Chapter 3
Chapter three
In Which Our Heroine Tests Her Hypothesis, Topples a Highlander, and Nearly Redefines Gravity
By morning, the Highland mist receded like a bashful chaperone, granting Wanton her first clear observation of the Glenravish Games: a seasonal migration of men toward feats of pointless strength and questionable attire.
“A fascinating society,” she murmured, noting the absence of referees, safety measures, or trousers. “All brawn, no bureaucracy. One shudders to think what would happen if they ever discovered parliamentary procedure.”
She tapped her pencil against her chin. If only the gentlemen of London developed the habit of throwing things away—logs, grievances, fragile egos—instead of shoving them up inside, how many heated wars and cold marriages might be prevented?
Field Hypothesis 14.5: Regular emotional exorcise could halve both military expenditure and the national divorce rate.
“Well,” Wanton mused, jotting a star beside the note, “that’s certainly a most valid study—one for another time, perhaps. When I’m less surrounded by flying timber and unchecked masculinity.”
The field stretched before her, crowded with plaid and purpose. Drums pounded, banners snapped, and the scent of roasted meat wrestled valiantly with that of damp wool.
Wanton adjusted her disguise—a borrowed tartan shawl that smelled faintly of onions and mutiny—and crouched behind a stack of barrels with her notebook and brass protractor.
The ensemble was completed by a pair of Morag’s boots, vast enough to qualify as small watercraft and only marginally suited for espionage.
Each step produced a sound somewhere between a squelch and an accusation.
She peered over the barrels. Everywhere she looked, men were throwing something: hammers, stones, insults.
One particularly zealous competitor had already removed his shirt in the name of aerodynamics, a decision Wanton fully supported in the interest of data collection.
If only England could bottle all this...
masculine volatility. One might heat an entire county on male grievance alone.
Field Observation 15.0: The average Highland arm exhibits torque exceeding that of a small windmill. Muscles appear sentient. Further study required (for science).
While she was having an eyefull of Highland muscle, Tavish, however, was nowhere in sight. That, she told herself, was scientifically advantageous. Observation required emotional neutrality, and his proximity had been shown to interfere with her data integrity.
Preliminary Finding: Within a five-yard radius of Subject MacTease, respiration becomes irregular, pulse exhibits experimental enthusiasm, and all rational hypotheses collapse under field conditions.
She adjusted her bonnet and resumed scribbling equations, taking discreet notes about velocity per grunt. “Power times mass equals—oh, good heavens, that’s a lot of mass.”
The next competitor, a tall brute of a man with shoulders like siege engines, hefted his caber—a log of considerable personality—and prepared to throw.
Wanton tilted her head. “Splendid extension. But the angle—oh dear.”
Her pencil raced across the page, scribbling equations furiously. A few hasty calculations later, she froze.
Trajectory: twenty-eight degrees.
Rotation of hips: threatening.
Predicted endpoint: the bleachers.
Occupied bleachers. Proof that freedom without geometry lead to tragedy.
She leapt up, panic and scientific duty battling for dominance. “Stop!” she cried, sprinting into the field. “Unregulated momentum is a public menace!”
For a people so attached to liberty, the Highlanders were remarkably poor at listening to instruction.
So Wanton did what any responsible scholar would do in a crisis: she abandoned reason and charged directly toward danger.
She raced forward, mud splattering, petticoats flying like distressed banners. One spectator was directly in her path—a startled piper with the physique of a startled piper—she shoved him aside with surprising ferocity. “Apologies! Peer-reviewed emergency!”
The massive caber-thrower took a step back, straining under the caliber of the caber. In seconds, that log would turn into a missile and exterminate half of Tavish’s clan!
In the absence of a proper war cry, Wanton yelled “Tally-hoo!” and barreled straight into the caber thrower’s back.
Note to self: acquire a more suitable field exclamation for hands-on research—something between “Eureka!” and “Hen o doddle dee!”
The impact was cataclysmic—but trajectory-bending.
They toppled like mismatched dominoes, sprawling into the grass in a tangle of limbs, plaid, and uninvited academic enthusiasm. The ground received them with a damp, undignified squelch—proof, perhaps, that gravity had an excellent sense of humor.
For a brief moment, all she could see was tartan, sky, and one very offended elbow.
