Page 4

T hrough the window , Lileas caught sight of the tall figure outside and her face lit up with genuine delight. She hurried to the door and flung it open with such enthusiasm that it banged against the inner wall.

"Oh, wonderful!" she exclaimed, gesturing him inside with obvious pleasure. "It could have waited until after the rain, but I am so pleased to see ye. I think I've just struck on an idea ye could help with."

For a moment, Ewan simply stared at the woman before him, his mind struggling to process this enthusiastic welcome. This was not the reception he had expected, not the cool dismissal or angry rejection he had braced himself for.

Who greeted their unwanted suitor with such obvious joy?

Perhaps she was touched by some madness.

Good grief, he thought, his mind reeling, I'm betrothed to a lunatic!

Yet even as the thought formed, he found himself questioning it.

She seemed more alert, more vibrantly alive than anyone he had ever encountered.

"Come, come," Lileas said, taking his arm with familiarity that should have been presumptuous but somehow felt natural. "Dinnae stand there dripping. Ye'll catch yer death, and then where would I be?"

"I..." Ewan began, then stopped abruptly when she led him inside and he witnessed the other side of the cottage that had been hidden from view.

"Sweet heaven," Ewan breathed, turning slowly to take it all in. "What is all this?"

"My work," Lileas said proudly. She paused, suddenly remembering her manners. "Oh, but where are my manners. Please dry yer cloak by the fire, and here, take this cloth to dry yer hair."

Ewan removed his sodden cloak, grateful for her consideration, and draped it near the hearth. The warmth began to work on his chilled bones immediately. "Thank ye, lass."

"Tell me, what do ye ken of St. Agnes Abbey?" Lileas asked, making polite conversation.

The question caught him off guard. "It's... a house of God. The sisters are known for their healing arts, their..." He paused, his mind working to connect the dots. "Their uisge beatha ."

"Ah." Lileas smiled brilliantly. "Now ye're beginning to understand. The good sisters produce some of the finest spirits in the Highlands. Their whiskey is sought after by lairds from here to Edinburgh."

As she spoke about angles and heat flow and distillation principles, Ewan found himself truly looking at her for the first time.

Without the barrier of expectations, she was.

.. bonnie. More than bonnie. Her dark brown hair caught the firelight, framing a face animated with intelligence and enthusiasm.

"But," Lileas continued, moving with fluid grace to adjust something on her still, "the traditional methods are terribly wasteful.

It takes enormous amounts of grain to produce relatively small quantities of spirits.

" She gestured toward her contraptions with obvious pride. "I've been working on improvements."

Meanwhile, Lileas was having her own moment of revelation. When had the abbey acquired such a handsome blacksmith? This man was tall and broad-shouldered, with striking green eyes and a strong jaw. There was something in his bearing that was unusual for a craftsman.

Surely it's a sin, she thought, heat rising in her cheeks, to have such lusty thoughts about a blacksmith. But Lord help her, the man was magnificent.

"Ye've been perfecting their spirits," Ewan said, and it wasn't a question but a statement of understanding.

"Among other things." She picked up a small glass vial filled with clear liquid. "This batch is nearly twice as pure as anything they've produced before, using half the grain and a third of the time."

Ewan moved closer, studying the contraptions with growing amazement. The design was ingenious. "Ye built all this yerself?"

"Crafted it, certainly. The sisters helped with some of the parts, but the ideas and improvements... those are all mine." She set the vial down carefully. "But I still need a blacksmith to craft some of the pipes."

"And it works?"

"Better than I'd hoped. The real trick is in the cooling vessels.

If we could fashion the coils with a more gradual curve, the heat would flow more evenly.

" She moved to another part of her apparatus.

"And if I can perfect this process, well, then perhaps I can build something similar for my clan.

Then I could prove I'm worth more to them than I would be married off to some arrogant, boorish boar of a man. "

Ewan's jaw tightened at her casual dismissal of her betrothed, but she was too absorbed in her work to notice.

"Not that I dare speak badly of anyone," she continued, "but surely my betrothed must be exactly that, based on all the rumors I've heard.

I mean, what sort of man simply expects a woman to submit to marriage without even meeting her properly first?

