Chapter One
Scotland, the Northwest Highlands
Clinging to a rock wall, pressing his fingers into a narrow horizontal crevice and propping his hobnailed boots on a ledge, Evan Mackenzie, Viscount Glendevon and lately Earl of Kildonan, took a deep breath. He rested his brow on his upraised arm and contemplated his dilemma.
He was alone on a nearly vertical rise of rough black gneiss in a cold, buffeting wind and heavy mist. Sleet pattered against the rock and rendered it slippery as the devil. He could scarcely see past his own reach, and his climbing companion had disappeared from view.
In this thick, cold mist, Evan couldn’t see worth a damn. One wrong step on this precarious path and he would plummet. The natural chimneys and corries on this black mountainside would claim him even before he hit solid ground two thousand feet below.
Only what he deserved for returning to this place, he thought.
He had kept his distance from Glen Shee for years, but the mountains had lured him back this time.
Their silent call was strong, but so were the practical demands of his inheritance.
His father had died in a shooting accident while hunting several months ago, and so Evan had finally returned north.
Looking down into the heavy swath of white fog below his booted feet, he felt oddly as if he stood on a cloud above the earth. “Fitz!” he shouted. “Arthur Fitzgibbon! Where the devil are you!”
The words came back in eerie, muffled echoes.
Then silence. No answering shout, no crunch of a boot over stone, not even a cry of distress.
Had the professor decided to head back already?
Fitz had made it clear he was not keen on climbing through the mist, but he would not have simply left on his own—or would he?
In this weather, the lure of a dram before a hearthfire at Kildonan Castle was strong. It pulled at Evan, too.
Fog and spitting rain obscured the view below by now, so that Evan could not be certain when his friend had vanished from sight. Fitzgibbon was a good fellow, though a bit impractical. Perhaps he had called out his intention and simply assumed Evan would follow him down.
Evan frowned. If so, he could only hope Fitz made it down safely.
Pausing, he peered at a slab of rock in front of him.
Of mixed black gneiss and white crystal, striped like a zebra, it was treacherous, for he noticed a coating of verglas, a thin transparent layer of ice.
He pulled a small ice pick out of his canvas knapsack and hacked into the verglas to improve his next fingerhold, then moved upward.
The chill of ice and wind invaded his limbs, and he felt a twist of hunger.
He could not blame Arthur Fitzgibbon for giving up adventure in favor of a hot toddy and a warm hearth fire.
The thought of that comfort made Evan pause again.
Perhaps he should move down too, and tackle this ascent on a better day.
He liked a little danger, but the weather had more sting today than he had anticipated.
Clinging to the cold shoulder of the mountain, he looked down at the wreath of fog beneath his boots. From here, there was no quick way down or up.
He had come home to settle some estate matters—and to try himself against the mountain he remembered so well from boyhood.
Having scrambled in the Alps and climbed in other regions of Scotland, for him nothing was finer than the Torridons of his home in northwest Scotland.
Alpine peaks were higher and had a pristine fairytale beauty, but these Highland slopes possessed a dark, ancient power that humbled the climber.
The raw, primeval strength of the Torridons seemed to erupt from the very heart of the earth.
He stared into the vat of milky fog rising around him, found another hold, and pulled up.
The rope securing his waist was knotted on its upper end to an iron claw hooked over a rock above his head.
It was easier to go up than down. Once he reached a safe perch to rest, he would wait for the mist to clear before climbing down.
Grim, determined, he ascended by increments, the going difficult, slippery with mist. Until this height, the climb had been steep but straightforward.
But sleety rain, fog, and cold had swept in quickly.
Scaling the rock wall toward the split peak of the mountain was far more dangerous in this weather than otherwise.
He tugged on the rope to test its security, then inched upward.
His fingers met snow in the next handhold.
Gripping textured rock beneath, finding a new hold, he surged upward.
Sleet pattered noisily over rock and turf.
He could just see the mountaintop now. To the left, he glimpsed rugged snowy slopes in the distance.
He had reached a high and precarious point and had to push on.
The wind shoved at him, knocking his shoulder against stone, slipping his hold loose. He bumped downward, but the thick rope held. Finding niches for hands and feet, he crawled upward again.
