As Alasdair confidently expected, the days ticked along smoothly, like a well-oiled clockwork, and a week swiftly passed. The usual rounds of work and play; and the nights alone with his wife had indeed fallen into a predictable pattern. He wandered in, greeted her, they had quick, uneventful congress, and he went to sleep.

On the eighth night, he came into their bedchamber very late.

“Are you awake, madam?”

The question had become a ritual, only now she said:

“Yes. But it’s my woman’s time.”

“Oh.”

“And I wish,” she added waspishly, “you would stop calling me ‘madam’ in that pompous way.”

“I wasn’t aware,” he said, offended, getting into bed, “that I was being pompous.”

“Well, you were.”

There was a silence. Alasdair settled himself comfortably. He had heard that during this monthly interval, women could be rather touchy. So, cautiously, he asked, “What shall I call you then?”

“Isn’t it obvious? My name is Fiona.”

“Very well—Fiona.”

She only gave a sniff. Huffily, he turned on his side with his back to her, and closed his eyes. Adjusted the bedcovers. Shifted his pillows around. After a while he said, over his shoulder and with a little growl in his voice:

“I can hear you being awake.”

“I’m just lying here. Minding my own business, I might add.”

“It’s practically the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“What do you care?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Fiona. Please just tell me.”

There was another silence. Finally, she answered, reluctantly, as if unwilling to share anything personal:

“I have insomnia.”

He remembered finding her in her morning-room, napping. He recalled the dark circles under her eyes. Now he wondered how many hours she had spent in this bed, awake in the darkness, while he had serenely slept, oblivious.

He rolled onto his back. Turned his head and looked at her. The fire in the hearth provided just enough light for him to see that she, too, lay on her back, her eyes fixed—as they often seemed to be—on the canopy above their heads.

He cleared his throat a little. “Why do you have insomnia?”

“I developed it as a child.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said grudgingly. “I suppose when I realized my father was often unkind to my mother.”

“Was he—unkind to you?”

“He was . . . is . . . volatile. Was he unkind? Well, he would sometimes threaten to beat us. So I began to lie awake at night, in case he did come into the room I shared with my sisters, in one of his rages.”

“Were you afraid?” He turned onto his side, facing her.

“Not really. I lay awake thinking about what I would do if he came in.”

“What you’d do?”

“Yes. I kept a fire iron next to me in bed.”

“Would you have used it on him?”

“I told myself I would. I couldn’t protect Mother, but I could at least try to protect my sisters.”

“That was brave of you.”

He saw her shoulders, covered by her prim white nightgown, lifting in a shrug. “I don’t know about that. He never hit us, never came into our room. Perhaps I overreacted. But the end result was insomnia.”

“Surely there are remedies. Maybe Dr. Colquhoun could help.”

“I doubt it. I’ve tried everything. Chamomile, hops, lady slipper, lavender, valerian. Hot baths, cold baths. Warm milk. Wool socks. More exercise, less exercise. Oils on my feet, oils on my forehead. Nothing has worked.”

How far apart in the bed they were, he thought. The space between them seemed vast; her face was a little ghostly in the dimness. He tried to think what it would feel like to be unable to sleep, night after night, year after year. Naturally he at once felt a tremendous desire to sleepily yawn. He repressed it. Out loud he said, sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your problem.”

Did he imagine it, or was there, beneath her level, dispassionate tone, a note of melancholy?

He said, on an impulse:

“Just so you know. I didn’t ride my horse through the castle.”

She didn’t respond for a few moments. Then: “I believe you. I’ve seen how you’re too good to your horses to do something like that.”

“Thank you.” He added, still impulsively, “May I ask you something? It’s something I’ve been curious about.”

He saw her quickly turn to him, as if alarmed. As if there was something she didn’t want him to know. “Curious about what?” she asked.

“About how you learned to speak French so well.”

“Ah.” She sounded rather thankful. “There was a French family who came to Wick Bay, very poor and in distress. I spent a lot of time with them, and eventually I picked up their language. And what about you? You understood me at that dinner with Wynda? Avez-vous un tuteur, ou vous avez été envoyé loin à l’école?”

