Page 61 of Highland Fire

He took a moment or two to look around the place.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had entered these chambers, yet he felt no sense of strangeness.

The blue curtains at the windows with matching bed draperies put him in mind of the chamber he had occupied at Cranley before his marriage.

There were other similarities: the dark oak furniture; a certain Spartan atmosphere; the model of Drake’s Golden Hind which he, Rand, had built with his father when a boy.

A vague recollection came back to him. He had outgrown his interest in sailing ships, and he’d carelessly passed his model of the Golden Hind along to his young cousin. Evidently, David had treasured it.

For a long time, Rand stood crouched over that model, tracing the masts and rigging with one finger, lost in memories of a happy boyhood and of a father who had entered into all his interests. He was smiling when he pushed into the little dressing room which had served as David’s bookroom.

There was no sense of familiarity here, for David’s store of books were of a far more literary bent than Rand’s.

The Greek dramatists were well represented.

Rand opened a volume of Sophocles and quickly shut it when the Greek letters jumped out at him.

He had not looked at Greek since his Oxford days.

David was clever. Rand could remember his mother saying so, now that he thought about it.

He supposed that a boy who could not enter into the games of other boys must find other ways to occupy his time.

On top of David’s desk, he came across a well-worn copy of Byron’s Childe Harold .

There was nothing to interest Rand there.

One drawer down, he found a gentleman’s monogrammed driving gauntlet.

There was no mate to it. Beneath the gauntlet, in the same drawer, was a letter written in a feminine hand.

Rand stared at that letter as if debating with himself.

Finally, as though it would crumble into dust at the first touch, he gingerly withdrew it.

Hardly breathing, he smoothed out the one-page epistle, and read.

Oh, my dear,

Forgive me for what I said. I did not mean it, not one word of it. Come back to the Highlands. Come back, and we shall see if there is not something we can do to ease this hopeless passion of yours. I pray for your return.

There was no signature. None was necessary.

Rand would have recognized Caitlin’s hand anywhere.

Colors seemed to leap before his eyes, and the pain in his chest was so acute, he feared he might faint.

Caitlin and David . He crushed her letter into his balled fist. For one demented moment, he was fiercely glad that David was dead and no longer a threat to him.

But that thought had sprung from the worst part of him.

There was another part, a better part, which rushed in almost at once to draw off the poison.

He was shaking and was hardly aware that someone had entered the room. Fighting to find his control, he passed a hand over his eyes. A cough brought his head round. Just inside the door, a footman stood waiting respectfully to attract his attention.

“What is it?” asked Rand.

The look of concern was replaced by a mask of well-bred indifference. “The master begs a moment of your time, your lordship. You may find him in the library.”

Rand gave himself a few minutes before he made his way downstairs. When he entered the library, two gentlemen rose to greet him. Rand’s eyes passed over his uncle and fastened on the younger gentleman.

“Mr. Haughton!” he exclaimed, going forward. “What brings you here?”

Haughton colored hotly and stammered before getting out, “I’m afraid I’m the bearer of very sad tidings. Your friend, Mr. Murray, has missed you, it seems.”

“John? John Murray of Deeside?”

“The same. We parted company in London. He went on to your place in Sussex, and I came on here.”

Rand was aware of a sudden release of tension. Whatever the sad tidings, they did not immediately concern his wife. “Why don’t we sit down?” he said.

When they were seated, Haughton said at once, “It’s your wife’s grandfather.

He has suffered a stroke. Obviously, it’s serious or your wife would not have been sent for.

I’m sorry I know so little about his condition, but I did not expect to find you here.

Murray could tell you more. There was a fire, you see—oh, not the house but the stable!

All the horses perished. It was too much for Glenshiel. ”

Rand fired a few questions at Mr. Haughton, but there was little more to be learned. Then he remembered that Caitlin’s dog had been tethered in Glenshiel’s stable. The question in his mind was answered by Haughton’s next words.

“The deerhound managed to escape the conflagration.”

Eric Randal’s voice was very grave. “Don’t cavil, man! Tell him the whole of it!”

Rand looked from one sober face to the other.

Haughton coughed to clear an obstruction in his throat.

“You may remember, Lord Randal, that my father was missing?” When Rand nodded, he continued in the same strained tone.

“His body has been found. At the inquest, the verdict was that it was an accident, that he had lost his step and had fallen down a gully. There are some, however, who are blaming his death on your wife’s dog.