The crowd gasped as the caber left the man’s hands at a new, improbable angle.
It spun through the air in majestic slow motion, twirling end over end like a wooden angel performing a Highland pirouette.
Wanton, still sprawled on the thrower’s back, grinned in relief. “Splendid! It’s cleared the bleachers entirely. Saved by geometry!”
Her triumph lasted precisely two rotations.
The caber, apparently insulted by her confidence, veered gracefully off course and sailed straight toward the clan’s corn stores.
It struck the wooden wall with a resounding thunk, vanishing halfway through like an enthusiastic spear of destiny. A cloud of grain exploded outward in a golden plume, settling over the stunned crowd like ironic applause.
Wanton blinked through the raining corn. “Technically, that still counts as a successful redirection of force.”
Someone screamed.
Everyone stared.
Wanton attempted a reassuring smile. “Good news! No casualties, except your winter supplies.”
The silence grew heavier. Then someone hissed, “The Sassenach did it.”
A murmur rippled through the clan, gathering mass and menace.
“She is sabotagin’ the Games!” someone shouted.
The cry spread like fire on whisky.
“The Sassenach ruined Malcom’s throw on purpose!”
“She’s here to bring the English fences!”
Wanton flailed her notebook above her head like a holy relic. “Sabotage? I was saving lives! My mathematics are unimpeachable!”
A cabbage struck the ground beside her boot, followed by a muttered curse. She took a cautious step back. “Does ‘Highland Hospitality’ include exceptions for mobs?” she whispered hopefully to no one.
The circle closed. Faces loomed—weathered, angry, suspicious.
“I assure you,” she said, trying for dignity, “I have never once intentionally destroyed a grain storage facility.”
The caber thrower she had felled pushed himself up from the ground, mud dripping from his knees and pride. He brushed his kilt, and his eyes found her.
For the first time in her life, Wanton discovered a situation in which she had no desire to investigate what lay beneath a kilt.
“Maybe we ought to toss her next,” he growled. “See if she lands better than the caber.”
From somewhere behind the crowd came a deep voice.
“Enough.”
The clansmen froze.
The thrower stiffened. Then, begrudgingly, turned.
Tavish was striding through the wreckage, every inch the laird—broad-shouldered, rain-streaked, and radiating authority.
“Leave it, Malcolm,” Tavish said, his tone flat as iron.
Malcolm.
So this was the cousin Morag had mentioned—the one with ambition sharper than honor.
“She’s made a mockery of the Games,” Malcolm protested. “You’d defend her?”
Tavish’s gaze snapped to him, cold and unblinking. “I said enough.”
“If this is the sort o’ Games ye can manage, cousin, maybe the English are right. Sell the land and be done with it.” Malcolm said and stalked away.
Wanton exhaled shakily, clutching her notebook as if it could explain her intentions for her. “Thank you,” she murmured to Tavish. “That was statistically effective crowd control.”
He stopped before her.
For one impossible moment, she thought he might say something kind—something that would acknowledge she had, in her own catastrophic way, been trying to help.
But Tavish didn’t speak. His gaze swept the wreckage: the splintered caber, the shattered whisky casks, the glen littered with grain like golden guilt. When his eyes returned to hers, they were thunder.
Her stomach sank, as though the entire Highland atmosphere had abandoned her lungs at once.
“The trajectory was—”
His gaze swept the wreckage. “Ye call this science? Ye come to the Highlands to fix what ye dinna understand.”
“Correction,” she whispered. “To improve it.”
“That’s what every Sassenach says before the fences go up.”
“I was trying to help,” she said, her voice trembling like an unstable experiment.
“You’ve done enough,” he said, voice low but heavy enough to still the air between them.
Then he turned to calm his people, his voice steady and authoritative, while Wanton stood in the ruin of her own good intentions. He didn’t even look back…
The crowd began to disperse, muttering darkly, skirts and kilts whispering through the settling corn.
Morag was led away by a neighbor, shaking her head.
The piper limped off, bagpipe deflated, wheezing like a wounded goose.
Even the rams—her once-loyal research assistants—trotted after the departing clansmen with an air of professional shame.
In less than a minute, she was alone.
Field Observation 15.0: Disapproval from subjects of study produces acute chest compression, increased ocular humidity, and an irrational desire to be liked. Further analysis postponed due to mortification.