A Rogue in Moonlight (The Whisky Rogues #3)

Prologue

Scotland, the Highlands

Just before dawn on his thirteenth birthday, Dougal MacGregor climbed a hill behind his father, whose steps were long and sure.

Tall for his age, Dougal kept pace and glanced around in the half darkness, where surrounding mist obscured the trees and rocks on the hillside.

Even in daylight, the climb was risky, but his father knew every step and misstep over these hills.

Born in Glen Kinloch, John MacGregor was the glen’s laird, a farmer, and a clever smuggler.

Dougal was proud to be Kinloch’s son and eager to be the newest keeper of the family secret, which his father had promised to reveal to him that very morning.

Where hill met mountain, the way grew steep, but Dougal and his father had the strong legs and good lungs of Highlanders used to long miles.

His late mother, Anna MacIan, had often said that her son was even more handsome than his brawny, dark-haired father.

Dougal wanted to be as fine a man as John MacGregor of Kinloch one day, and watch over the people of Glen Kinloch with the same fairness his father showed.

He wanted to be a smuggler like John, too.

The free trade put coin in poor Highland pockets, though the new laws and regulations had made the enterprise more dangerous.

But Dougal would rather run whisky over the hills and outwit the revenue men than go to school.

Books and learning were not half as enjoyable as leading gaugers on a merry chase by moonlight, and reaching the shore of the great loch, where sloops waited to take whisky kegs along to the river, and out of Scotland entirely.

Dougal had gone with his father and uncles on a few runs, and they had declared that a swift and clever lad was a boon to the work.

John MacGregor did not want that life for his son.

He was adamant that Dougal would have an education; he wanted books and cravats in his son’s future, not illicit exporting.

He had saved every spare penny and a modest inheritance to ensure that one day his son would attend university in Glasgow and become a lawyer.

Education and personal wealth were the best ways to save Glen Kinloch, John insisted.

If the laird was able to assure the well-being of the people of the glen, they could remain in their own homes, tending their livestock, and brewing whisky for their use with no need to smuggle.

He knew that over the past two generations, Highlanders had been forced from their homes due to the greed of wealthy men who bought acreage to stock the hills with wool-producing sheep, or to turn land into shooting preserves.

Clan chiefs with funds could save their lands, but Glen Kinloch was a small, poor lairdship.

So the laird had turned to smuggling for better coin.

And he had decided that books and neckcloths would be part of his son’s future.

In a few short years, he would send Dougal to university and away from the glen and all he loved.

Until then, the boy attended the little glen school whenever there was a dominie to teach there.

Currently, that was a sour-faced man that Kinloch paid personally.

Though quick and clever at learning, Dougal preferred to tend the herds and fields with his father.

Even more, he liked the excitement of the smuggling runs.

Climbing the hill behind his father that morning, Dougal was eager to learn the Kinloch secret, so closely guarded by each laird that Dougal knew only part of the story.

Something to do with a fairy promise and the gift of a recipe for a magical whisky made only at Kinloch.

Finally, he would learn the whole of it.

“Come ahead, lad,” John whispered, leading Dougal to the top of the steep slope, where trees crowned the ridge. Far above, the peak of the mountain loomed through a ring of mist. “Look for the markings that show the way.” He gestured at the ground.

Dougal looked at thick clusters of heather spreading over earth and rock, newly green but not yet blooming. “What marks?” he asked.

“Fairy footprints. See, just there.” John pointed.

Then Dougal saw marks on the rock like tiny feet all in a row, marching up the mountain. He blinked in awe. “The Fey came by here?”

“The fairies leave their mark where they walk or dance. And their footprints show the way to fairy places. But only a few can see the marks.”

“I see them.”

“The MacGregors of Kinloch have the gift, and we know the secret of this place. Come ahead.” John led the way upward.

The sky was lighter now. A wall of sheer rock rose to one side, while below, the vast glen looked like a bowl of mist. Dougal looked around. “Da, can the revenue men find us up here?”

“Not in this fog. The gaugers rarely come up this high, most of them being Lowlanders not fit for the climb.”

“I feel as if someone is watching us,” he said uneasily.