“The tutors came later. School came first, when my brother and I were sent to one in Glasgow, where after six years there they finally kicked us both out.”

“Kicked you out? Why?”

“Well, we didn’t ride horses through the buildings, but we did accept other dares.” He laughed. “We were, in fact, the terrors of the school.”

“What did you do?”

“What didn’t we do. The pranks, the fights, the defiance. We did manage to sneak some learning in, but we hated it there. We just wanted to be home.”

“Were your parents angry?”

“Our father didn’t care, but our mother—my God, she was furious. She wanted to send us to Eton, but Gavin and I vowed we’d run away on a pirate ship before we’d ever set one toe in England. She knew us well enough to believe we really would do it, so we stayed home, evaded the poor tutors she brought in, and more or less ran wild after that. She gave up on us, as long as we didn’t interfere with her endless renovations.”

Fiona was quiet, as if absorbing this, and Alasdair was already sorry he’d said so much. He hated looking backward, hated thinking about the time before—

She said, very quietly, “I hope you don’t think I was listening to gossip, but Dame Margery did tell me about . . . what happened on the loch . . .”

With an effort he made his voice light. “Don’t worry about it. What about you? Did you and your sisters ever go to school?”

Again, a silence, as if she were registering his rebuff, and deciding how she wanted to react.

Then:

“No, we didn’t. We had a governess for a few years, a very earnest and capable lady, but eventually Father’s ambivalence about the value of female education overcame him, and he let Miss Dwight go. She found a more congenial situation in Dumfries, and Father let me buy as many books as I wanted, so it all worked out fairly well, especially since my mother was so intimidated by Miss Dwight that she completely went out of her way to avoid her.” Suddenly Fiona laughed, with what sounded like genuine amusement. “Once I found her underneath the stairs. Just sitting there. Poor Mother!”

Alasdair smiled. And he said, still in that interested, impulsive spirit: “May I ask another question?”

With laughter still in her voice, she said, “Yes.”

“What’s your favorite dish?”

“Cook’s boeuf à la Bourguignonne.”

“Favorite color?”

“Periwinkle.”

“Writer you most admire?”

“Shakespeare.”

“Season?”

“Spring.”

“Dogs or cats?”

“Dogs. Of course.”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”

He laughed. “Why not?”

“Why not?” she repeated. “That’s a good question. I suppose it’s felt like a secret for all these years. Back home I used to swim sometimes in the bay, when no one was around. Even though Father told us not to.”

“A renegade! Weren’t you cold?”

“I almost froze to death. But it was worth it.”

He very nearly said, Gavin and I used to swim in the loch, but caught himself just in time. And his brain, very agile and quick, served up something else he had wondered about, thanks to her mention of the bay, and home. Was there, back there, a swain who had lost her to her precipitous marriage?

So he instead said:

“Why were you still unmarried at twenty-seven?”

“Still harping on that, laird?” In an instant the mirth was gone. “Worried that there’s something wrong with me? Some defect I ought to have disclosed? After all, you’ve never seen the upper part of my body, have you? I could have three breasts, or bloody sores there, or worse. I suppose you can’t bear to look—”

“Fiona, I only—”

“Or perhaps I am—as you so discreetly hinted that evening in the Great Drawing-room—past my best childbearing years. Maybe it’s hopeless, and all these delightful romps together have been a waste of time.”

Her words were blistering and sharp. If they’d been fencers in a duel, she’d be flying at him, without a fleuret on the tip, lunging to kill. And in this kind of situation, you either retreated, or you parried, just as aggressively.

“Yes, delightful,” he said, with a snarl in his voice. “Didn’t you listen to the marriage vows we made? Our task is that of procreation.”

“Task. It’s very obvious it’s a task.”

“And just how would you be able to make such a judgment, madam?”

“Are you accusing me of being unchaste?” she snapped. “Surely you were aware of the state of things when you first had me? Or was your mind elsewhere?”

