Beloved Highlander

Gregor gulped down the whiskey, and before the girl had even left the room, some of the color returned to his face.

“Your bandages need changing,” Meg said.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll get Malcolm Bain to do it. Tell me what you have come all this way to tell me.”

Meg nodded, leaning forward, her eyes fixed on his.

“After you left Glen Dhui, Captain Grant, the management of the estate was put into the hands of the government. It was…difficult for the people. And then my father bought it.”

His smile had gone, his face turned rigid and unemotional. She could read nothing in it.

“You know my father,” she said softly. “He is General Mackintosh.”

Something was stirring in the depths of those amber eyes, a whirlpool of emotion he tried to keep hidden by sweeping his dark lashes over them. But she read pain in the tightening of his mouth, the stiffening of his body, the white knuckles of his clenched hand. Real pain.

“General Mackintosh is your father,” he repeated, and it was not a question.

“Yes. My father is the man whose life you saved when you were in prison, Captain Grant.”

Now those thick, dark lashes lifted, and she saw bewilderment. “The name was the same, but I did not think…Why would the General Mackintosh I knew buy Glen Dhui? He lived in the North of England.”

Meg smiled wryly. “He did, and why indeed? If you think it was to repay you for your courageous action, then think again. My father is not quite so altruistic. He knew of Glen Dhui from you, presumably, and then he learned that the estate was forfeit by your family after the Rebellion. He had to travel north of the border on business that year. Glen Dhui was out of his way, but he journeyed to it anyway. There were a number of wealthy men from England who fancied themselves lairds after the 1715. They bought estates confiscated from Jacobite owners. But my father wasn’t looking to increase his prestige. He fell in love with Glen Dhui, and made an immediate offer to the government. They accepted. And so we went to make our home there. He has been a good laird,” she finished, lifting her chin and daring him to disagree.

Slowly he nodded his head, accepting her words. He shivered again, and pulled the quilt closer about him, his hair falling forward in thick lengths, his eyes a golden gleam through his lashes.

“Then why do you need me?” he asked quietly.

“The general is not well. Duncan helps, he is a good tacksman, and he advises us. Our tenants are loyal and reliable. But my father is no longer able to run the estate as he once did, and much falls to me. I do not mind…. In fact I enjoy it. I cannot foresee any problems in my taking the reins from him, when he is ready to relinquish them.”

“The general isna well, but you are perfectly competent to take over. I ask again, my lady, why do you need me?”

Meg sighed, her fingers tightening upon each other. “The Duke of Abercauldy has an estate to the south of us, far larger than Glen Dhui. We have always been on good terms with him; he and the general are friends. Were friends.”

The bitterness in her voice caught her unawares. She found those cool amber eyes once more upon her, probing her weaknesses.

“The duke came often to call, and they would sit and talk. The general…My father enjoyed his company—he trusted him. I trusted my father. And then one day they hatched a plot between them, that the duke and I would marry, and so join our estates together. But it wasn’t the land—[ ]not in my father’s mind, anyway. He has always wanted for me to marry into the aristocracy. It has always been his wish, but I have resisted. It has been a bone of contention between us since I came of age. My father has not agreed with my point of view, but he has respected it…until now. I…” but her voice failed her.

Those eyes were full of attention now, not a trace of fever. “You dinna wish to marry him?”

“I did not think to marry anyone,” she replied tersely. “In the end I felt I had no choice.”

“So he changed your mind?”

Meg laughed without humor. “They had signed some papers, legal documents, but that was not the reason I agreed. I am five and twenty and single, probably too old to attract another man. When my father dies I will be all alone, but again, that did not persuade me. The general is not the man he was, Captain. He forgets. His mind is fading. He did not mean to make me unhappy—the opposite in fact. I could not hate him for wanting to see me safe. When I saw what our falling out was doing to him, how it was destroying what time he has left, I capitulated.”

She said it coldly, without flinching, daring him to make a comment.

He nodded, but there was a tension in him, a hardness about his face she could not read. “And now? I still dinna understand the reason you want me to go home.”

Home. It was a slip. They both ignored it.

“He was married before,” she said flatly. “Two years ago. To Lady Isabella Mackenzie, an heiress from the Western Isles. The marriage was unhappy. He…mistreated her. She died in an accident—so it was said. Tragic and sad, but unremarkable. And then…then I received information that it was no accident. That Isabella may well have been murdered, by the duke himself.”

“And you accept this information? You trust the source it came from?”

She barely hesitated. “I do. And there is more. Once we began asking questions closer to Abercauldy’s lands, we learned that he has an evil reputation where women are concerned. Cruelty and…and disappearances. It is just that he took care we did not know about these rumors. Until it was too late.”

“Did you tell the duke what you had heard?”