Chapter 2
Chapter two
In Which a Scholar Invokes Custom, a Highlander Loses Patience, and Everyone Loses Their Sanity
When consciousness returned, it arrived like an unwanted suitor—persistent, warm, and entirely too close.
Wanton opened one eye. A fire crackled in a vast stone hearth, the light licking across antlers and weaponry. The air smelled of peat, rain, and moral disapproval.
A grey-haired woman hovered beside her, bustling and muttering in a language that sounded like English wrestling vowels.
“Am I dead?” Wanton croaked.
The woman snorted. “No, but ye gave the barrels a finer death than they deserved.”
Just then the temperature of the room dropped several moral degrees.
Her Highlander savior filled the doorway like a particularly judgmental monument to virility, kilt unruffled, expression grimly heroic. His gaze travelled over her as though evaluating the precise damage civilization had just wrought upon his glen.
She sat up straighter. “Hello there. Splendid torque application earlier.”
His brow furrowed. “Ye’ve words for what happened?”
“Of course. I’m a scientist. Everything requires words.”
He folded his arms, the motion so broad it seemed to rearrange the furniture. “Who are ye, and where d’ye hail from?”
“London,” she said proudly, as though confessing to a noble affliction.
His expression didn’t change. “Aye. I can smell the fences.”
Wanton sat up straighter, smoothing her skirts with the air of a woman attending a morning call rather than a post-catastrophic interrogation. “I'm Wanton Wallflower,” she said crisply, “Fellow of the Self-Funded Society for the Advancement of Experimental Science.”
She reached into her reticule and produced a slightly damp calling card, embossed in earnest italics:
Miss Wanton Wallflower, Natural Philosopher (Occasional Explosions Expected).
She offered it with two fingers and impeccable poise.
The Highlander took the card as if it might bite, squinted at it, and snorted. “Self-funded, aye? I believe that part.”
Wanton blinked. “One must maintain independence of thought—and finances—when advancing the frontiers of knowledge.”
He made no move to return the courtesy. She waited. And waited longer. It occurred to her that Highlanders perhaps had not yet discovered the civilized custom of exchanging names upon introduction.
“Might I ask,” she said sweetly, “the name of my saviour?”
Silence. The fire crackled. Somewhere, a log collapsed in sympathy.
Perhaps, she thought, he simply hadn’t understood. She rummaged in her reticule again and triumphantly produced a small Gaelic phrasebook.
Consulting the page, she attempted what she hoped was a fluent address. “Mo thaing, gaisgeach nam fèidh!”
His eyebrows shot up. “Ye just called me a ‘heroic stag of questionable parentage.’”
“Oh dear.” She flipped a page. “That can’t be right.”
“It’s close enough,” he muttered. His voice rumbled like distant thunder. “Now tell me what ye’re doin’ in my lands.”
Wanton brightened, delighted. “Your lands? Oh! Then you must be the famous Tavish MacTease.”
One of his brows lifted, the only sign of vanity the man seemed willing to admit.
Wanton clasped her damp hands. “Laird of Glenravish, undefeated in the Highland hammer throw, the man who once chased off an entire detachment of English soldiers armed only with a caber and poor pronunciation.” A linguistic victory, if not a tactical one…
His mouth twitched. “Ye’ve been readin’ nonsense.”
“Primary sources,” she corrected. “One must always verify one’s data. I am thrilled to meet such a specimen of applied physics.”
Tavish blinked slowly, as though translating from a dialect of madness. “Aye. An honour I can scarce return. Now—why are ye here, wrapped in my plaid, instead o’ in a madhouse back in England where ye belong?”
“So that is your plaid!” she gasped. “I suspected as much when I woke. It’s… surprisingly breathable. I can feel my moral boundaries evaporating.”
The woman snorted. “Aye, lass. That’s what freedom feels like.”
The Highlander stared at her for a long, silent moment, then muttered something under his breath that she sincerely hoped was a Highland blessing. “Estate your business, ma’am.”