“Could be the mountain fairies. They will not harm us. Come up to me,” his father said, offering a hand as he helped his son climb up over a cluster of boulders.

Something glinted on the ground, and Dougal stooped to pick up a small, shining stone. It was a crystal of the sort called cairngorm, its peaty color glowing in the dawn light. He dropped it into his jacket pocket and walked on. “Da, tell me again about the Kinloch gift.”

“Aye then. Long ago, the first laird of Kinloch and his wife were walking on this very mountainside, when they came upon an ailing fairy woman about to give birth. They delivered her babe and gave her a dram of whisky made in their own still, thus saving her life, and they were thanked by the woman’s husband.

The next night, he knocked on the door of their home and gave them a gift—the secret of making a magical brew. ”

“Fairy whisky,” Dougal said. “A magical brew that men would kill for.”

John huffed. “Your uncles have been going on again. True, Kinloch uisge beatha is legendary, and the secret of the brew is guarded closely by the laird of Kinloch and his family. Some covet our whisky and would like the recipe. But Kinloch’s fairy brew must never be sold for coin.

Only sharing it freely keeps our luck with the Fey.

Remember that always, when you are laird. ”

Dougal nodded. “I will. It must never be sold, only given away. And I will guard the secret with my life.”

“We hope it never comes to that. Remember, too, that riches may come if the fairy whisky is sold, but consequences will follow. So be warned. Besides,” John said, “our Glen Kinloch brew is excellent stuff, and earns us enough coin to live by. So we need never sell the fairy brew.”

Though young, Dougal had occasionally tasted Glen Kinloch whisky, uisge-beatha ghleann ceann loch. But he had never tasted the fairy brew, which his father called uisge-beatha síthiche an ceann loch: the fairy whisky of Kinloch. “What is so different about the fairy sort of uisge-beatha?”

“That sort has powerful magic and must be prepared and taken with care. Not all are affected by the magic. Some consider it simply a good whisky. And we never let on.” His father winked. “Now look there.”

Following John MacGregor’s gesture, Dougal saw a small birch glade on a ledge along the slope. The light of dawn slanted through mist and trees as Dougal and his father approached, their footfalls crushing grass. He heard the keen cry of a hawk overhead.

There in the pale light, Dougal saw a blue haze.

Thousands of bluebells were scattered along the ground in a dense carpet beneath the birch trees, delicate bells drooping gracefully on slender stalks.

As he and his father walked through, dewdrops shed over his legs and kilt hem.

He had seen wildflowers in profusion, but not like this.

John MacGregor took a small silver flask from inside the folds of his plaid.

Handing it to Dougal, he withdrew two more flasks.

“Here, at dawn, we collect the fairy dew, and we thank the fairies for the blessing. The dew and our gratitude give the whisky its special magic. We will fill the three flasks and add them to the brew later. It will pour out as if the bottles are bottomless, though it will suddenly disappear when it is time to make it again.”

Dougal looked around dubiously. “Collect dew from wee bluebells? That is impossible. It is a task that lassies might like, not men,” he added with disdain.

John laughed. “Not the dew from flower petals, lad. Come this way.” He waded through the bluebells toward a cluster of birches, pushing aside flower stalks with his boot to expose a natural well in the ground. “No one knows this place is here. The fairies guard it.”

The opening in the earth was only as wide as an ordinary kettle, its edge obscured by stones, flowers, and grass. Dougal peered down to see a dark reflection of water. Natural springs were common enough. He frowned, doubtful.

His father circled the well three times, murmuring in Gaelic. Then he looked at Dougal. “Walk thrice round the well, ask politely for your dearest wish, and thank the fairies. They will grant your wish to you.”

“Did all your wishes come true, Da?”

“I wed my dearest love and I have a fine son.” John smiled. “Now it is your turn.”

Carefully, Dougal traced careful steps around the well. I wish to be a brave smuggler like my father, he thought.

“Now this. Pay attention, lad.” John lifted his arms. “MacGregor of Kinloch is here,” he said to the trees, the air. “I ask your help in collecting the magical gift promised me and mine long ago. This is my son, who will one day be the keeper of this well in his turn.”