It seems almost conclusive that he was savaged by your wife’s dog. ”

“That is preposterous! Bocain would not attack anyone unless that person were to attack Caitlin. I beg your pardon, Mr. Haughton. Naturally, I am shocked to hear of your father’s death. But if there was not an accident, there must be some other explanation for it.”

Haughton sounded unutterably weary. “I don’t know what to believe.

All I know is that my father’s body was not a pretty sight when I identified it.

However, I assure you, whatever the truth of that matter may be, your wife’s deerhound has become the terror of Deeside.

She has reverted to something wild and unpredictable, so much so that there’s a bounty on her head. ”

A suspicion was beginning to grow in Rand’s mind. “What I can’t understand is what brings you into this neck of the woods, Mr. Haughton? It is Mr. Haughton, is it not?”

The hot color returned to the young man’s cheeks. “My name is Haughton. However, I think it is my father, my stepfather , whom you have found out. He was, as you must know, Ewan Grant, and as for what brings me here, I have brought his body home to my mother for burial.”

Rand was still trying to grapple with so much confusion when his uncle quietly interposed, “I did not know that my friend had gone into Scotland, or I would have told you. To my knowledge, he was in London, attending to business.”

“There was nothing sinister in it,” cut in Mr. Haughton. “For reasons you must understand, my father did not wish to use his own name. He was afraid that the Clan Gordon would take their revenge for the duel which resulted in the death of the laird o’ Daroch so many years ago.”

“Those feuds are a thing of the past,” Rand answered shortly. “No one, nowadays, carries a vendetta to such extremes.”

“You are wrong there,” replied Haughton.

“At all events, it was what my father believed.” He looked away and made a helpless motion with his hands.

“I thought it best not to reveal my father’s true identity.

As far as everyone on Deeside knows, it was Mr. Haughton, the senior, who met with a terrible accident. ”

A number of things were going through Rand’s mind. He was thinking of something his uncle had said the night before, namely that he did not believe in coincidence. No more did Rand.

There had been two separate accidents on Deeside within the space of a few weeks, one involving Caitlin and the other involving Ewan Grant.

They were presumed to be accidents, because there was no apparent motive for murder.

If these accidents were not accidents, Rand reflected, then what had set them off and what connection did one have to the other? More to the point, who was behind them?

“What did your father hope to gain by going to Scotland?” asked Rand.

“As to that, I’m not sure that my father was clear in his own mind.

Before your cousin went off to Brussels to join his regiment, he came to see him.

I was not present at that interview. And later, when it was known that David Randal had fallen at Waterloo, my father became restless.

I know he had an agent in Deeside, someone who spied out the land.

I’ve come across his reports among my father’s papers.

They make interesting reading, but there is nothing sinister there either.

I don’t really know what my father hoped to gain.

All I know is that he hoped to right a great wrong. ”

Though Rand was listening intently, his brain was functioning at another level. Fragments of this and that were beginning to fall into place, forming something so incredible that he was reluctant to accept it.

When there was a prolonged silence, he said, “Mr. Haughton, I should like to see those reports, if I may.”

Rand was certain of one thing. He was not going to allow Caitlin to return to Deeside. He was sorry about her grandfather, more than sorry. He wished that things were different, but as they stood, he was not going to chance his wife’s life.

Mr. Haughton had erred when he had said there was nothing sinister in the reports his father’s agent had sent. The irony was that the man had gathered all the information without understanding its significance. Rand remembered his conversation with Patrick Gordon, the Bard of Aboyne.

That put him in mind of something else—the uncanny feeling that he was following in his cousin David’s footsteps.

It was David who had sent Ewan Grant to Scotland, and even if Mr. Haughton could not fathom the reason for it, Rand knew why.

David must have told Grant that Caitlin believed he was her father.

But Grant wasn’t, could not be, for if he had been, there would have been no reason to do away with him—and no reason for the attack on Caitlin.

Everything always came back to the laird o’ Daroch. It always had, and Rand was cursing himself now for not having seen it sooner.

When he stepped down from his chaise outside Cranley’s front doors, he steeled himself to meet tears and entreaties.

The doors were flung open, but it was not Caitlin who ran down the steps to welcome him home; his mother and the twins greeted him.

It took him some time to make sense of their excited babble.

It seemed that his brothers were chasing him down all over the south of England to give him the news about Glenshiel, while Caitlin and Murray had set off for Scotland on the understanding that he would follow almost immediately.

They had almost a week’s head start.