“I’m a scholar. You’ll find that the only thing I intend to conquer is torque. I’m here on a research expedition.”
“To destroy half my field?”
“To study the laws of motion under the influence of excessive masculinity.”
He blinked once. “The what?”
“The Highland Games present ideal conditions: flying objects, perspiration, torque,” Wanton said, with the patient authority of a woman explaining gravity to a cabbage. “I will remain here this week to prove that testosterone directly affects physics.”
She straightened her shoulders, girding herself with all the weary grace of civilization preparing to educate the wilderness. “Do not fret, Mr. MacTease. I’m quite used to translating advanced principles for subjects with... less formal exposure to science.”
Tavish’s brows rose. “Subjects?”
“Yes, yes. You’ll hardly feel a thing,” she assured him briskly—though, privately, she suspected those biceps alone could alter the course of small rivers, or at least compromise the accuracy of her data.
His eyes narrowed. “Enough o’ yer experiments and yer English airs. Take yer superiority, shove it in yer cart, and leave Glenravish before nightfall. I’ll have no Sassenach spies sniffin’ about my lands—no matter how bonny they might be.”
Wanton blinked. “You think me pretty?”
“I think ye’re trouble,” he said, turning away. “Goodbye, Flùr na cuthach.”
Her pulse gave a most unladylike skip. There it was again—that peculiar resonance of Gaelic, somewhere between a growl and a lullaby, vibrating directly through the nervous system.
Field Observation 9.0: The Gaelic language appears to exert measurable effects on female metabolism. Heart rate elevated, respiration erratic, moral equilibrium compromised. Further testing required—preferably with repetition of phrase.
She gasped. “What does that mean?”
He ignored her and reached for the door.
“Wait!” she called. “I’m not a spy—well, there was that one time I infiltrated the Royal Society’s annual picnic, but purely for science!”
“Ye broke into a picnic?”
“I prefer to think of it as an unsanctioned peer review.”
The old woman made a strangled sound that might have been laughter. Laird Tavish did not.
“Please mister Tavish. I came all this way. I have to prove my hypothesis.”
“English investors have been sniffin’ round Glenravish, wantin’ to buy the land for their damned fences. And ye appear out o’ nowhere the week o’ the Games? Aye. Spy.”
She smiled brightly. “If I were a spy, I’d be much better dressed. Look at this hem—it’s practically treasonous.”
Wanton pressed on. “Besides, I don’t care about land. That is a fixation of blind moles and hormonally-imbalanced patriarchies. I’m only interested in you.”
The laird’s eyes narrowed. “In me?”
“Scientifically speaking.” Her cheeks heated, but she prodded on. “Your torque was magnificent.”
He stared. She beamed. The air shimmered with mutual disbelief.
The woman—Morag, Wanton decided—set a teacup on the table between them. “Here. Drink this before ye both combust.”
Wanton accepted, inhaling gratefully. “Ah, the universal solvent of tension.” She took a sip.
Tavish turned toward the door. “Finish that and be on your way.”
She froze mid-swallow. Oh no. Evicted already—before she’d conducted a single experiment. That was worse than being rejected by the Royal Society and advised to marry a microscope if she loved research so much.
Her mind whirred. Think, Wanton!
She glanced from the laird’s retreating figure—musculature rivaling minor deities—to the steaming cup in her hands. Tea. Civilization’s final defense against despair.
What leverage did she have? Nothing but observation, deduction, and a half-boiled beverage.
She ransacked her memory for something she’d read in her Visitor’s Guide to the Highlands…
Bagpipes are not a mating call? No, irrelevant.
Kilts should never be ironed while occupied? Also unhelpful.
And then—aha!—there it was, just below “How to Survive Men in Kilts Without Killing Your Reputation (or Dying of Curiosity).”
Highland Hospitality.
Her eyes widened. The ancient law! A sacred social contract between host and guest.
She straightened, heart racing. “Wait!” she blurted, just as he reached the threshold.