Hearing the sound of rushing water, Dougal glanced down to see bubbles churning in the well.

A spout shot upward, the water dancing with rainbows.

In the mist rising from the well, small lights soared up, circling him.

He stared in awe and delight, feeling delicious chills run all through him so that his hair and skin tickled.

“The lights!” He looked up as they flew in circles around him and his father, flitting and swirling like delicate motes of sunlight, though dawn had hardly bloomed yet.

“The Fey are showing us they are here. I am glad you have a chance to see them.”

“I have seen lights like those before, but I thought it was a trick of sunlight.”

“Sometimes it is just that, so we must look carefully to know it is the Fey.” John dropped to one knee and began to fill his flask at the waterspout.

Kneeling, Dougal did the same, tipping the second flask to allow the water to leap inside.

When all three flasks were full, the bubbling spout subsided, and the tiny rainbow lights faded too.

John stood. Dougal rose too, as the carpet of flowers closed to cover the well.

“There,” John said quietly. “Now you know the secret shared with our ancestor long ago. This is the source of the fairy water that we use to make uisge beatha an Ceann Loch an síthean, Kinloch fairy whisky. No one knows it is here.”

Dougal nodded. He felt reverent, almost like being in the kirk on Sundays. “Where are the fairies? I thought we might see them.”

“They are here. The lights told us that. If they wanted us to see them, they would have appeared. Now listen, and remember. Circle the well three times, make your wish, then ask the Fey to bring up the water. Fill three silver flasks. And always leave a token of thanks.” John plucked a silver button from his jacket and set it beside the little spring.

Dougal noticed buttons, coins, ribbons, and stones scattered amid the profusion of bluebells. Some looked very old indeed.

The buttons on his jacket were wooden and not very special. Dougal reached into his pocket for the small cairngorm he had found on the slope and left it beside his father’s silver button. John nodded approval.

They left the glade, walking down the steep hillside as the sun rose higher. Soon the mist burned away to reveal the long green glen with its meadow floor and a sparkling river like a silver ribbon. Cozy stone houses lay snug against the sides of the glen, and sheep wandered the meadows and slopes.

“What did you wish for, Da?” Dougal asked as they neared home.

Kinloch House, the old stone tower where he lived with his father, his aunt, uncles, and younger sister Ellen, thrust up from a low bank of fog.

The stone was crumbling in places, ivy softening the broken edges.

Three hundred years old, the place always needed repairs, and Dougal often helped his father and uncles fix and shore up.

Though it was old and shabby, he loved all its familiar, quirky flaws.

“My wish?” John MacGregor shrugged. “I asked that my son be Kinloch’s finest and best laird someday so that he might save our glen from any harm to come.”

“Will harm come? This is a peaceful place.”

“The world beyond is not always peaceful, even if our glen is so.”

“But Da, you are the finest and best laird the glen has ever known.”

“I wish it were so, lad, I do. What was your wish?”

“To be like you,” Dougal said.

John laughed. “Go on. Tell your Aunt Jean that we have returned with the fairy dew. Tell her to start baking and cooking, for we shall have a celebration. Tomorrow, we will spread fresh barley to sprout and begin your first batch of fairy brew.”

*

A year to the day, John MacGregor was pistol-shot by revenue officers in the twilight and died at midnight.

The laird of Kinloch had been carrying four kegs of whisky in panniers on the back of a pony when the excise men had found him.

They gave him no chance to explain. MacGregor had not died defending his people, or even trading Kinloch’s legitimate brew.

Instead, he had traded his life for a few casks of peat-reek whisky.

The kegs were not smuggled stuff. They were a gift meant for the manse and the reverend.

His father’s unjust death troubled Dougal deeply, devastating him at night and hardening his heart during the day. He realized that his father’s wish at the fairy well had come true: Now the son was laird of Kinloch, and far too soon.

In the years that followed, he knew that he could never be Kinloch’s finest laird—John MacGregor had been that.

Nor did he want to be the educated, wealthy gentleman and advocate of the law that his father had wished for him.

Dougal found another way to honor his father as fiercely as the man deserved.

He became a smuggler the likes of which the hills had not seen for generations.