Chapter Five
Drone and melody filled the air, cresting off the mountain and returning faint and rich, a quavering that soared over the glen. The sound filled him inside so that he need not think, nor watch for the coach rolling toward Auchnashee carrying the bright and lovely lass he would never see again.
The last haunting note faded. He set his pipes over his shoulder and walked higher on the hillside, wind sifting through his hair.
Stopping along the slope, he drew a breath, set the pipes again, and propelled air through the blowstick to inflate the woolen bag and the stretchable sheep bladder inside.
The bag with its four chanters had belonged to his grandfather, and its sound was rich and resonant.
Tucking the full bag under his arm, he let fingertips fly over the holes along the main chant pipe.
The tune was older than his bagpipe, played over so many generations that the echo sounded as if the hills themselves rang it out.
Dougal preferred playing in solitude, for his pleasure and for whatever sheep, cattle, goats, and wandering locals might hear.
He did not play at weddings or funerals, nor at ceilidhs held in villages—Garloch to the west, Drumcairn to the east, with Kinloch House halfway between.
The two villages at either end of the glen had a long rivalry that expressed itself at ceilidhs, kirks, ball games, and in distilling and free trading.
Over generations, the lairds of Kinloch had been neutral.
His father had played the bagpipes for social occasions, and his Uncle Fergus played for any and all. But Dougal kept the music to himself.
Keeping apart was protective, he knew, a habit developed by a lad who became a laird too soon, with the responsibility of tenants and estate on his young shoulders.
Loyal in his bones to the people of his glen, he did not pipe for them, nor involve himself overmuch in their lives.
Truth was, he knew he was not highly skilled at piping, not like his father or Uncle Fergus. He simply loved it.
He had learned much from his father, and after him, his father’s brothers, Ranald, Hamish, Fergus, and great-uncle Hector.
Those kinsmen had taught Dougal all he knew, guiding him, all of them acting as fathers as he grew.
He had learned to make whisky from his father and old Hector; to play the pipes from Fergus, the red-headed blacksmith; learned herding and husbandry from stodgy, steady Ranald; and Uncle Hamish had shown him how to repair nearly anything.
Everything but that blasted old coach, he thought. Every time he and Hamish fixed it, the old thing would start to shimmy and creak once again.
But sometimes what was broken stayed broken.
Like his heart. Once hurt, it had stayed that way.
First with the loss of his mother, later his father, and years later the girl he would have married.
She would have kept a neat house and a kind bed for him.
But she had asked him to give up smuggling.
When he refused, she left the glen to marry a shepherd.
And may she be happy with her four wee bairns and placid husband, he thought. Dougal had decided he was better off without a wife.
The last note he blew rang out like a lamb’s bleat, slightly off pitch. He rested, looking down at the long loch and the pale ribbon of the lochside road. The old coach was nowhere to be seen.
After a while he saw Hamish walking along a ridge toward him, with two dogs at his heels, leggy gray beasts whose majestic, formidable forebears had ambled the halls of Kinloch House for generations.
But this lazy pair, Dougal knew, wanted nothing more than to flop in doorways.
Still, Sorcha and Mhor were fine guardians and amiable companions.
And their presence meant that Hamish had returned to Kinloch House before following the sound in search of his nephew.
“So she refused,” Dougal said as Hamish approached.
“She did.” His uncle picked up a stick, tossed it. The dogs watched it fly, then settled at the man’s feet. “Useless beasts,” Hamish muttered.
“Fetching would make them seem obedient, and they cannot have that.”
“That lass o’ yours is not the least obedient either,” Hamish said.
“My lass!” Dougal laughed. “I did not expect her to agree, to be honest. But on the chance she saw the wisdom in it, I sent you with the coach.”
“That lass has more than a touch of stubborn in her. It was a waste of time and breath to tell her to leave. She intends to stay. And she had Mary to back her up.”
“That could be a formidable pair. Her brother is a gauger,” Dougal said. “He could bring men into our hills. She must go.” He felt a twinge of regret as he spoke.
“She is determined to open the school, and the reverend is out telling the families so. Mary spoke of it while we ate sausages at her table.”
“Sausages? Mary MacIan gave you breakfast?”
Hamish took a parchment bundle from his pocket. “For you and Lucy.”
Setting the bagpipe on the grass, Dougal unwrapped the packet to find sausages and a stack of oatcakes. He ate a sausage, savory and still warm. The hounds stood, interested, and he tossed bits to them. “Mary is a fine cook.” He licked his fingers.