Oh God, oh God, he’d backed himself into a corner. How had things gotten so ugly so quickly? And yet, even in the heat of the fight, a little, awful part of him was rejoicing. Safe, safe, safe.

“This,” he said coldly (and yet comfortably), “is a highly indelicate conversation.”

“Indelicate?” She gave a sardonic laugh. “I had no idea your sensibilities were so refined, laird. Do forgive me.”

“And I, madam, had no idea you were capable of such coarseness.” Now he was simply being an ass. He knew it. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“Well, we’ve learned quite a lot about each other tonight, haven’t we?” she said icily.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Very enlightening.”

“And exhausting.” He yawned, loudly and ostentatiously. “Good night then.”

He could hear her scornful huff as she flounced onto her side, with her back to him. “Yes. Good night.”

Alasdair closed his eyes. It was almost as if the angry, ugly words they’d exchanged were still hanging in the air, taking up space in the darkness of the room. He waited, waited, for them to subside. And as he waited, it came to him then—that despite the mechanical nature of their coupling, he’d been assuming she found him attractive, as women generally did. He’d brushed aside her reply to his provocative question in the Great Drawing-room, when he’d said:

You do not find my person comely?

Not particularly, she had coolly answered.

He let this startling possibility sink in.

Yes, he’d been assuming that she wanted him, while he was the one dispensing his—ah—favors at his own convenience. That he had the upper hand, he was in control.

Maybe, maybe, he was wrong.

Then came another unwelcome thought, like an angel (or devil?) perched on his shoulder:

Well, lad, you haven’t exactly done much to excite her passion, have you?

He countered, She’s not my type.

What’s wrong with her?

Too thin, too pale, too blonde.

The angel (or devil) seemed to say, slyly: Have you really looked at her, lad?

Alasdair almost groaned out loud. Here he was, having a dialogue with himself. What the hell was wrong with him?

The sly little voice made itself known again.

Have you, lad? Or have you locked yourself in?

Shut up, he tried to tell the voice. I’ve worked everything out to my satisfaction. Don’t you go—

Rocking the boat? said the voice, a little cruelly.

I’m done with you, Voice.

But you’re not done with Mòrag, are you?

Shut up. Go away.

Never.

Alasdair shifted in the bed, raked a hand through his hair.

Which reminded him. What was so wrong with red hair, by the way?

Not a damn thing.

He had nice, thick hair which he kept clean and well-barbered.

He opened his eyes, turned his head to glare at her back.

Look at her? Locked in?

Damned stupid voice.

And he closed his eyes again, waiting—a little guiltily—for sleep to claim him. His last waking thought was the belated realization that with the advent of her woman’s time, a hope for conception had been dashed.

Well, he’d certainly been the compassionate husband, hadn’t he.

Later, much later that night, Alasdair dreamed he made passionate love to his wife, who sat astride him, her curious silvery hair released at last from its braid. It covered her like a living mantle of silk. And in this dream, her pale, slender body actually glowed, as if she were on fire. It was his touch that ignited her.

A deep coldness lay between the laird and his lady, and little Sheila was overheard saying casually to her playmates a few days later:

“There are ghosts in the castle.”

“We wish,” one of the other children answered, just as casually, tossing out a little piece of crockery for a marker, and they all went on with their lively, occasionally contentious game of hop-scotch.

And a few days later after that, on a beautiful morning that held in it the tiniest hint of autumn, Fiona stood in the warm, clean kitchen conferring with Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, and with Cook. All around her was well-ordered bustle; on a low stool near the hearth sat Sheila, playing with her doll. Isobel had made a white lace wrapper and a wee nightcap for the doll to wear, and Sheila was carefully tying the tiny ribbons, one after another. On her lap was also a big lemony biscuit, sweet with sugar and dotted with caraway seeds.

One of these delicious biscuits Fiona had just sampled and approved. Now she was looking over Mrs. Allen’s menu suggestions for the week’s dinners. “Yes, Monday and Tuesday look fine, thank you. Cook, have you the ingredients for the vermicelli soup on Tuesday?”

