old grandmother…or whatever.”

“Sir?”

“MacGregor, you are an unconscionable rogue!”

MacGregor sensed that the ice had begun to melt, and he let out a telling sigh. “I’m no’ sure I follow ye, sir.”

“Never mind. I believe you. It was all a misunderstanding. The boy wandered into the wrong room and panicked. We shall let it go at that for the present, shall we?”

When MacGregor left Rand’s study, those threatening words, “for the present,” buzzed inside his head.

He hardly knew what he was feeling. He was conscience stricken because it was he who had forcibly thrust young Gordon into the wrong room.

He was annoyed because the lad had acted with all the aplomb of a hysterical virgin.

But mostly, he was alarmed. If the Randal ever caught up with Dirk Gordon…

MacGregor shuddered and resolved to find Daroch at once and tell him what was afoot.

For a long time after MacGregor had quit the room, Rand stared out at the avenue of oaks which graced the wide sweep of Strathcairn’s drive.

In that dim light just before dawn, the oaks had taken on a sinister aspect, had become grim and forbidding and infinitely menacing.

The scene outside matched Rand’s inner mood perfectly.

He was reflecting that MacGregor’s story was reasonably truthful up to a point.

By substituting the words “contraband whiskey” for “peat,” Rand had a fair idea of what was going on.

Having decided that MacGregor and the boy were smugglers, he concluded that Daroch, the boy’s kinsman, whom he had yet to meet, was probably the leader.

The boy was among those who had attacked his coach.

It was reasonable to assume that Daroch and his fellow smugglers were in on that, too.

The smuggling was of no consequence to Rand. The attack on his coach, which he had once viewed as a minor irritation, was far more significant. On reflection, he absolved MacGregor and his cohorts from wishing him harm. The boy was a different matter.

For all his paucity of years, the boy was the real threat.

Rand could not accept that he had panicked when he had walked into the wrong chamber.

Dirk Gordon wanted his blood. The niggling doubt in Rand’s mind had been quashed when the boy had calmly stood by while he, Rand, had almost foundered in a desperate bid to save him from drowning.

What stuck in his craw was that last insult—the salute with which the boy had taunted him before making his escape.

Inconceivable as it seemed, Rand was forced to conclude that young Gordon was out for revenge.

He had taken a whipping, and Rand must be punished for it.

This was something Rand would not tolerate, not only for his own sake, but for those who were close to him.

Very soon, his mother and sisters would be arriving in Deeside.

Dirk Gordon must be stopped before matters got out of hand.

When he finally picked up the candle to light his steps to his bedchamber, he was thinking that it was more than time he made himself known to his neighbor, and he was willing to wager that Daroch had returned from his jaunt to Aboyne.

Caitlin thunked the teapot on the table and rattled the teacups. Daroch was absently picking at a dish of shortbread and gave no sign that he was aware of her displeasure.

Finally coming to himself, he said, “She refused to see me. I could hear her at the piano, but the maid said that Miss Fiona was not at home. Now why would she do such a thing?”

“You tell me.” Caitlin’s tone was decidedly unsympathetic. Seating herself, she studiously poured from a silver teapot.

Daroch accepted the cup and saucer from her hand, and threw her one of his coaxing grins. “I prefer strong tea. I don’t suppose there’s a wee dram to go in it?”

“I’m clean out of wee drams. Have another shortbread.”

“What? Oh, thank you.” It was beginning to register that he was no more in favor with Caitlin than he was with Fiona. Setting down his cup and saucer, he said, “Stop playing cat and mouse with me, Caitlin. Out with it. What have I done to annoy you?”

Caitlin looked him over as though he were a dead roach she had found under the last shortbread on her plate. “Mollie Fletcher,” she said simply, succinctly, and with undisguised feminine scorn.

Daroch had the grace to blush. Quickly rallying, he said fiercely, “Mollie Fletcher can mean nothing to you! Besides, gently bred girls should know nothing of such things, let alone mention them.”

“Ah, but you see, I am not gently bred, and”—she broke off a piece of shortbread and nibbled daintily—“and though Fiona most certainly is, I don’t think she sets much store by these fusty old precepts.”

At the mention of Fiona’s name, Daroch visibly started and made to push back his chair. Bocain, who was keeping a watchful eye on things from her favorite spot on the hearth, rose slowly to her feet. Her lip was curled, and the sound that issued from her throat resembled distant thunder.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” advised Caitlin conversationally, “or you may find yourself without a finger, if not a hand. Good girl, Bocain. Down!” She smiled her approval.

When Daroch sank back in his chair, the deerhound resumed her former languorous pose. “That dog is a menace,” he said indignantly. “Why you allow her in the house, I shall never understand.”

“She’s a pet, that’s why.”

“Bah!”

Caitlin’s eyes twinkled. She and Daroch had had this argument before.

He was Master of the Deeside Hunt. His foxhounds—vicious unpredictable creatures in Caitlin’s opinion—were kept under lock and key.

His hunting dogs were work dogs. The notion that someone might wish to keep a dog as a pet was foreign to Daroch, nor did he approve of it.

“Look here,” he said, “you’re not telling me that Fiona knows anything about Mollie?”

“I don’t see how she can not know. Glenshiel loses no opportunity in blackening your character.

Somehow, he got wind of your little ladybird”—she spoke the last word with relish—“and regaled us with the juicy details over the dinner table.” That wasn’t quite true.

It was MacGregor who had given Caitlin the juicy details the night they had stopped in at The Fair Maid.

Her grandfather had alluded to Daroch’s absence in broad hints.

No fools the ladies, they had taken his point.

“But…” Daroch combed his fingers through his hair. “But…that means nothing at all, not to men of the world, and what’s more, your grandfather knows it. From what I’ve heard, he was no saint in his youth.”