" Her eyes flashed with indignation. "I intend to remain hidden here until he finally sees sense and grows tired of waiting, then he can marry some other poor lass who does not mind being bartered like cattle. "

Every word was like a knife thrust, particularly painful because he was beginning to see her point of view with uncomfortable clarity.

"He sent me letters, ye ken," Lileas said, her tone softening slightly as she adjusted the flame beneath her distilling vessel.

"My betrothed, I mean. They were... well, actually they were very nice letters.

Most men would not take the time to write such thoughtful words, and his handwriting was quite elegant. "

The unexpected praise sent a jolt through him. She had read his letters, had found them thoughtful.

"Did ye write back?" Ewan asked through gritted teeth, his voice strangely hoarse.

"No." Lileas shook her head. "There's no point if I dinnae intend to marry him, is there? It seems improper to form a bond with a man I’ll never meet."

The words hit him like physical blows, confirming his worst fears about her complete rejection.

"So hiding away in an abbey is better?" The question came out sharper than intended.

Lileas paused, considering this challenge with thoughtful attention. "Perhaps ye have a point there." She glanced at him with a rueful smile. "Ye know, ye're very easy to talk to. Most men just grunt and nod when I speak, but ye actually listen to me."

The smile that followed seemed to light up the entire cottage, and Ewan stood deadly still, afraid that any movement might break the spell of the moment.

"So... what do ye think? Can ye create coils precise enough?" She turned to face him fully, her eyes bright with excitement. "Is such a thing possible?"

"I..." Ewan hesitated, realizing with growing alarm that he had no idea how to answer her question. He knew little of metalworking beyond the basics, certainly nothing that would qualify him to work on her sophisticated apparatus.

Lileas tilted her head, studying his face with growing confusion as she noticed the uncertainty he was struggling to hide. Something in his expression wasn't quite right. And there was something else about his bearing, his speech patterns, that seemed wrong somehow.

"Wait," she said slowly, her enthusiasm beginning to fade as doubt crept into her voice. "Are ye not the new blacksmith?"

Ewan felt the walls of his carefully maintained pretense crumbling around him.

"No, lass," Ewan replied quietly. "I'm not."

The warmth drained from her expression, replaced by wariness and something that might have been dread.

"Then who are ye?" The question came out as barely more than a whisper.

Ewan met her eyes directly, his voice dropping to a dark whisper. "I am yer betrothed."

For a heartbeat that stretched into eternity, Lileas simply stared at him, her mind struggling to process the words. The man she had been talking to so freely, sharing her work with, feeling attracted to, was the very person she had been hiding from for three months.

Then the full horror of the situation crashed over her like a Highland storm.

"NO!" she shouted, the word torn from her throat with enough force to make the glassware rattle. Without thinking, operating purely on instinct, she grabbed the nearest object: a small copper tube.

She swung it at him with all the force that fear could provide.

Ewan dodged the blow just in time, but the sudden movement caught him off guard and he stumbled backward.

His foot caught on one of the many pieces of equipment scattered throughout the cottage, and in his retreat, the back of his head struck one of the larger pipes protruding from the wall with a sickening thud.

He slid down the stone wall like a felled tree, his eyes rolling back as consciousness fled and his body went completely limp.

Lileas stood there, the small copper tube still clutched in her trembling hands, staring in horror at the unconscious form of Laird Ewan MacNeil sprawled on her cottage floor.

Then the full realization of what she had done hit her with devastating force. She dropped the tube and grabbed a damp cloth from her work area. She fell to her knees beside him, gently cradling his head in her lap as carefully as if he were made of the finest glass.

She dabbed at his forehead with the cloth, checking for signs of life while willing him to wake up, her hands shaking so badly she could barely control her movements.

"Please dinnae die," she whispered, her voice breaking.

"I'm so sorry. I did nae mean to hurt ye.

I was just... ye startled me, and ye're supposed to be a terrible man, but ye listened to me, and ye seemed interested in my work, and now I've probably killed ye, and they'll hang me for murdering a laird, and I'll never get to finish my brew. "

Even in her panic, her mind was working with methodical precision, trying to find solutions to what seemed like an impossible situation. But for once in her life, all her intelligence seemed inadequate to the situation before her.

***