Page 64 of Highland Fire

Whining now, she sniffed at the water’s edge. There were stepping stones here, but the water had risen to cover them. As daintily as any lady, Bocain stepped gingerly from stone to stone. At the last, with a great bound, she leapt clear to the opposite bank.

At this point, the Feardar Burn ran into the Dee.

Bocain left the river and followed the burn, upstream, over bog, through stands of birch toward the North Deeside Road.

She was moving in a circle, returning to Glenshiel House by a roundabout route.

As she neared the road, it was evident that some sound or scent in the air was agitating her.

Several times, she pulled back her lips and growled threateningly.

Beneath the Feardar Bridge, where Caitlin had once lain in wait for the English laird, Bocain seemed to lose her bearings.

Whining, barking, she turned in circles, moving off in one direction, only to turn in her tracks and peer into the mist, as if unsure of herself.

Something seemed to bring her to a decision, for she suddenly bounded up the steep incline to gain the road.

The man on horseback was unaware that he was being stalked.

All at once, he was seized by an unholy premonition and he pulled on the reins.

He reached for his pistol at the very moment that Bocain broke from the cover of pine trees which edged the road.

With a great lunge, she leapt for both horse and rider.

Someone or something was following her. Caitlin turned her pony in a half-circle and looked back over the moor. The mist came as a surprise to her, so intent had she been on her thoughts. “Bocain,” she said softly, wondering if she could go through with it.

As the mist eddied in front of her, now thickly, now clinging to her like threads of cobwebs, she had a flash of recall.

Just so, she had turned her pony to face Rand, when he was pursuing her across this same moor.

But it wasn’t the same. Then, she had had only a dirk for protection.

Now she carried her grandfather’s pistol, a great silver affair that was so heavy she didn’t know how she was going to manage with it.

She couldn’t go through with it. She knew she couldn’t go through with it.

Then she heard the dogs, far down the glen, and she steeled herself for what must be done.

At the entrance to the quarry, she dismounted. She couldn’t see very far in front of her face, but it hardly mattered. She knew where she was going. There were no trees here to tether her mount. With Morder, however, tethering was unnecessary. Caitlin had trained her pony to come at her whistle.

She moved carefully, watching each step, not because she was afraid that Bocain would attack her, but because the pistol was primed and ready and she was not used to handling firing pieces.

In her whole life, she had only had a couple of lessons, and that was at her grandfather’s insistence.

He believed that a woman who lived on her own should be able to protect herself, but that had been before Bocain had reached her maturity.

Birse and heather thinned out; then there were only lichens clinging to rocks. Then there were only rocks, and huge granite boulders. She knew there were no tinkers or Gypsies. They never stayed in one place for long.

When she came across the bones, she averted her eyes. Not far into the quarry, she found Bocain’s lair. It wasn’t a cave or anything like it. It was simply a dry space under an overhanging ledge.

She was weeping now. Dashing the tears from her cheeks with the edge of her plaid, she sat down to wait, her back pressed against the buttress of rock. It was inevitable that her thoughts would turn to that far off day when she had found the pup.

The rustle of something close at hand brought her head up. “Bocain?”

There was a ghastly sound, as of labored breathing. Caitlin’s skin came out in goose bumps, and she lifted her pistol. A horse whinnied. She heard a soft step, then another, and a figure came out of the mist.

“Uncle Donald!” Relief surged through her, then quickly ebbed. Hoarsely, she got out, “Don’t say that Daroch’s dogs got to Bocain?”

Donald Randal was leaning heavily on a shepherd’s staff. “I couldna say. I think not. I turned back at the ford at Balmoral. The dogs will keep her out of the way for a good while yet.”

His tone was so odd that she squinted up at him. He was smiling, looking up at the sky as though he could see through the mist to the clear ether above. When he looked down at her, she could tell that he had been weeping too.

“I wanted to thank ye for last night,” he said, “for bringing us together. I thought my brother hated me, but he doesna. He didna say anything—well, he cannot, can he? All the same, he forgave me. When I looked into his eyes, I knew he understood.”

She wasn’t alarmed. She was at a loss. “Glenshiel forgave you for what, Uncle Donald?”

He looked at her as though she had asked him a foolish question.

“For setting the fire; for his stroke. He tried to stop me, ye know. He shouldn’t have done that.

I had to get rid of the dog, don’t ye see?

She knew too much. She wouldna let me come near her.

Everyone remarked on the change in her. It was awkward, don’t ye know? ”

By this time, Caitlin was alarmed, but her fears were all for her uncle. “It’s all been too much for you,” she said. “When this is over, when Glenshiel recovers, you’ll see things in a different light.”

As though she had not spoken, he went on, “I told him everything. I told him about Ewan Grant.”

At the name her head came up. “What about Ewan Grant?”

He blinked and his brow puckered as though her question or her tone of voice puzzled him. “I had to kill him. I told Glenshiel all about it, and he forgave me.”

“Then tell me!” She wasn’t thinking of the present. Her mind went back in time to the duel with Daroch, wondering if there had been another duel of which she knew nothing.

