“Then watch yerself, Fiona, lass. And watch oot fer the laird. He took his horse; I heard someone say he rode oot bareback.”
Of course he had.“I will. I’ll send ye back word as soon as I know anything.”
One of the wagons rolled past as she reached the stable, and she grabbed for the tail. Two of the grooms pulled her aboard, and she sat down between them. The road wasn’t meant to be traveled this quickly at night, but the fire wouldn’t wait for them. “Stop at the loch and fill the buckets,” she ordered, as Loch Sìbhreach came into view on her left. “Tilly, ye and Diarmid stay right here and make certain the wagons behind us do the same.”
The footman and the maid jumped to the ground. “Aye, Miss Fiona. We’ll see to it.”
The moment they crested the low hill she could see the glow in the center of the valley. The villagers in Strouth must have heard the alarm being raised as well, because she could see the line of lanterns heading along the road that intersected with the path to the mill. Good. Strouth was a bit closer than Lattimer was, and every second would count.
“It smells like burned bread,” one of the others said, as they rumbled and jolted toward the orange and yellow blaze.
“That’s the sacks of flour and grain burning,” Hugh replied grimly, nothing but a dressing robe and a pair of breeches between the footman and the chilly night.
They needed to move faster. Gabriel’s comment that they were being attacked, that this and Brian Maxwell’s cow hadn’t been accidents, made sense. And added in with Lattimer’s other misfortunes over the past years, it infuriated her.
Someone had stolen sheep, yes, but she’d put that to poachers, to the desperate act of a few desperate individuals. The irrigation gates that failed one by one, the mill’s grindstone that seemed to crack at least once a year, seed grain that got wet and rotted—everyone else had put those and dozens of other incidents to the MacKittrick curse. She’d decided it was general bad luck, brought on by the property’s slowly diminishing finances that kept her constantly behind on repairs.
But if someone had done this… Fiona clenched her cold fingers into fists. She needed to talk with Gabriel. Previously her familiarity and friendship and kinship with everyone had given her an advantage over him, made her necessary—or so she’d thought. Now, though, all this pointed to someone she knew, and she hadn’t a clue who it might be. Nor could she go about threatening and accusing people. As much as she would hate to see him do it, Gabriel could be more forceful than she. And he was certainly more cynical and suspicious to begin with.
The trees gave way to meadow, and she gasped. The grain mill wasn’t merely burning. Itwasfire. She couldn’t make out anything but orange and yellow flames roaring halfway to heaven, obscured only by black smoke and broken here and there by black sticks that had once been beams but that now looked crazily like some giant’s burning bones.
A line of people stretched from the stream to the fire, the buckets they passed along heavy and reflecting wet in the light from the fire. The wagon lurched to a halt, and Hugh helped her to the ground, grabbed up a bucket, and ran toward the fire. Fiona turned a quick circle, looking for Gabriel.
Her first concern should have been for Niall and Letitia Garretson and their young daughters Jenny and Rose, but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to know he was safe. It was so odd to realize that nothing and no one mattered as much as he did, even weighted against people she’d known all her life. Even when she’d devoted the past four years to looking after all of them—every single life here in the meadow.
She frowned. Wherever Gabriel was, he would be helping. Grabbing an empty bucket and then a second one, she strode over to where the bank of the millstream flattened out into a manageable slope. Adding them to the pile being filled and handed off, she turned to go looking for more.
A wall collapsed, sending a shower of fire and sparks into the air. One fell on her skirt, smoldering, and she beat it out with her hands. Before she’d even arrived the mill had been completely engulfed; it was horribly clear that there was nothing left to save. The best they could hope for now was that they could keep the blaze from spreading to the wheat fields around the mill.
She retrieved bucket after bucket as they were emptied into the flames and cast aside. As the fire finally began to run out of fuel, the flames dipped lower over the glowing pile of timber and blackened stone. The black smoke became white steam, and she finally caught sight of Gabriel, beating out a long tendril of flame with a shovel before it could spread in the long grass.
Thank goodness.Tired as she was, the tension running through her shoulders eased a little. He was safe. Or as safe as any of them were, anyway. As she watched, he finished beating the spot fire out and went back to shoveling dirt and mud over the smoking wreckage.
When the parade of buckets began to slow and light began to glimmer on the eastern horizon, she handed the duty off to someone else and went to find the Garretsons where they stood in their nightclothes by the stream. She put a hand on Niall’s slumped shoulders and then wordlessly hugged Letitia and the two lasses.
“I banked the fire in the cottage,” Niall said. “Before we went to bed. Just as I always do. And I would nae leave a lantern in the mill. I wouldnae do such a thing. My lasses… I might have lost my lasses. We were asleep, Miss Fiona. If we hadnae… Someone fired a shot, and that woke me.”
“Thank goodness it did,” she said aloud, though the gunshot troubled her as much as anything else. “Did the shot come from close by, then? Do ye ken who did it? Did they help ye flee the cottage?”
The miller blinked, clearly only hearing half of what she was saying. “I didnae see anyone till old Reggie Eylar came running up the road, yelling fer us to get oot of the hoose because it was afire. We were oot by then already, but he helped me with the pigs and sent his boy doon to alert the castle.” A sob broke from his chest. “My da’ and his da’ and his da’ before him worked that mill. What will we do now? Where will we live?”
A hand touched Fiona’s shoulder, warm and firm. “Firstly, Mr. Garretson,” Gabriel said, “you and your family will stay at Lattimer as long as you need to. Secondly, once this fire is well out, you and I and some of your neighbors will pull the wreckage apart and see if anything can be salvaged. Thirdly, I will expect your assistance and advice when I arrange for a new cottage and mill to be built here.”
Letitia burst into tears, hugging her daughters to her. “Oh, my laird, thank ye so—”
Gabriel held up his hand, and she immediately subsided. “You just spent half the night watching your home burn, Mrs. Garretson,” he said. “You don’t owe me anything.” He tightened his grip on Fiona’s shoulder. “Will you see them to Lattimer, Fiona?”
“Aye,” she returned, holding out her arms to herd the family to the nearest wagon. “We’ll find ye someaught to wear, and Mrs. Ritchie’ll have a nice, hot breakfast fer ye.”
“I’ll stay,” Niall stated, looking again at the smoking ruins.
“No,” Gabriel countered. “Eat, and get some sleep. There’s nothing to do now but make certain the fire doesn’t flare up again, and there are plenty of men here to see to that.”
The miller nodded. “Aye, m’laird. I will thank ye, too, and I reckon ye cannae stop me.”
With a brief smile, Gabriel inclined his head, then turned away. “Give me a moment,” Fiona told the Garretsons, and walked after him. “Gabriel.”
He immediately turned around again. “They could have been killed,” he said, his voice low and hard, fury in the stiff line of his spine. “Those two little girls. This is far beyond stealing some damned sheep.”
