Page 66 of Highland Fire

Rand’s voice! Her first rush of elation gave way to dread.

She listened intently, peering into the wavering mist. Hoofbeats!

He was on horseback, making for the dense hedge of brambles.

He was moving too swiftly. There would not be time to check his mount before they made the jump.

One misstep and horse and rider would go plunging over the edge of the quarry.

Out of the mist, a shape took form. It wasn’t a horse and rider. A huge beast of prey silently bore down upon them. Muscles rippling along her broad back, powerful shoulders tensed and straining, she came at them like lightning.

At the same moment that Donald Randal leapt for Caitlin, Bocain soared into the air. Man and beast came together in a sickening shock of flesh on bone. A hand clutched wildly for Caitlin, tearing the plaid from her shoulders, then the momentum carried both man and dog over the edge of the quarry.

In the next moment Rand was there, snatching Caitlin into his arms, hauling her across his mount’s back. As his horse came to a quivering, stamping halt, she turned her face into his chest and wept.

It was a long time before Caitlin could bear to lift her head from the comfort to be found in her husband’s arms. “I thought you would go over too! I thought you would go over too!” Between sobs and moans, she repeated those words over and over, reliving those last, terrifying moments.

“No chance of that,” he said, trying to console her. “I’m an excellent rider. And I learned the trick of clearing those bramble bushes from you. Don’t cry, my love. You’re safe now.”

She was suddenly aware that they were not alone. Twisting in Rand’s arms, she saw three young men kneeling at the edge of the quarry. Their horses were on the other side of the thickets.

“My brothers,” said Rand. “We all came together.”

Peter Randal looked up at that moment and called out, “The dog is safe, though I think she may be injured. She landed on a ledge. I can just make her out. If we get a rope, we should be able to haul her up. There’s no sign of the man.

This infernal mist is obscuring my vision. It’s possible that he is safe too.”

He didn’t sound as if he believed his own words. Caitlin practically threw herself from the horse’s back and went racing to the edge of the quarry. Her eyes scoured the veil of mist. It wasn’t a ledge that had saved Bocain, but the scree.

“What is it?” asked Rand, perceiving her look of astonishment.

“The scree slope,” she said, looking to him for confirmation. “It’s right here.”

“You didn’t think I’d make the jump at any other point?”

“You knew?”

“Well, of course I knew. Didn’t you?”

“No. The mist was so dense I didn’t know where I was.” She looked about her, shaking her head. Laughter bubbled up, but she cut it off when she heard the edge of hysteria in it. “Do you think that my uncle…?” Her words dwindled as she saw Harry signal silently to Rand with a shake of his head.

“We’ll see,” said Rand. “Harry! Robert! Peter! You three go on down and see what you can find out. Caitlin and I will get the dog up.”

When his brothers had moved off to do his bidding, Rand went to fetch a rope from one of the saddlebags. A bark and a long unearthly groan brought him racing back to the edge of the quarry. Bocain’s great head lifted to look up at him.

“Come on, girl,” Caitlin pleaded. “You can do it.”

At the sound of that feminine voice, Bocain let out a furious bark. With a great bound, she cleared the lip of the quarry and leapt for the girl.

Caitlin’s arms were around her dog. Rand’s arms were around his wife.

They were sitting on a patch of heather near the base of the quarry, sheltering against a buttress of rock.

Rand’s coat was around Caitlin’s shoulders.

From the quarry entrance, from time to time, one of Rand’s brothers would call out.

They had still to find Donald Randal’s body.

The dog might have helped in their search, but nothing could induce Bocain to leave Caitlin’s side, and Rand refused to allow Caitlin to enter the quarry.

Caitlin had momentarily come to the end of her recitation of that morning’s harrowing events.

After an interval, she said, “Now it’s your turn. What I can’t understand is how you knew where to find me.”

“I didn’t,” answered Rand. “We were making for Glenshiel House with all speed when Bocain found us! I don’t mind telling you, when she jumped for my horse’s head, I thought it was all up with me.

