Sarah Gabriel (5 page)

“Drunk on his own peat reek,” one of the men growled. “What else do you carry besides that drunken rascal? Kegs of whisky that we should confiscate?”

Ranald growled in Gaelic to Andrew, who answered and then addressed the officers. “Not everyone moves peat reek about, sir. My father takes offense to be so accused.”

“Until we find crocks and kegs under the straw, eh?”

“We’re carrying only hay and one sick old man,” Andrew answered. “Hector is not drunk. He’s ill, and we mean to get him some help.”

“They’re all thieves and liars in this glen,” one of the officers snarled. He thumped the bottom of the cart bed so hard that Dougal knew, by the sound, that he used a gun butt or a cudgel.

Dougal emitted an unearthly groan, even to his own ears. The men cried out and must have jumped back. One of them barked something to Andrew and Ranald.

“I would not be touching him if I were you,” Andrew answered.

“What’s he got?”

Ranald muttered again to Andrew. “Fever, sir,” Andrew said.

“That’s nothing. Get him up. Let’s see him.”

“Tinneas-an-gradh dubh
,” Ranald said quickly.

“Tinnie-gra-doo…what is that?” an officer demanded.

“It is the Gaelic for a terrible sickness,” Andrew said. “He has had the
tinneas-an-gradh dubh
before, but not so bad as this. Please do not touch him, sir,” he added hastily, when one of the men stepped closer.

Dougal coughed again, loudly, still clutching the girl to him. Her arms slid around him, probably to ease her position. Feeling her tremble against him, he rubbed her shoulder in reassurance, and felt her relax a little. Her bonnet tipped askew, and his lips touched the soft shell of her ear. She sighed beneath his hand, and shifted in his arms.

The movement was sultry—they were so damn close, he thought—and feelings rocketed through his body that required immediate suppression. He drew his hips back a little from her. She glanced up at him in the darkness of the plaid over both of them, and he stared into her eyes.

For a moment he could have forgotten where they were, what they were doing—who he was, and what he had promised himself about women, as if there was magic in her gaze. But he could not allow himself to be so distracted, not now, with king’s men standing so near.

“Tinnie what? I’ve never heard of it,” one revenue man said to the other.

“They’re lying, so they can get illegal whisky past us. Search the cart.”

Dougal knew the men had the authority to
search the cart, and everyone in it. The excise officers acted as deputies of the law, specially charged with apprehending smugglers and collecting their illicit goods, usually whisky, from which the officers could collect fees that made up the greater part of their wages. Therefore the incentive to find criminals throughout the Highland regions was strong, and encouraged by the government. Dougal frowned, listening.

“Sir,
dubh
means ‘black’ in Gaelic,” the other revenue officer replied. “Black something. It seems bad. We’d best keep away, Mr. MacIntyre.”

Dougal frowned. Tam MacIntyre was known to be a tough, even cruel law enforcer, who had lately been promoted to chief revenue officer at the other end of the loch.

“Tinneas-an-gradh dubh
,” Ranald repeated. “Bad.”

“Bad, see,” Andrew said hastily. “Mr. MacIntyre, sir, we must pass. Only one woman can help Hector, and we must get there. Please, he is suffering.”

MacIntyre paused. Dougal felt the tension in the silence. “Go on, then,” he growled. “But if you see that rascal Dougal MacGregor, tell him I am looking for him.”

“I have not seen him for a while,” Andrew said.

“He’s probably out roaming the drovers’ roads with a load of peat reek,” MacIntyre said.

“He has never been caught out at such a thing,” Andrew said. “He is a fine laird, caring after his glen and his tenants, his cattle and his fields.”

“And his barley brew? Just tell him we’ve discovered another still up the glen side. We’ve dismantled it, but we do not yet know who owns it. The new law states that any illegal still found on a landowner’s property is the fault of the landowner, regardless of who owns or runs the still. The punishment and the fine could be Kinloch’s to bear on this one.”

Ranald murmured something and spat.

“In English, you old goat, I know you speak it,” MacIntyre said.

“The reverend hired a teacher to come to Glen Kinloch to teach us English,” Andrew said. “Perhaps my father will learn it then.”

“You need no teaching. You’re a slick-tongued otter, and I do not trust a word you say.”

