Once Upon a Highland Autumn (14 page)

Now, looking at the coach coming over the hill, he felt a slight hope that maybe, perhaps, by some miracle, it might be Lady Megan waving to him.

“Hallo-o-o!” The hair on Kit’s neck rose at the sound. It was the call of a female on a husband hunt. The cry had an unmistakable tone to it, filled with hope, determination, and giddy flirtation. Not Megan, then.

He looked around. It was too late to hide, and the little cottage had only two small rooms and a loft, and he was over six feet tall. He’d be easy to find if his visitor wished to hunt him down, and that would be most embarrassing indeed. No, he had no choice but to clasp his hands behind his back and wait.

She descended almost before the coach had come to a halt, and rushed toward him.

“Good afternoon, Lord Rossington!” she cried. Her eyes darted over his person, then returned to his face, her lips forming a hungry pout.

Kit recognized Miss Jane Parkhill, a friend of Arabella’s, and forced himself not to wince at the high pitch of her voice. Arabella had been singing Jane Parkhill’s praises for the past year, begging him to meet her, to court her, to marry her. In fact, his sister was so certain that Miss Parkhill would be the perfect bride for him that she encouraged him to skip the first two steps entirely, or simply perform all three at the altar to save time.

He marveled now that even if he had managed to avoid the matter of Miss Jane Parkhill in England, here she was, in the Highlands of Scotland of all places, coming at him. Her brother, Edward, whom Kit knew slightly, appeared next, grinning hopefully, without a hint of apology on his bland face.

Kit silently rebuked his sister as he bestowed a thin smile on the Parkhill siblings. He wondered if Edward might be here to arrange the marriage contract. One word, a single incautious glance, and Edward would no doubt pluck the prepared document from the pocket of his elegant coat.

Edward Parkhill was a goodly enough chap, but one who had inherited a mountain of debts along with the ancestral pile. He needed money, through a lucrative marriage of his own, or better still, by arranging one for his sister. Kit noted the disappointment on his face as he looked from the cottage to the castle and back again.

Jane was dressed in the first stare of fashion, looking more prepared for a carriage ride in Hyde Park or a stroll on Bond Street—or a marriage proposal—than a walk in the Highlands. She tottered on high-heeled boots, dyed rose pink to match the frill on her fashionable spencer, and the feathers that beckoned to him from the top of her straw bonnet.

Jane’s sweetly expectant moue left Kit in no doubt that if he were to reach out and grab her hand and drag her inside the cottage to have his way with her in the hayloft, she’d not object beyond asking him not to crush the lace trim on her gown. Edward would happily guard the door, contract in hand.

Kit took a step backward, and felt marginally safer. He pictured Megan, sprawled across his chest, her face smudged, her eyes bright, her lips inviting a kiss, and wondered what she would look like in a hayloft, with straw in her hair. He shook the thought away and concentrated on his guests.

“What brings you to Scotland, Miss Parkhill?” he asked politely.

“We’ve come for tea,” Jane replied, as if it was perfectly obvious, and not at all odd that a lady might travel over hard roads for a fortnight just to take tea.

“I’m afraid there isn’t any,” Kit said. He’d come armed with only a flask of ale, a loaf of bread, and a promise from Leslie to have a meal ready and waiting when Kit returned to the inn. He’d been considering dropping a line in the loch and catching a fish to roast over a campfire on the shore. He could not imagine offering the fashionable Miss Jane Parkhill a hunk of bread, a bit of fish skewered on a stick, and a cup of water dipped from the loch. Megan, though . . . He firmly shut the door on that thought. Jane cast a brief look of despair at the cottage, then tilted her head.

“Why, where is your manor, my lord? The Earl of Rossington is famous for the magnificence of his homes. Lead me to your estate and stop teasing. I swear I am quite parched,” Jane said playfully. She cast her eyes around the glen, but found nothing to stop them until she reached the castle. Her nose wrinkled. “Goodness,” she murmured.

“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” Kit said.

“You aren’t staying
here
, are you, old chap?” Edward asked in horror. “Lady Megan made the place sound as if it was quite grand when she told us you were here. I see she has a rather biting sense of humor.”

