The Laird's Forbidden Lowlander (Hearts of the Highlands #1)

Prologue

The Frozen River

Diana Fraser was eight years old and already knew that adults said "wait here" when they intended to leave her waiting far too long.

Her father had gone into the small stone house nearly an hour ago, carrying his instrument case, two glass vials, and the expression he saved for people who were very ill. Before he shut the door, he pointed to the stone bench beside the wall.

"Stay where I can find you."

Diana settled on the bench and counted the stones in the wall. Then she counted them again, because one of them seemed to belong to two rows at once. She tried to decide whether that was allowed.

The wind settled the question by taking the clean cloth her father had left on top of the smaller case.

Diana jumped off the bench.

The cloth went over the wall, brushed the frost-covered heather, and carried on toward the trees. It was a good cloth, folded by her mother that morning, and Dr. Andrew Fraser did not like clean materials touching the ground. He said so often enough that the words had acquired the weight of law.

She would reach it before the wind carried it to the stream.

The old snow crunched under her boots. Diana gathered her skirt in one hand and pushed through the bushes, keeping her eyes on the white square that appeared and disappeared ahead of her. Protecting medical supplies certainly fell within the order to stay nearby.

The interpretation was sound, she decided.

When the cloth stopped at the bank, Diana slowed. The wide stream had frozen overnight, forming a clear surface over dark water. Thin branches and leaves were trapped under the ice, within reach.

So was the cloth.

She knelt on the bank and stretched out her arm. Her fingers touched a damp corner, and the cloth slid a few inches farther.

Diana set one boot on the ice. When nothing happened, she set down the other, and the silence around her changed. A thin sound ran beneath her feet, too brief to understand and too clear to ignore.

She stepped back.

The ice gave way.

The water closed over her head so fast that Diana lost the scream. The cold got in under her dress, through her sleeves, and into her boots. Her feet searched for the bottom and did not find it. Her skirt opened around her legs, heavy, pulling her down.

She struck her hands against the ice, and the smooth surface returned every blow.

The world above was close: white light between bare branches, under a colorless sky.

Diana opened her mouth and swallowed water.

Something struck the ice above her. A shape moved beside the opening, followed by a muffled sound, a voice that could not get through the water.

She reached for the broken edge, and her nails scraped across it and slipped.

A branch appeared in front of her face. Diana grabbed it, and the wood slid out of her hands.

The voice sounded again, closer now. The branch returned, pushed until it touched her chest, and she closed her arms around it.

The pull came all at once.

Her dress caught on a point of ice. It tore at her shoulder, and a cutting pain opened near her collarbone. Her body moved forward. Her head broke the surface, and air entered her lungs in blows.

"Hold on!"

She held on.

The boy lying on the ice had dug his heels into the snow at the bank. He looked too large for twelve and too young to be giving orders that way. One hand held the branch. The other had wrapped a dark plaid around his own arm and the trunk of a low tree.

"Don't let go."

Diana tried to answer. Her teeth were knocking together hard enough to prevent any word.

The ice broke under his shoulder.

The boy turned his body, and an edge tore through the wool and reached skin. Red appeared near the collar of his shirt. He set his mouth and kept pulling.

Diana's dress dragged through the opening. Her chest struck the edge, and the pain near her collarbone opened again. Her knees reached solid ice at last, and the boy took hold of the back of her dress and hauled her up to the bank.

She fell onto the snow.

For a few moments she could only cough. Water came out of her mouth, her nose, and places that should not have held any water at all.

The boy knelt beside her.

"Breathe slowly."

The instruction was absurd, since Diana was already breathing in every manner available to her.

He pulled the plaid off the tree trunk and wrapped it around her. The wool smelled of smoke, rain, and horse. It was also dry on the inside. Diana held the edges with fingers that had stopped obeying properly.

The boy examined the cut near her collarbone. The sleeve of her dress had torn, and blood had come through the shift.

"That needs to be cleaned."

Diana looked up at his shoulder.

"So does yours."

He looked at his own shirt, as if he had only just noticed the blood.

"It's small."

"So is mine."

"Yours is bleeding more."

"Because I'm smaller."

The boy went quiet, possibly for want of an answer to that. Diana counted it a small victory while he got to his feet and put out his hand.

"Can you walk?"

She put her hand in his. His fingers were rough and warm. Diana managed to stand, though her legs shook under the soaked dress.

"My father is in that house."

The boy looked where she pointed.

"Andrew Fraser?"

Diana pulled the plaid tighter around herself.

"You know my father?"

"He treated one of our men in the autumn."

The answer came plainly, with no explanation of who ours were. Diana studied the brooch pinned to what remained of the cloth at his shoulder, a piece of silver marked with interlaced lines she did not recognize.

"What's your name?"

He hesitated. The wind moved the dark hair across his forehead.

"Alistair."

"Just Alistair?"

"Alistair MacLeod."

The surname had weight. Diana had heard it before in conversations that stopped when she walked into a room, and her father said that names could open doors and close roads. That one did both.

The boy started to lead her along the bank, keeping himself between her and the stream.

"I owe you my life," Diana said.

When he did not answer, she pulled his hand to make him stop.

"My father says a debt must be repaid."

"Your father says a great many things."

"Nearly all of them correct."

"Nearly?"

"He believes I stay where he puts me."

Alistair looked back, toward the empty bench beside the wall. Something moved in his face, though Diana had no name for it.

"Learn to swim," he said. "That will do."

"That does not repay a life."

"It keeps me from having to go into another river for you."

Diana weighed the proposal, which had logic and very little grandeur.

"I am still going to pay."

"Then pay by learning."

He walked on, satisfied that the matter was closed.

When they reached the small house, her father came out the door with his sleeves rolled up.

At the sight of her, soaked through, he dropped the cloth he was carrying.

Diana tried to explain the wind and the need to protect clean materials.

Dr. Fraser listened as far as the part where the ice gave way.

Then he stopped asking questions and carried her inside.

Before the door closed, Diana looked for the boy.

Alistair stood by the wall, pressing his hand to the cut on his shoulder. The wind lifted one corner of the plaid that now covered her shoulders.

He gave a short nod.

Diana did the same.

That night her father cleaned the cut near her collarbone while her mother mourned the ruined dress. The cloth was forgotten, and the river could wait.

Diana kept only the name.

Alistair MacLeod.