“To be sure we do.”

“Excellent. But one of the entrees for Wednesday—I do not think the laird cares for beef tongue roast, and nor do I overmuch, so perhaps you might reserve that for staff. A roasted sirloin instead for the high table?”

“Aye, mistress, and we’ll enjoy the tongue, thank you.”

“Good. And a salad of potatoes and peas, if the peas are fresh?”

“Indeed they are.”

“Then I think we’re done.” Fiona smiled. “Now, do you need more salve for your arm?”

Cook rolled up her sleeve to display the inside of her forearm, where the skin was pink and healthy. “Nay, I thank you, mistress. Only see how well the burn has healed!”

“It has, and I’m so pleased,” said Fiona warmly. “Thank you, Mrs. Allen, you may go. Cook, if you could have a nuncheon brought to my morning-room in an hour or so, I’ll take it in there, and—”

She broke off as she realized that Sheila was tugging at her skirt. Goodness, how that child crept up on one! But she smiled down at her and said, “Yes, hinny?”

“Lady, lady, have you a magic salve for my granny’s hands? They’re paining her greatly.”

Fiona looked inquiringly at Cook, who nodded and said, “It’s the rheumatism which plagues poor Dame Margery, mistress.”

“I’ll bring some salve for your granny,” Fiona promised, “and herbs for a tea. It will help, although it’s not magic, hinny.”

“When, lady, when?”

“I’ll come tomorrow, if you’ll tell me where you live.”

“You must go past the village to the heather meadow. We live on the very edge of it, just where the forest begins. I think there are boogeymen within it, but Granny says I’m wrong.”

“There’s no such thing as boogeymen, child!” interpolated Cook reprovingly, and Fiona only said:

“Tell your granny I will come in the afternoon.”

Sheila nodded, and picked up her biscuit which had fallen to the floor. With casual nonchalance she began to eat it, and Fiona smiled again and went off to the stillroom, where she began assembling the herbs she needed. As she worked her mind wandered, thinking for the hundredth time about the other night in which she and Alasdair had quarreled so fiercely.

She’d been feeling very low, for there was no babe within her womb, no little one to dream of, look forward to. Why couldn’t he have said, What if tonight I held you? Simply held you?

Why couldn’t she have said, Please will you hold me?

Because they couldn’t. Obviously.

But oh, she had wanted to be held, had wanted a little comfort. It might have been nice to be clasped in those strong arms, to feel her body brought close to his, to lay her head on that broad chest and listen, just listen, to his heartbeat. Who knew, maybe—what a wild, wild hope— maybe it would even have lulled her into sleep.

That wasn’t how it had gone, however. Oh well. The truth was, you couldn’t have everything in life. You didn’t want to be like that foolish farmer in the cautionary tale by Aesop—greedily killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Wasn’t that the key to, well, if not happiness, at least not being miserable? Accepting things the way they were?

That’s what people said, at any rate.

And so here it was, another day.

Time, as the saying goes, was marching on.

Whether you liked it or not.

Fiona reached for a fragrant sprig of lavender, and focused again on her work. Despite everything, she was looking forward to riding out to the heather meadow. Exceptionally lovely it was, surrounded by dense woodlands of pine, juniper, yew, and with the majestic Grampian mountains in the distance, rising up to meet the wide blue sky. Beautiful, calm, and peaceful.

She could, she thought wryly, aware of a faint, but unmistakably lonely ache within the far reaches of her heart, certainly use the peace of mind.

On the very next day, in the fullness of a glorious afternoon dappled with the light and shadow of drifting clouds, Alasdair, riding with his bailiff Shaw to visit some of the tenant farmers who lived on the remote northern border of the Penhallow lands, saw that one whole length of fence, a cattle enclosure, had been hacked away. Inquiries among the farmers elicited the information that it had just happened last night, and that half a dozen cattle had been stolen—a heavy toll.

“I’ll send some men to help you rebuild, and to stand watch during the next several nights,” Alasdair told them. “And we’ll try to find your cattle.”