“Lady Megan?” Kit blurted. He felt a sense of betrayal that she had given away his direction so casually, and to Jane Parkhill of all people. His stomach slithered to his boots as he realized what that meant. The Parkhills had been at Dundrummie, possibly had the supper he’d missed out on. He cast a sharp look at Edward. Had the dowager countess proposed to him, too? Edward simply regarded him with a bored smile, and Kit felt an irrational desire to punch him in the nose.

“I came for an—” He stopped at the word
adventure
. The Parkhills, with their identical sets of pale blue eyes, now gazing at him with identical expressions of horror, would hardly understand.

“I see,” Jane murmured, suddenly looking awkward. “I had hoped . . .” She swallowed and looked at her brother. “Edward, I think we must invite Lord Rossington to come and stay with us in Inverness.”

Kit stifled his own horror. “I am not homeless, Miss Parkhill. I am residing at a local inn. I am simply here to consider what might be done with the glen,” he said, and instantly regretted it as Jane’s eyes lit.

“Oh, you mean to
build
here! How wonderful. I see a fine manor house just there, in the Palladian style. If that monstrosity in the loch were torn down, imagine how fine the view would be, especially if a woodland garden was added.” She came to his side, looped her arm through his and pointed. “Or, we could turn the castle into a kind of dovecote, or a menagerie, perhaps. I’ve always wanted to raise rabbits.”

We?
“Do you . . . hunt rabbits, Miss Parkhill?” Kit managed, feeling acutely uncomfortable. The lady’s perfume was overwhelming, like flowers at a funeral.

Jane giggled. “Not for the meat, silly—for the
fur
.”

“That waterfall at the end of the valley would be a good spot for a mill. Wool processing, you know,” Edward suggested. “There are plenty who would invest in such a scheme, if you get rid of any peasants taking up space unnecessarily.”

Kit was silent. He knew precisely what Edward Parkhill had in mind. Other Scottish landowners had thrown their tenants off the land to make room for advancements, little caring that the poor folk had lived there for generations and had nowhere else to go.

“There’s Merridew, for instance,” Edward continued. “He’s looking for a new venture. I was just speaking with him yesterday—”

“Merridew is here?” He knew the man, of course.

“For the hunting he says, but I daresay he was as smitten as I was with the young ladies at Dundrummie. They have a connection by marriage to the Earl of Somerson, you know.”

Kit felt a bolt of heat climb his spine.

“I understand you have already met Lady Margaret and Lady Alice,” Jane said.

Megan and Alanna
, Kit corrected silently. “I have,” he replied evenly.

“Then you must know that Merridew is to host a dance in their honor at the assembly rooms in Dundrummie village a week from tomorrow,” Jane said. “I doubt it’s anything to rival London or Bath, but it will be a pleasant diversion. You will come, won’t you?”

“I—” Kit stared at her. He would have refused the invitation at once, but Megan would be there. He shook himself yet again. Attending the dance, or at least putting in the briefest of appearances, would provide an opportunity to return her handkerchief, and put an end to any connection between them. “I will check my engagements.” He used the excuse he usually gave in London, but it sounded ridiculous here in the Highlands. He had no engagements, no appointments, no obligations. He smiled, contented with that—no
happy
—for the first time in a very long while.

Jane mistook his smile for agreement. “You will come!” she said, clasping her hands together, regarding him with such delight that he feared for a moment that she might actually rush forward and kiss him.

“Come to us before the dance for dinner, my lord,” she gushed. “We can arrive at the assembly together.” Her smile was so sweet it made his teeth ache. Warning bells clamored in his brain, and he stepped back.

“Thank you, but I have other plans for dinner that evening, I’m afraid.”

Jane cast a petulant look at her brother. “It’s Katherine Fairchild, no doubt. She’s staying at Castle Crief with her cousins. Or is it Lady Mary Lennox? And I heard rumors in London that Lord Underwood intended to bring his nieces north . . .”

Kit’s chest clenched. Were there truly so many English debutantes in Scotland? He’d have been safer if he’d stayed in England. He remained silent, mostly because his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Jane and Edward regarded him curiously, as if waiting for a reply. Had he missed a question, or a comment that required a reply?

He bowed. “Thank you both for coming,” he said, in what he hoped was a dismissive tone.