Dougal coughed again, wretchedly so. MacIntyre’s companion swore. “Let them pass, sir. If the old man dies here—”

“Very well,” MacIntyre said. “But tell all your kinsmen and friends that we are watching them. We have more men, and new laws. Highland smugglers will not get away with their crimes so easily as before.”

“Good evening sir,” Andrew said abruptly, and snapped the reins. As the horse stepped forward and the cart lurched, Dougal kept his arms wrapped around the girl. His face was close to hers under the cover of the old blanket. He heard Andrew and Ranald talking, and then Ranald laughed outright.

“Kinloch, did you hear?” Ranald asked over his shoulder.

“I did,” Dougal said. “Be quiet, you two, until we are far away.”

“Tinneas-an-gradh dubh
,” Andrew repeated, hooting. “The black lovesickness!”

“Aye, the black lovesickness is upon him,” Ranald crowed. “He’s got it bad!”

“It will slay him for certain,” Andrew added with exaggerated seriousness.

“We’d best see the lass home to save the laird from the lovesickness,” Ranald said.

“Enough,” Dougal called gruffly. Holding the girl in his arms, he knew she listened intently. Then he realized that he still covered her mouth with his hand. Releasing his hand slowly, he felt her lips, warm and tender, under his palm. The sensation brought sudden desire, hot as flame. He looked at her in the shadows under the plaid, and was sure that her breath came faster, as did his.

“I did not know that
tinneas-an-gradh dubh
was such a plague in this glen,” she said in perfectly intoned Gaelic.

“When a beautiful lass visits from the city and leaves the laird brokenhearted, it is the black lovesickness for him,” Ranald said.

“You are enjoying it far too much,” Dougal said.

“So you’ve had this plague before,” the girl observed.

“Not so often as my kinsmen would have you
believe,” he drawled quietly. She laughed, and he heard the reluctance in it, as if she did not want to enjoy any of this, or relax, and yet she did. He smiled a little in the dark, feeling some of that reluctance himself, and aware of its irony.

“The road is clear ahead, but best keep under the blanket until we stop, Dougal.”

“Aye.” Dougal ducked fully under the plaid, pulling it high over Fiona’s head as well.

“I thought your name was Hector,” she said.

“Hector MacGregor is my great-great-uncle, who claims to be a hundred years old.”

“The officers would have thought Hector to be in perfect health, if they had seen you.”

“So they would.” He chuckled. “But Hector says it is the fairy magic that keeps him young, so perhaps they would not be so surprised as you think.”

“Fairy magic? What do you mean?” She tipped her head, close to his.

“It is said that the MacGregors of Kinloch know a few fairy secrets,” he said.

“Do you?” she asked intently.

He shrugged. “More than some, and less than others.”

“I find fairy lore quite…intriguing.”

What he found intriguing was Fiona, he told himself. The feel of her in his arms, his body still stretched halfway over hers, the plaid cocooning them in warmth and strange intimacy; his thoughts were not on fairies, but on far more immediate and
tantalizing matters. As the cart rolled along, every jolt and lurch brought him into contact with her, so that he felt increasingly on fire.

He was no boy to be aroused without control, and he was not one to take advantage of a pretty woman for the mere pleasure of it, discounting her feelings in the matter—but by God, he found it hard to endure her warm, firm body under his; her gentle, sweet breath upon his cheek; her heartbeat thumping in her throat so close to his fingertips along her collarbone. He was tempted to pull her closer, taste her, caress her. But none of it suited his purpose.

Then he forced himself to remember what she had said, however odd the remark had seemed under the circumstances. “What is it you want to know about fairies?”

“I am interested in the legends and in sightings. Have you ever seen fairies and such?”

Dougal raised his brows, surprised by her question, particularly considering the situation. “Some of my kinsmen claim to have seen them here and there, and my father—” He stopped.

“Your father has seen them?”

“He is no longer with us,” he answered abruptly. “Such strange questions,” he said. “I would expect you to complain about smugglers, or at least ask about the school.”

“That, too,” she said. “But I am fascinated by stories of fairy sightings.”

He watched her in the murky darkness beneath
the plaid, where her eyes glimmered like stars, and her breath was soft as a night breeze. “I am looking at a fairy creature even now,” he murmured, “and she’s the lovely queen of them all.”