Reaching the wedged iron claw, he pulled it out carefully and tossed it a little higher, hearing it clank and snag on a shelf.
He tested its strength and moved up, but the claw shifted and slipped.
He grabbed the edge of a rock. The ice under his hand was honeycombed, rotten with rain.
The claw sprang free, and he slid violently downward.
The rockface had enough incline to allow a fast grab of rock, tufted with wet grass. Somehow, he clung, but that disintegrated. He slid down the incline, his body making a rough path in the snow like the track of a sled.
Bumping, bouncing, he descended, hands grabbing as he tried to stop hurtling. At any moment he could careen wildly into the misty air and plummet straight down.
When the instant came, he sailed, fell, panicked—and then a strange peacefulness overcame him as he surrendered to the fall. Slamming into a ledge, he grabbed with both hands, felt his head knock stone, and sank into darkness.
*
“It’s a long walk to Glen Shee, and there’s a storm coming, Catriona.
” Morag MacLeod gathered her plaid shawl over her gray hair against the sleety drizzle.
Pausing on the hillside with Catriona, she peered down into the mist-filled glen.
“Stay the night with John and me and wait it out. I have a bad feeling a storm is coming, perhaps even a freeze. There is a strange chill in the air.”
“A wee cold rain will do me no harm. I will be home soon enough.” Catriona drew her own plaid higher over her head. “Papa and Finlay will be waiting for supper, and my aunt is also with us for now, so I’d best hurry.”
“Your father and brother have a cook in the manse. You need not rush home to look after them. Let your aunt, that old witch, take care of things for once. She treats you as no more than a servant, Catriona Mhòr, and it is not right. Plain Girl, she called you—tcha!” Morag shook her head.
“The one who sets aside her own happiness to take care of her parents, or in your case, your Da. It does not suit you. Nor are you plain in the least.”
“Plain enough,” Catriona said, shifting the large basket over her forearm.
She had walked the hills with Morag to fetch knitting pieces from Highland women living in crofts.
For the past few years, they had collected stockings, mittens, and blankets to donate to Highland regiments and to people in need throughout the nearby glens.
“You should be taking care of a husband and family of your own by now.”
“Who would marry one such as me? Tall as a man with hair like fire and a temperament to match. Rare is the man who would want me. I am needed in my father’s household,” she said.
“I do not pine for a husband. I already have a household to run and kindred who need me. Aunt Judith has only been with us since her widowing, and she will soon settle into her own home. Then I will stay with Papa. After that…perhaps a husband will come into my life.” She hoped for both her father’s long health and a family of her own, but she knew the two wishes might clash.
“Oh, that Judith plans to stay and take over what you have. And she will surely scold you for being late tonight. Ignore her,” Morag grumbled. She looked up. “More than rain is in those clouds. My old bones say snow is coming. Let’s hurry.”
Catriona clutched her plaid close. “I love the song you taught me today. Shall we sing it again?”
“You surely remember, quick as you learn. Go on, I want to hear it.”
Catriona began to sing, her voice quiet as the mist at first. The haunting melody came back to her easily, but she hesitated over some of the words in the tale of a long-lost lover returning from a sea voyage.
“Oh-ho-ri-ri-o,” Morag encouraged her, joining in the refrain. “Oh-ho-ri.”
Old Morag’s deep, rich voice harmonized with Catriona’s higher golden tones. “Good!” Morag approved. “Will you write this song down too, noting it as you learned at the Edinburgh school?”
“Musical notation? I will. I’ve written down every song I’ve heard since Mama left us, and I have all of hers as well, nearly a hundred by now. I hope to show it to Flora MacLeod. Did you tell Mother Flora that I want to learn more songs from her?”
“Ach, that crazy old woman! I told her,” Morag muttered.
Catriona laughed. “She’s your granny!”
“My husband’s great-granny. She claims she’s over a hundred years old now, but she says whatever she likes. Says she met the very king when she was wee, the one who gave Glen Shee to that old Kildonan earl. She says she met the fairies too, who taught her their songs. Hah!”