“You will come to the dance, won’t you?” Jane pleaded, advancing toward him, staggering over the uneven ground in her ridiculous footwear. Megan had crossed the ground in graceful, confident strides, the wind in her hair, her eyes on the hills . . .

Kit avoided answering. Instead, he turned and picked up his wrinkled cravat from the bench, and pointed up the hill. “Must meet with my surveyor,” he said. “Up there.” Jane could not possibly follow him, and Edward would be a cad indeed to leave his sister here alone. “Good day, Miss Parkhill, Edward.” He strode up the hill without looking back.

By the time the coach had lumbered back the way it had come, Kit was high on the ridge. He shut his eyes. It was the very thing he had left England to escape—women he had no interest in marrying. And yet they’d found him. Jane Parkhill, Katherine Fairchild, Mary Lennox, and God knew how many more—they were all here, all single, all having set their caps for him and failed during the London Season. He glanced at the empty road, wondered how many more London coaches he could expect to come trundling awkwardly over the lip of the glen. An otter poked its sleek head out of the water and stared at him in alarm.

And there was quite another problem. How could he search for treasure with a constant parade of females stalking him? He understood how the grouse felt during hunting season, a hundred guns pointed at them, beaters flushing them out, dogs baying.

And he had Megan McNabb to thank for all of it—she’d given Jane Parkhill his direction, told her exactly where she could find him. How many others had she told? How many would Jane tell? The numbers expanded in his brain.

He pictured Megan McNabb in his mind, standing in the wind, laughing at him. He clenched his fist on his knee. When he saw her again, he’d—

The warning bells in his brain sounded again, but they didn’t dissolve the image of the lovely Lady Megan.

Kit felt a flare of terror. If he wasn’t careful, he would indeed end up a married man before the year was out. He needed a distraction. He took Nathaniel’s journal out of his pocket and began to read.

Glen Dorian, March 1746

C
aptain Nathaniel Linwood pulled the collar of his greatcoat tighter, and tried to ignore the icy rain that found its way inside his clothing anyway. It was a miserable day, and the routine patrol had done little to inspire anything but a feeling of impending doom. He looked down into faces simmering with anger as he rode through village after village with naught but three men. Those same faces had been carefully blank at the sight of a red coat a few weeks earlier, but folk were bolder now, fiercer. The battle was coming. Cumberland was on the march from Aberdeen. He planned to stop at Nairn and await Charles Stuart’s pleasure.

Nathaniel paused on the brow of a hill to get his bearings.

The troopers behind him broke their silence to grumble about the weather, declared it worse than England in the dead of winter, and remarked that the flowers were blooming at home by now. Nothing bloomed here save chilblains.

“Why would anyone choose to live here, Captain?” his sergeant asked, and Nathaniel pointed.

“That’s why,” he said.

This misty valley of Glen Dorian spread out before him, gray and grim in the rain, the loch black. But the castle stood on a rocky island in the loch, rising from the water with elegant grace, the lofty towers poking the low clouds. Golden light shone out from the windows, and flaming torches marked the way along the causeway to the gate. “Shall we go and pay our respects?” he asked.

“If there’s a chance to warm ourselves, I’ll take it,” the sergeant said. “Are they rebels or loyalists?”

Nathaniel remembered the earnest face of the MacIntosh of Glen Dorian, his assurances that he intended to remain neutral in the fight. Would he still, even now, with battle imminent? Nathaniel was making this visit to find out.

He hadn’t seen MacIntosh—or his young brother-by-marriage—since the night they’d met in Nairn. But if the laird was arming for war, he wanted to know.

They stopped at the foot of the causeway that led across the water, holding a moment, giving the laird a chance to ride out if he did not wish them to ride across. No one appeared, and the heavy iron gate at the other end stood open.

“Is it safe?” one of his men asked.

Was it? Nathaniel’s gut was pressed against his spine, his hands tight on the sodden reins. He remembered MacIntosh’s proud face, his intelligent eyes, his assurance that he wanted only peace. As he looked at the man’s castle, Nathaniel felt a sharp tug of longing for the comforts of home—the welcome, the warmth, the company of family.

“I suppose we’ll find out,” he replied, and urged his horse onto the narrow strip of road. He heard his escort follow, but kept his eyes on the castle.