He turned, slow and wary. “Aye?”
She raised her cup triumphantly. “I’ve drunk under your roof!”
He blinked. “What?”
“Tea,” she explained, brandishing it like evidence in court. “Hot, aromatic, legally binding tea. According to the ancient customs of Highland Hospitality, you cannot evict me. I am, in fact, your guest!”
Tavish stared at her as though she’d just declared herself Queen Mary. “Ye’re mad.”
Morag, bless her loyal heart, nodded gravely from the fireside. “She’s right, laird. Once a guest’s shared your bread or your brew, you canna turn them out. Would shame the glen.”
“Saints preserve me,” Tavish muttered.
Wanton brightened. “So it’s settled! I’ll remain until my research concludes. Perfect conditions—subject available, control group pending.”
He groaned, running a hand through his hair. “You’ve a death wish, woman.”
“Not at all,” she said serenely. “Just an insatiable curiosity.”
He muttered something Gaelic that Morag translated with a sigh. “He says he’ll regret this till his dying day.”
Wanton smiled, utterly radiant. “Splendid! That should give me adequate time for data collection.”
He crossed the room and stopped directly before her.
“Ye might stay,” he said, voice low, “if ye’ve a mind to. But hear me, Sassenach—if I catch ye meddlin’ in the Games, the land, or the folk of Glenravish, I’ll evict ye myself.”
His gaze dropped, brief and scorching, to the teacup still trembling in her hands. “Hospitality or no.”
Then he straightened, turned on his heel, and strode out, the door shutting behind him like the punctuation of a thunderclap.
Wanton watched him go, because it seemed a waste of eyesight not to. The kilt moved as he walked—bold, swinging, and outrageously confident. It wasn’t so much a garment as a declaration: This is freedom, and it has thighs.
Field Observation 12.0: The Highland male employs fabric not for concealment, but for defiance. A culture so comfortable with exposure might indeed have nothing to hide—except, perhaps, its feelings toward trousers.
She fanned herself with her damp calling card. “Remarkable,” she murmured. “The subject exhibits superior stride, minimal remorse, and a distressing influence on pulse rate.”
Morag gave a dry chuckle. “Aye. That’s the polite version.”
Wanton took another sip of tea, gathering her dignity—and what remained of her pulse.
“One would think that wearing a kilt would render a subject less… well—” she gestured vaguely toward the door Tavish had thundered through—“less inclined to confinement of any kind. One associates freedom of fabric with freedom of temperament.”
Morag snorted into her shawl. “Oh, lass, dinna judge our laird too harshly. The man’s temper’s the only thing he’s allowed himself to keep.”
Wanton tilted her head, intrigued. “Fascinating. Is it hereditary or situational?”
“These lands o’ Glenravish have been in the MacTease blood since before kings learned manners.
But times are turnin’. The English want fences.
Enclosures, they call it—tidy wee walls to pen the land and the folk both.
Tavish is the only laird left refusin’ to sell.
” Morag said grimly, settling herself in the chair opposite.
Wanton blinked. “They want to buy the Highlands? For what purpose—croquet?”
“For profit,” Morag said. “They’d turn hills into pasture, throw the clans off, an’ fill their purses while we watch our homes vanish.”
The fire crackled between them, spitting tiny sparks.
Morag’s voice softened. “That’s why the Games matter. They keep the glen proud. Remind the folk we’re still here, still strong. Lose them, and the people lose heart.”
Wanton stared into the flames. “So this isn’t merely athletic display—it’s… a cultural rebellion disguised as sport. A sociopolitical performance under competitive stress.”
Morag squinted. “It’s what, dear?”
But Wanton hardly heard her. Her mind was already ablaze with righteous conviction and inappropriate enthusiasm.
If English investors thought they could march into the Highlands and tamper with her newly acquired research grounds, they were gravely mistaken. She would defend this endangered ecosystem of torque and testosterone with every instrument in her arsenal—quill, chart, and questionable logic included.