Chapter One
Argyle, Scotland, August 1750
“I hear he is a terrible, wicked man,” Aggie said, her voice rife with scandal, “a typical highlander, always flashing his dirk or his sword, going off his head with temper and committing vile murder, or worse.”
Jeannie Robertson MacWherter, hunched over her small plot of garden beneath the surprisingly warm August sun, wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of one filthy hand and shot a look of annoyance at her companion, Aggie Moffat. Though ostensibly Jeannie’s servant—and her only one—Aggie had in truth become far more since the death of Jeannie’s father last year. Now Jeannie bit her tongue, pushed away her irritation, and reminded herself just how dear to her Aggie was.
“Have you been gossiping again?” she asked sternly. “You know what I told you about believing everything you hear.”
Aggie looked stricken. Back in Dumfries, from whence the two women hailed, she had gathered snippets of news and wild stories the way other women might gather flowers, and treasured them as tenderly. But things were different here in Argyle. Jeannie wanted to start new, keep her nose—and that of her maid—clean.
“Well, but,” Aggie said in earnest self-defense, her lowland brogue coloring every word, “it is just so dull here. I do vow, mistress, I will perish if something interesting does not happen soon.”
Jeannie understood the sentiment. The two of them had been in residence at the small stone house in Glen Rowan since May, and life could not be more different from the bustle and clatter of Dumfries. Jeannie had been totally unprepared for the quiet, the deep, seamless dark that fell at night, and the isolation of the glen.
Only three houses occupied the small valley set like a green jewel cupped in God’s hand half way between Oban and Glencoe. One belonged to the landed family Avrie, the other—near the head of the glen and currently unoccupied—to the man Aggie now decried. With so little to talk about, Jeannie could only sympathize with Aggie’s exaggeration.
Still, Jeannie could not permit such chatter, especially of a stranger.
“You’ve been listening to the folks at Avrie House again, have you?” she accused and added, not giving Aggie a chance to answer, “Anyway, what could be worse than murder?”
Aggie took the second question as an invitation and lowered her voice to a throb. Her plain, somewhat homely face, enlivened by a pair of truly beautiful blue eyes, acquired the glow with which she always imparted what she termed news. “I am speaking of him having his way with women, of course.”
Jeannie experienced a twinge of disquiet. The man in question—one Finnan MacAllister—had been a friend of her late husband, Geordie, and was arguably the last person Jeannie wished to encounter. Yet she owed her presence here at this peaceful refuge to him.
Now dismay caused her to sit back on her heels and regard Aggie fiercely. “Are you speaking of rape? Because, if you are, that is a very grave accusation to make.” Not that Jeannie felt inclined to defend the man, but fair was fair, as her father had always said—at least when he was sober.
“Well,” Aggie admitted with a touch of remorse, “not that, maybe, but he definitely works his wiles on them and is far too persuasive, if you know what I mean.”
“I certainly do not. If you say he seduces women, we have nothing to worry about. It is surely difficult to do from a distance.” To Jeannie’s knowledge, Finnan MacAllister was not in residence at the big stone house, Dun Mhor, and had not been since her arrival.
Of course he did not have to be in residence to make his intentions felt. Jeannie’s mind shied away from the letter even now tucked into a chest in her bedroom. She had not told Aggie about that dreadful missive, nor would she.
“They say,” Aggie continued with renewed enjoyment, “he has had every woman in the glen.”
“Oh, has he?” Jeannie could not keep the sarcasm from her voice. It made no great number from whom to choose—the old Dowager Avrie at Avrie House, her various servants, and presumably the wives of her landsmen. “And from whom did you get this nugget of knowledge? Dorcas, in Mistress Avrie’s kitchen?”
Jeannie knew for a fact Aggie stole away and walked the short distance to Avrie House for a cup of tea whenever she could. But the Dowager Avrie’s cook, whom Jeannie had met on two occasions, was clearly a harridan with a mean streak and a spiteful tongue.
Not that Jeannie thought well of Finnan MacAllister. Far from it. And he, from the tone of his letter, clearly thought very ill of her in return.
You have no right to occupy the premises at Rowan Cottage and will vacate immediately, he had written in a heavy, black, yet—for a reputed murdering savage—very respectable hand.This missive will serve as your notice. I give you thirty days to remove yourself.
It had been dated 15 June. It was now 16 August, and the wicked Finnan had not appeared in the glen to enforce his demand.
“Has he,” Jeannie added spitefully, “had Dorcas and that awful cohort of hers, Marie?” Marie, a squat troll of a woman, had a tongue like a wasp. Jeannie had loathed her on sight.
“Well, no.”
“Then he has not ‘had’ every woman in the glen, has he?” Jeannie challenged. “Be careful what you say, Aggie. I wish a peaceful life here, and a clean start.”
Besides, everyone at Avrie House obviously detested Finnan MacAllister even more than Jeannie did herself. They might have good reason, or they might not; it was scarcely Jeannie’s place to tell. The Avries had once owned this beautiful glen. It was rumored Finnan MacAllister had schemed and cheated it away from them and precipitated the death of Lady Avrie’s son. But that, too, was gossip.
“Now,” she urged more briskly, “help me weed this pitiful crop, or we shall have nothing to eat this winter.”
Jeannie, a city lass born and bred, made no fit gardener. Everything she had planted, from parsnips to cabbage, struggled and wilted. The soil here seemed determined to thwart her every effort.
“Yes, miss,” Aggie agreed. She enjoyed the garden even less than Jeannie. At least Jeannie appreciated being out in the sweet air and the views of enclosing, purple-clad hills.