I didn’t recognize her, you see. My first panicked thought was that she was a lion that had escaped from a menagerie. ”

Caitlin allowed herself a small smile, though laughter was the farthest thing from her mind. She knew what Rand was doing. He was trying to distract her from thinking of what his brothers would find on the floor of the quarry. She shut her eyes for a moment, then made an effort to help him.

“And she made a great to-do until you turned your horses around and followed her?”

“Nothing of the sort! She turned the horses for us. They almost bolted! My brothers are not particularly struck with this shaggy canine specimen at the moment.” As he spoke, he prodded Bocain with the toe of his boot. She rolled over and let out a long contented sigh.

Caitlin shivered. “Thank God you came when you did!”

Rand made no answer to this, but hugged her a little closer to him.

He was thinking that never had there ever been a cavalry charge like the one just past, when he and his brothers had ridden with whip and spur over the mist enshrouded moors, not knowing where the quarry was, trusting implicitly in the dog’s instinct to lead them.

Nor did he ever want to experience again that annihilating sense of terror that had gripped him when the mist lifted to reveal his wife poised on the edge of a cliff with a madman leaping for her.

He had lied to Caitlin when he had told her he knew that the scree was right behind her.

He had not wanted to add one iota to the terrors were bound to haunt her dreams for some time to come.

“You told me to hold on!” She turned her head to look up at him. “Your voice came to me through the mist. You knew that something like this might happen, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How? You weren’t even here.”

In a matter of a few minutes, Rand had related almost all that he had found out from his uncle and young Mr. Haughton when he had posted down to Dorset.

“And you suspected my uncle?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t going to tell her how close he had come to suspecting her grandfather, until he had remembered that Glenshiel had always believed that the laird o’ Daroch was Caitlin’s father. As long as her uncle had not known it, Caitlin was safe.

“It all added up,” he said. “When Daroch’s dogs attacked you and someone shot at you, I could not see any motive for it. Then, with Grant’s death, and with everything that his stepson and my uncle related to me, it all became clear. The answer was not in the present, but in the past.”

“In the old blood feud, in fact?”

“Yes. It was all in the reports from Grant’s agent.

Your uncle lived in the past. It colored all his thinking.

He rewrote history, did you know? Someone once told me so, but at the time, I didn’t realize it was significant.

” He was thinking of the Bard of Aboyne.

“In short, what Grant learned was that your father, that is Daroch, was not the debaucher of innocents he was made out to be. Your uncle blackened his character, not viciously, not openly, but with sly hints and innuendo. He gave all the Gordons of Daroch a bad name, and it stuck.”

“His mind was unhinged by what he and his mother had suffered at the hands of the old laird’s clansmen after Culloden?”

“Yes, and all of that happened almost fifty years before Morag Randal fell in love with Robert Gordon. It’s…incredible.”

She moved restlessly. “Who was Grant’s agent?”

His smile was so fleeting, she did not see it.

“He was…is…your grandfather’s physician.

It was Dr. Innes who attended Daroch after the duel.

Grant wrote to him, asking in general terms about all the principals involved.

Dr. Innes became more involved than had been intended.

His interest was piqued, you see. And of course, he had occasion to meet with your uncle every time he called on Glenshiel.

” What he did not tell her was that Innes had garnered enough information on Caitlin and the present laird o’ Daroch to have them both sent to the colonies for a long time to come.

She ruminated silently for a moment or two, then said, “I can’t think why Mr. Grant had need of an agent. Why not simply come in person?”

“He wasn’t a paid agent or anything like that. It was merely one acquaintance writing to another and asking for information. For some reason, Grant delayed coming into Scotland. And as I said, Innes became more involved that he was meant to be.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“No. It’s what Haughton told me. I came straight on here.”

There was a silence as Caitlin assimilated his words. At length, she said, “I knew how much my grandfather hated all the Gordons of Daroch, but my uncle always seemed so reasonable.’

“With your grandfather, it was all bluster, and everyone knew it. No one really listened to him. With your uncle, the hatred was deep seated, like a slumbering volcano. As I said, he wasn’t overtly vicious with it.

When he spoke, people listened to him. And when Grant came into Deeside trying to atone for the past, he stirred things up. ”

“And the volcano erupted?”