“That is just silliness. I am serious.”

So was he. And just when he should have agreed with her and let it be, he felt her breath soft upon his cheek, and his ear; a devastating jolt of desire went through him—and in that instant the cart lurched and her body shifted against him, her cheek brushing his, her lips perilously close to his. And before he could stop himself, he kissed her.

Her lips softened under his, and her mouth gave way for a moment. Then she pulled away, her chest quickening where she pressed close to him. “Oh,” she breathed, “oh—”

She touched her mouth to his then, so that he groaned low in his throat and gave in to the caress of her lips, the press of her body against his beneath the plaid, while the cart rumbled onward. No one but he and the girl knew what the blanket hid, or how one kiss tumbled full into another, as if some magic spell had taken hold of both of them.

He certainly could not account for it, could barely think. He was not drunk, in fact had been his usual sober and wary self that evening. Fully capable in mind and judgment, he was kissing this girl as if he had known her all his life, as if he had loved her forever.

The feeling was like a taste of fairy whisky, or the first burst of the sun at dawn—unexpected,
nearly miraculous, something to be savored, something that could change a man within if he let it. When the kiss seemed to renew itself, he touched his tongue to the soft, moist tip of her own, and pressed his body to hers, hard and ready; he heard and felt her soft moan between his own lips.

Sliding his hand along the curve of her hip and waist, sensing the heat of her body, he shaped her luscious curves with his palm, and forced himself to halt. Yet her hands slid along his shoulders to his neck, and he felt her fingers thread into the thickness of his hair.

Slow, sweet, breaths warming, tender exploration—and then the rumbling cart slowed, and he yanked away from her, breathing fast, aware of the quick rhythm of her breathing against his chest. She turned her head away, and Dougal shifted to his side.

“Miss, I—” He hardly knew what to say, or what had happened. “I beg pardon.”

She did not answer. He pulled the blanket aside and peered out.

And saw Ranald looking at them over his shoulder through the foggy darkness. “Mrs. MacIan’s house is just there in the cove,” his uncle said calmly. “We cannot take the cart down there in such a mist. But you can walk.”

“Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.” The girl spoke as she sat and pulled the blanket down. Hay bits were caught in her hair, and Dougal sat up too, stretching out a hand to pluck them free from her
dark hair. He straightened her bonnet, which had slipped askew. Brushing hastily at her skirts, she did not look at him.

Dougal bounded over the side of the cart to the ground, and reached up to her, though she hesitated before finally accepting his assistance. Under his hands, her slim curves fit his hands, feeling so good that he wanted to hold her close again—but he let her slide to the ground. Both of them stepped apart in silence, quickly, as if they had been caught out at mischief.

“My knapsack,” she said, turning, acting flustered. Dougal reached past her and grabbed the pack from the cart bed. Then he groped beneath the straw until he felt the hard shapes of the kegs hidden beneath the straw—the revenue officers had nearly discovered those. He drew out one ceramic crock wrapped in thick straw and tied with string. Tucking it beneath his arm, slinging the knapsack over his shoulder, he turned.

“Miss MacCarran, I’ll escort you to the house,” he said, gesturing for her to precede him. The fog was thick here, so near the water, and the twilight turned it to a sort of lavender mist. He could see the warm glow of brightly lit windows ahead.

She tilted her head, gazing up at him. He could still taste her lips, could sense his heart pounding, and wondered what she was thinking. Then she reached up to yank the knapsack from his shoulder, swinging it to carry it herself, the weight of the thing nearly knocking her off balance.

“No need to go with me,” she said, and turned to walk along the road.

“Do not let her go, Kinloch,” Ranald said. “She’ll break an ankle in the dark and mist on the path in the cove, and Mary MacIan will be after us all to account for it. Ach,” he added with a shudder.

“I am bringing Mrs. MacIan the whisky I promised her weeks ago.” Dougal shouldered the keg as he turned to follow the girl. He was interested, more so than he could easily admit. She was certainly not just another dull teacher from the city, afraid of smugglers and everything else. She was not only young and lovely, but stubborn, independent, and intelligent.

Perhaps she could even be trusted. But he could not rely on that, or allow her to stay.