“Think you it’s the Dalwhinnies again, laird?” asked Shaw, as they rode swiftly back toward the castle.

“It’s hard to believe they’d be that bold, after what happened so recently. You heard that old Dalziel Sutherlainn died last month?” At Shaw’s nod, he went on, “A hard man to mourn—a twisty mind, an improvident leader, rash and selfish. His son Crannog is now the chieftain.”

“Know you him, laird?”

“Nay, we’ve not met, but I wonder how far the apple can fall from its tree. I want twenty men out there at least, and word sent out to all the farmers to be on their guard.”

And at exactly the same time when Alasdair turned his horse back toward the castle, Fiona was giving Dame Margery a pot of salve and a cloth bag of herbs, and glancing around her cottage. It was small and simply furnished, but clean and comfortable. “Where is Sheila?” she asked. “I’ve brought some lemon biscuits as well.”

“Thank you, mistress,” said the old lady smilingly, “most kind of you! Sheila went off to gather some kindling for our fire. Though I thought she’d have returned by now. She’ll be sorry to have missed you, for she wished to show you her slate, with her letters drawn upon it.”

“I’ll walk out to meet her if I can,” answered Fiona, and said her farewells. Holding Gealag’s reins, she led him along a winding track into the shadowy woods that lay behind Margery’s cottage. Boogeymen lived here, little Sheila had said. Fiona remembered how, when she was small, her garrulous nurse had terrified herself and her sisters with bloodcurdling tales of trolls, wraiths, demons, and, worst of all, the Sack Man, a phantomlike figure said to descend upon wandering children, scoop them up in his foul sack, and carry them off in order to eat them. How incensed Father had been when he’d discovered this. He’d sent the nurse away, back to her family, and secretly Mother had confided to Fiona how grateful she was, for the stories had been petrifying her, too.

Fiona smiled faintly.

Then she heard men’s voices, low and rough, and paused, her smile yielding to an abrupt tense alertness. It was hearing Sheila’s voice that compelled her to pace cautiously forward, to the lip of a clearing, where she saw some ten or twelve men, plainly not of the Penhallow clan, for their clothing was ragged and unkempt. Their horses, tethered, were thin, but the half-dozen cattle were fat and robust; and in this dark clearing stood Sheila, gazing up at the men whose postures indicated both fierce hostility and more than a little fear.

They were all armed, with muskets and daggers, and Fiona briefly but intensely regretted not bringing her pistols. Then again, why would she? She’d merely ridden out to visit one of their own. Besides, she’d have been badly outnumbered anyway. These men were cattle thieves, and she was deeply afraid that the belligerence they were displaying toward Sheila—looking more than usually otherworldly with her pale, wandering eyes, very blank just now, and her seemingly unlikely attitude of calm imperturbability—would erupt into swift violence.

“You’re empty, empty,” said Sheila, matter-of-factly. “Hollow, hollow.”

One of the men, bearded and balding, hissed: “Kill her, laird, and be done with it! We must be away!”

The man just addressed slowly lifted his dagger, and took a step forward. “Aye, I’ll do it, just as you say!” He was very tall, cadaverously thin, and reekingly filthy, with a rough sort of mantle flung over his shoulders, made of shabby animal pelts loosely stitched together.

“Stop!” Fiona came three, four, five paces into the clearing. She could feel her heart thumping hard in her breast, but made her voice loud and imperative. The men all swung around to face her, weapons raised, and the leader jabbed his dagger menacingly.

“Who are you?” he cried out.

“It’s our lady,” answered Sheila calmly. “Good day, lady, you came as you said you would.”

“The Penhallow’s wife!” hissed the bald man. “Leave the little witch, laird, and let’s take her, and that horse of hers! A fine ransom the Penhallow will pay for her safe return!”

“Aye, that’s for sure,” agreed the leader. “But—how do we do that?”

“Bind her wrists,” the bald man replied, “and have her put on your horse. And you ride that horse of hers! Do it!” he barked at the other men, who moved quickly to obey.

