Page 40 of Highland Fire

The glen was to remain cut off from the outside world for another month. When a westerly wind brought a partial thaw, only the road to Aberdeen became navigable. There would be no traversing the mountain passes to the south and Perthshire until the arrival of spring.

For the most part, the vagaries of the climate hardly affected the residents of upper Deeside.

Few had interests or business they wished to pursue outside their own little realm.

Rand was an exception. The long hours he was compelled to while away in his wife’s proximity in enforced celibacy had worked a change in him.

Beneath his calm exterior, he was beginning to feel like a ravening beast of prey straining at the bars of his cage, and he was appalled.

Time was wasting, and he was no nearer to removing the obstacle which kept him from his wife.

If it had been possible, he would have posted down to his estate in Sussex to quiz, circumspectly, his mother and some of his father’s former cronies, his uncle among them.

The condition of the roads hemmed him in.

When winter temporarily relaxed its grip, he seized the opportunity of pursuing a lead that had come to him by way of Jamie MacGregor.

Aboyne was Rand’s destination, to seek out a local celebrity, a man known to be one of the last surviving Jacobite rebels in Deeside if not in the whole of Scotland.

As a mere boy of sixteen summers, Patrick Gordon had forsworn his own clan to come out under the banner of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Rand could not have cared less about the Jacobite Rebellion.

That conflict was almost seventy years past. Since then, Britain had been engaged in other, more crucial conflicts in every corner of the world.

His own generation, in particular, had seen action in Spain, culminating at Waterloo.

His interest in Patrick Gordon was in the man’s reputation as a chronicler of events.

In his time, Gordon had served as bard to the chiefs of the Clan Farquharson.

He possessed an inexhaustible fund of stories on local characters and, since his retirement to Aboyne, was much in demand at weddings and wakes.

He was a spinner of tales, all set to music, and all expurgated or exaggerated according to the company in which he found himself.

He was not precisely an historian. In another time, another age, he might have been a wandering minstrel.

On this particular evening, Rand was feeling none too pleased with himself.

The ride from Ballater to Aboyne had taken longer than he had anticipated, necessitating an overnight stay.

That meant his meeting with Gordon would have to be delayed till the following morning.

He had chosen to put up for the night in a very indifferent inn when he might have taken up more agreeable lodgings in Aboyne’s leading change-house.

The nature of his errand as well as his status as a newly married man only added to his irritation.

He could think of better things to do with his time than hide himself away like some guilty truant who was avoiding his schoolmasters.

At The Twa Craws, Rand hoped to avoid running into anyone who might recognize him.

All his precautions proved to be in vain.

He had hardly sat down to a late supper in the tiny dining room—there were no private parlors at The Twa Craws—when he was addressed by name by the proprietor.

After that, Rand could not hope to remain inconspicuous.

He was waited on with all the pomp and circumstance due a reigning monarch.

Nothing could have been more calculated to drive him away.

Gulping down the dregs of his tea—there was no coffee to be had—he slipped into his greatcoat and exited through the back doors, intending to check the quarters where his horse was stabled.

The light from the porch lantern hardly penetrated more than a few feet from the main building.

Rand had almost traversed the width of the dark courtyard when a coach and pair came careening around the corner of the inn, narrowly missing him, before coming to a shuddering halt.

Having no wish to advertise his presence, Rand checked a rush of anger and stepped to the side, well out of sight.

One of the coachmen jumped down and went to the assistance of his passengers.

A man struggled out of the coach, with what appeared to be a swooning woman clutched to his chest. For a moment, Rand thought he might be witnessing an abduction.

He felt in his pocket for the pistol he carried whenever he was on the road.

“How is he?” asked the coachman, adjusting the loose plaid solicitously around the invalid’s head and shoulders.

“He’ll do until we get him to the infirmary.”

Rand recognized the second voice. It belonged to young Douglas Gordon o’ Daroch.

“Och, a wee tot o’ whiskey will do him the world o’ good.” The coachman’s words were punctuated with chuckles.