“The Lowland lady made those for you,” Hamish said. “She made oatcakes and good strong tea, too. We shared a fine breakfast. You should have been there, Kinloch. She cooks.”
“She cooks?” He ate another sausage; it was seared, savory, perfect. He wrapped the rest to take home, wiping his fingers on his plaid. “A reason to keep her, then.”
Hamish chortled. “Aye, now that your Aunt Jean has run home to her mother again, leaving us to fend for ourselves once more.”
“Jeanie would come back if you were both less stubborn.”
“Bah. Life is more peaceful. The Lowland lass can cook. That is good enough.”
“It is not, and you know it. Though Lucy is near old enough to help,” he allowed.
“That wee lassie has no interest in household matters. It comes of being raised by a pack of scoundrels.”
“We are not so bad,” Dougal said. “Aunt Jeanie taught her to make her bed and keep her clothes neat, sweep the floors, sew a seam, cook a little.”
“She is not even seven years old. A bairn should not tend the fires and such. Besides, she makes salty porridge and weak tea. That wee bit needs a mother,” Hamish said. “You should have married the one who ran off with the shepherd.”
“She did not want me,” Dougal said.
Hamish grunted. “Then marry this Lowland lady so we can have good sausages and cakes, and she will teach the school and tell her brother to keep his officers away from her husband. And we will all be content.” He patted his belly.
“You have thought it all out,” Dougal drawled.
“For the sake of our stomachs, one of us needs a wife in that big house.”
“Jeanie will return.” But Dougal feared that this time, Hamish and Jean might be done with their stormy, passionate, stubborn marriage.
“Miss MacCarran would be out searching for wee rocks and letting us fend for ourselves, I guarantee. Nor would it help any of us if I brought a gauger’s sister into our house. ”
“Blast all gaugers!” Hamish shrugged. “Well, send her away if you can. A pity the reverend brought her here just at this time. I wish he had waited a few weeks more.”
“Aye.” Dougal bent to pick up his bagpipes and walked beside Hamish, the dogs following.
Aye, indeed, he did want the Lowland lass to stay, and he could not explain the strong feeling of it, the surge of craving inside him.
He barely knew the woman. But he could not forget those kisses—or the fine way she stood up to him and expressed her thoughts and her own will.
He admired that even more than sweet, earnest kisses.
He was not desperate for a wife, he told himself.
He had dallied now and then with one girl and another, if they were willing, and lived beyond the glen.
In truth, a long while had passed since the last time he had let his heart become even a little interested.
By now he was resigned to bachelorhood. It suited him.
But this Lowland girl was different. He felt it throughout his body and heart. Scowling, he tossed another stick. The deerhounds ignored it. “Lazy beasts.”
“I know how to get the teacher to leave,” Hamish said. “Let the fairies do it.”
“What?” Dougal looked at his uncle. Hamish was tough as an old ram, like his brothers Ranald and Fergus. But Hamish was the skeptical one when fairy legends and such were told. “You do not believe the legends of Kinloch.”
“I do not. But we have enough legends and haunts to frighten any Lowland lass away. Tell her about the fairies and haunts of Kinloch, and she will run home. And we will carry on. But without a cook,” he muttered.
Dougal laughed. “If she ran off in a fright, her brothers would be here the very next day to ask what we are up to in Glen Kinloch.”
“Brothers?”
“One of them is Lord Struan.”
“Och,” Hamish muttered. “We would also have to deal with the—what did the reverend call them? The Edinburgh Society for Ladies Who Fancy Themselves Better than Highlanders?”
“The Edinburgh Ladies’ Society for the Betterment of the Gaels.”
“The very ones. Whae’s better than us?” Hamish said, quoting Robert Burns, as Dougal laughed. “And what might scare that lass away from this glen?”
“Very little. She breaks rocks for amusement.”
“Tcha,” Hamish said, shaking his head. “We will tell her about the sprites who haunt the caves, and the tall ancient race of fairies who live in the hills, and the ghosts who bother all at Kinloch House. Except they do not, but she does not know that.”
“When she first saw me on the mountain, she thought I was one of the Sidhe. I only startled her for a moment. She was not frightened enough to leave, I can tell you that.”
“Then warn her of women stolen away by the fairies.”
“Scaring her is not the way. And do not take your wild scheme to the uncles.”