Fiona submitted to the indignity of having her hands tied together and being tossed up onto an old sway-backed mare, but when the leader approached Gealag, he found that short of killing the beautiful white horse he’d not mount him, for Gealag threw out his sharp front hooves with vicious intent.

“I’ll lead him, the brute,” said the bald man, moving toward Gealag, “and whip him if he balks.”

From atop the mare on which she perched astride, displaying far too much of her stockinged legs, Fiona said, with steel in her voice, “Harm him, and I’ll make you wish you were dead.”

“Ha!” retorted the bald man, snatching at Gealag’s reins, “as if you could, trussed up like a chicken as you are.”

“She’d shoot you in the heart, empty man,” remarked Sheila, then staggered as he stalked past her, cuffing her across her head, hissing, “Quiet, you witch!”

The leader swung up behind Fiona, holding her about the waist with an unnerving tentativeness, and kicked his heels into the mare’s flanks. “Let’s go!” he cried, and the ragtag cavalcade began making its way deeper into the forest. Fiona, nearly gagging from the smell of the man behind her, turned her head to stare at Sheila, first to make sure she wasn’t harmed, and second to try—foolish though it seemed—to communicate an urgent thought.

Go tell the laird, hinny!

Sheila only stared back at her, a grubby finger stuck into her mouth, her face utterly blank, and Fiona felt her heart sink.

Alasdair was very busy when he got back to the castle, organizing his men, sending out messages, looking over all the horses. The last thing on his mind was dinner, but as the hour arrived, he knew he and the men would be awake all the night and would benefit from having had a meal, so with them he quickly made his way to the Great Hall, only to find that his wife wasn’t there. How odd. Perhaps she was caught up in one task or another, or napping somewhere. He dispatched both a servant boy and her maidservant Edme to go find her.

Naturally it had begun to rain, so not only was Fiona tired, hungry, sore from the lack of a saddle, and unhappy, she was soaked to the bone and shivering in the cold. She had whiled away the long hours of this weary journey by eavesdropping, and had learned that the skeletal, bad-smelling leader, behind her, was named Crannog Sutherlainn, and that he’d only recently become the clan’s chieftain. She learned that the balding, bearded man, Faing, was Crannog’s uncle. As she listened to them openly rejoicing about not only stealing several fine, fat cattle but also looking forward to receiving an enormous ransom from Alasdair Penhallow, she refrained from pointing out that her absence at Castle Tadgh would be noticed (sooner rather than later, if Sheila bestirred herself), someone would come after her, and because cattle couldn’t travel particularly fast, the plodding pace of their escape was, frankly, a bit of a problem. For them.

The moon was high in the sky by the time, after a great deal of complaining among the men, their party stopped and made camp for the night in a small clearing filled with concealing underbrush. Fiona was relieved to be lifted down from the poor nag who’d been made to carry two people, and also to see that Gealag—although clearly nervous—was all right. She was pushed down into a wet patch of leaves to sit and given some malodorous venison jerky to eat, with her hands still bound together. Even in the darkness she could see the green patches of mold upon it, and so she turned to Crannog Sutherlainn who was beside her, and held out the jerky. “Here.”

“You don’t want it?” His long, thin face was suspicious.

“No. It’s nasty.”

“It’s the best we’ve got,” he said defensively, accepting it, and as he immediately began gnawing upon it, Fiona looked around the group of men who surrounded her, all of them, she now observed, as thin as their horses and eating their single pieces of jerky with undisguised avidity. Nothing else was produced to eat. She was pondering this, when Faing spoke to her.

“Wouldn’t mind having a bit of you,” he said with a smile that revealed several distinctly unappealing teeth, “before we let you go. You’re a rare beauty, lass. The Penhallow’s a lucky man.”

Fiona took a moment to wonder if a compliment coming from such a one could in any way be viewed as flattering, especially since she knew for a fact he couldn’t possibly be drunk and so it wasn’t just alcohol talking.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she responded coolly. “Violating me would only make my husband quite a bit angrier than he’s already certain to be.” My husband. Was this the first time she’d said those two words out loud?