Daroch laughed. “It was one tot too many which led to poor Jock’s undoing. God, he’s a dead weight. Here, give me a hand before the redcoats find us.”

Bracing their companion’s weight between them, they pushed through the back doors of The Twa Craws.

Rand hesitated, debating whether or not he should go to their assistance.

He hardly liked to turn his back on anyone who was in difficulty.

On the other hand, he had not formed the impression that there was any urgency in conveying the unconscious man to a physician.

He assumed that Daroch and his friend had been drinking or wenching or both when they had become involved in an altercation.

That brought back fond memories of his own salad days.

Smiling nostalgically, he continued on his errand.

Though not quite up to what Nero was used to, the stable was clean and comfortable, and his bay hardly lifted his head from the pail of oats he was munching.

Rand had no qualms about turning in for the night, not when his groom had found a pallet in the vacant stall next to Nero’s.

There was no sign of the coach and pair when Rand entered the inn.

Wondering a little at this, he mentioned it in passing to the proprietor.

The landlord knew nothing of a coach and pair.

To his knowledge, no one had entered his establishment later than his lordship.

Certainly, no one had ordered a meal or called for a jug of ale or a tot of whiskey.

Rand was more relieved than puzzled. He had no inclination to come face to face with Daroch, necessitating explanations for either’s presence in such an out-of-the-way inn that evening, and he was quite sure that the young laird shared his sentiments.

Bidding the landlord goodnight, he ascended the narrow staircase to his chamber.

Rand’s foul humor had not improved by one iota when he rose from his bed the following morning.

It seemed to him then that he was setting about the thing the wrong way.

What he should have done was approach a bona fide historian, someone like Donald Randal.

Who better than his wife’s great-uncle could answer his questions about her parentage?

Patrick Gordon did not deal in precise truths.

A bard’s chronicles owed far more to fiction than fact.

So why had he come on this wild-goose chase?

He was here because he could not bring himself to embarrass his wife by openly stirring up an old scandal.

Subtlety and finesse were called for here.

A dozen times in the last weeks he had hinted that Donald Randal might give him the information he wanted.

With some people, suggestions and innuendos were as effective as blowing on a bowl of cold porridge to warm it up.

He could not see himself coming straight out and asking point-blank for the name of Caitlin’s father as he had done with Glenshiel.

Caitlin’s grandfather was wise in the ways of the world.

He had a thick skin. Donald Randal seemed almost fragile in comparison.

Any perceived offense to Caitlin would be an offense against himself.

Rand had observed that Caitlin could do no wrong in her uncle’s eyes.

Patrick Gordon lived with a widowed daughter at the eastern edge of the village, and within minutes after Rand had entered the tiny cottage, his ill humor began to fade.

There was something about the old gentleman that he took to immediately.

Those wise old eyes with their mischievous glint were so appealing.

For all his five and eighty years, Gordon was as trim and spry as a man in his prime.

He was one of those ageless types. Neither the lines on his face nor his bald pate with its thin feathering of fine white hair could detract from that first impression of youthfulness.

It was not so with his daughter. Rand was glad that he had kept his thoughts to himself until the introductions were made, for he had mistaken the lady for Gordon’s contemporary. In point of fact, she looked older than her father.

Gordon lost no time in waving his tight-lipped daughter out of the room. As was to be expected in a Highland home, two tot glasses were soon produced and both gentlemen were seated in chairs which practically hugged the fire in the gate.

“Lang may your lummie reek,” said Gordon, raising his glass in a toast.

Rand had only a vague notion of what the words meant, something to do with a smoking chimney, but Caitlin had explained their significance—a wish for prosperity.

“ Slainte mhaith ,” he replied at once, “good health.”

They drank slowly, as was proper, savoring each droplet of the delectable liquid. At the same time, they were taking stock of each other.

Rand had rehearsed what he wished to say. Even if the old man could not help him in his quest, he still had a legitimate reason for being there.