“All these years, I thought he was the father of your babe. But he wasna, was he, Morag? It was Daroch all the time.”

The words seemed to come to her from someone else. “How did you find out that Daroch was the father of my child?”

“Och, Morag, ye were together in the shieling. I saw ye. My mistake was in thinking it was that other woman who was with Daroch. But it wasna her. Grant told me himself, or Haughton, as he called himself latterly.”

Her throat felt as though she had swallowed a mouthful of sand. “You killed Mr. Haughton?”

“Why did ye do it?” The anguish in his eyes was genuine. “Ye knew about the feud. Ye knew that the Gordons and Randals are mortal enemies. Yet ye lay wi’ a Gordon! Have ye no shame? Did I not tell ye what they did to our mother, what they did to me?”

Though horrified, she was only half persuaded that he knew what he was saying, and a long way from thinking that she stood in any jeopardy.

In the voice she might have used to comfort a distraught child, she said, “Don’t think about it, Uncle Donald.

You know full well that my moth—that I would not have looked twice at Daroch.

I had too much pride to become just another of his women.

You wrote it all down in your history of the Gordons o’ Daroch—don’t you remember?

I read it myself. Daroch wanted my mother, all right, but she would have none of him. It was Ewan Grant she preferred.”

He brought his staff down hard on the buttress, closer to her head, and she jumped.

“Ye were playacting to throw Glenshiel and me off the scent! Don’t lie to me!

I saw his ring on your finger. The night o’ the Randal’s ball, ye were wearing Daroch’s ring.

Ye were not just another of his women! He married ye, didn’t he?

And had I not told Ewan Grant I saw Daroch with his sister, had there been no duel, ye and Daroch would have left the glen and set up house somewhere far away where I couldna reach ye. ”

Her eyes were wide, and she was staring at him as if he were a creature from one of her nightmares.

“Ye married him!” he said, demanding that she answer him.

She moistened her lips, remembering that she had worn her mother’s ring on her wedding day, a ring that no one had remarked upon. “How can you be sure it was Daroch’s ring? No one else mentioned it, not even Glenshiel.”

“I knew! It was the ring his mother wore. If ye had read my history o’ the clan more carefully, ye would have known it too!”

For the first time, she experienced real fear. “Uncle Donald, don’t you know me? It’s Caitlin. My mother has been dead these many years.”

“I’m truly sorry.” He was shaking his head, moving in closer. “I’m truly sorry.”

The same moment she cocked her pistol, he lunged with his staff.

Her head jerked back, and the staff smashed into the overhang, missing her by inches.

She had time to get off a clear shot. Her fingers trembled, and she discovered that she had not the will to pull the trigger.

When he lunged for her again, she rolled to the side and quickly scrambled to her feet.

Backing away from him, with the pistol aimed threateningly, she got out, “It was you who set Daroch’s dogs on me! It was you who fired that shot which missed me by inches.”

“I thought ye would have worked it out long afore now.”

“And you really did murder poor Mr. Grant!” She was sobbing in terror. “But why? If he wasn’t my father, it doesn’t make sense!”

“I wish to God he had been your father! The Grants’ blood is no’ tainted. Our clan has no quarrel with them.”

“Then why did you do it?”

As the conversation went forward, she continued to retreat one step at a time, well aware that her uncle was also edging himself into position.

“He threatened to expose me! After the attack on ye? He was almost sure that it came from me, and that Daroch was your father. I didna want to kill him! As God is my witness, I didna want to kill him! It was forced upon me.”

“As you were forced to kill Serle!”

He laughed, still advancing upon her, staff swinging in an arc.

There was a wily look in his eyes. “I tricked ye, lass. The last I saw of Serle, he was crossing the ford at Balmoral, by the side o’ the young laird o’ Daroch.

Aye, and who do ye think persuaded Daroch it would be a mercy to rid Deeside o’ your dog? ”

“You could not be so devious,” she breathed. But he was—terribly, terribly dangerous. “Keep back,” she cried out, “or I’ll blow your brains out!”

He stopped for a moment, head angled to the side, assessing her. “I think not,” he said.

She couldn’t take in what was happening. Everything about him was endearingly familiar and, at the same time, so horribly strange. “You love me,” she said, sobbing in her anguish. “You know you do. You taught me so many things. We both love history…” She jumped back as the staff came at her again.

“Then ye should remember the lessons ye learned,” he said fiercely. “Have ye no’ heard Glenshiel tell ye that Gordon blood is bad blood? We’ll no have it tainting our family.”

She was forcing herself to converse with him as she backed out of the quarry. Soon, she would be within reach of her pony. “The young laird o’ Daroch,” she said, “Fiona’s beau? You don’t dislike him.”

“Why should I? There not a drop o’ Gordon blood in the lad. If there were, I would not see Fiona go to him. I would kill her first.”

She whistled and though Morder whinnied in answer, she did not appear.

“I tethered her to a rock,” he said gently.

He swung at her with the staff, catching the pistol such a blow that she thought her wrist would break. As the weapon went rolling over rocks and scree, she dodged away. She stumbled, and her ankle turned under her. He came at her again, and she leapt away, into the dense fog.