“She’s right, Uncle,” interpolated Crannog Sutherlainn, sounding more than a little anxious. “Come to think of it, maybe we ought to be pushing along right now.”

The men began loudly grumbling, and Faing replied, “No. We’re fatigued,” and Crannog promptly subsided, his eyes darting worriedly about. They came to rest on Fiona. “You’re cold?” he asked, softly, as if hoping the others wouldn’t hear him.

“Yes.”

He took off his shabby fur mantle, and laid it around her shoulders. Its smell was awful, and as it was already wet it provided little real warmth, but Fiona couldn’t help but be touched by Crannog’s gesture. She saw, as he bent near her, that he couldn’t be more than twenty years old.

He’s only a boy! she thought. Aloud she said quietly, “Thank you.”

He nodded, and without his mantle she could see just how painfully thin he was; his shoulders were knobby and his Adam’s apple huge in the scrawny column of his throat. Here was someone considerably thinner than herself, but she doubted very much that he was anywhere near as well fed.

Empty, empty, hollow, hollow, little Sheila had said.

The castle and the stables and the gardens had been thoroughly searched and his wife, apparently, was missing. Alasdair stood in the Great Hall, frowning. Annoying and perplexing Fiona might be, but she wasn’t flighty, or one to play pranks. He was wondering uneasily if there was a connection between the Sutherlainns and Fiona’s mysterious disappearance, when Cook approached him, and said, twisting her hands in her apron:

“Laird, it’s come to me, ’twas yesterday that the mistress mentioned she was to ride out today to Dame Margery with some herbs.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before Alasdair was gone from the Hall, off to the stables where he had a half-dozen men saddle their horses along with his own. Twenty minutes later, he stood just inside Dame Margery’s cottage, having woken her and little Sheila from their beds.

The old lady was baffled, alarmed, and turned to Sheila, who, barefoot and in her nightgown, stood sleepily rubbing her eyes.

“What know you of this?” she said urgently to her granddaughter. “You told me you saw the mistress in the woods, but nothing else.”

“You saw the mistress, lass?” put in Alasdair quickly. “When?”

“Oh, this afternoon, laird, I was looking for kindling for Granny.”

“What happened then?”

“The men took her away with them.”

The little girl was calm, vague, so casual in her speech that Alasdair had to keep himself from what felt like literally exploding. He’d been exasperated many times prior in his life, but he now knew, with soul-shaking certainty, that this moment was the absolute topper.

Sharply, from between clenched teeth, he said, “What men?” just as old Dame Margery exclaimed in horror:

“You never said a word of this!”

“Oh, Granny, when I saw those lemon biscuits I forgot all about it. Aren’t they so good? I wish we could have them every day.”

Patience, he told himself sternly. You mustn’t frighten the child. “What men did you see, little Sheila?”

She looked up at him (at least one eye did, the other seemed to be directed at a stoneware crock in which, he suspected, biscuits were stored). “I didn’t know them, laird, but one of them called me a witch, which is a terrible lie. They had some of our cattle, and they also stole our lady and her horse.”

“Can you tell me which way they went, lass?”

She nodded. “Oh yes, laird, they’re following the northwest trail, but they’re not going very fast, and if you ride hard you’ll find them in about an hour and a half. But be careful, because the rain has made the trail very slippery. Although the rain will stop soon.”

Now the lass was all about sharing useful information. Hours had passed since Fiona had been taken—long, treacherous hours in which anything might happen. That they were going northwest confirmed his suspicion that it was the Sutherlainn clan they were dealing with, led by a man of whom Alasdair knew nothing: a lack of information which made him very, very uncomfortable.

As he and his men began riding as rapidly as they dared along a trail which was, as Sheila predicted, dangerously slippery, Alasdair thought of Fiona, alone, vulnerable, unprotected, and he felt the cold hand of fear take hold of his heart. If the Sutherlainns so much as hurt one hair of her head, he told himself grimly, he would wreak such vengeance upon them that the entire clan would wish it had never seen the light of day.